Well, back in Vienna for two more days. This is a wonderful city but it
will be incredibly great to get back home to the one I love and to the life
I placed on hold for one month but before I leave Austria I wanted to place
a few of my thoughts on the list.
As everyone knows, this was a gargantuan effort to put on Among Immortals
and I am without any doubts that we accomplished as much as was possible at
this time given the resources, time and money at our disposal. In fact,
immediately after the performance there was a mixture of relief and joy
that we had actually "pulled it off." Although a few hours later, some
were starting to compare Among Immortals to what they imagined the final
performance to be, the one with seven stages, a web stage and light cones.
In effect, a comparison between something that was actually accomplished to
that which was idealized. Maybe this comparison was premature in the
afterglow of the performance in that it served to dampen some of the joy
surrounding the event but then again maybe it serves some useful purpose.
I don't know. But we did show the two main goals of oudeis in that we
clearly established that the Internet could be used as a tool for
collaboration. The second objective was to use the Internet as a
performance space and though we had some success in this area it could have
been much better. Juli, the MOO is a very important part of what we were
attempting and this was one of the three major areas where the performance
was not technically "perfect." Because of problems we were not able to
show the MOO on the bottom third of the screen. This was a major drawback,
another was the fact that we were technically unable to have a shockwave
site accessible on the Web. The third was a failure in providing the
transmission of real audio over most of the web. If these technical
"imperfections" had been resolved we would clearly have demonstrated the
usefulness of the Internet as a performance space. Still, to a lessor
degree, I do think we accomplished this goal. I also want to make clear
that these elements which had to be dropped from the performance were not
the fault of the technical team but were simply unavoidable because of the
lack of resources that were already mentioned. In fact, the technical team
was absolutely superb, working through many nights to solve one problem
after another. A huge thanks to Aaron, Rainer, Christian. These guys are
great!!! Santiago, who handled much of the technical stuff as well as the
artistic sides of things was really wonderful to get to know. Monika who
arrived at exactly the right minute was absolutely essential in the success
of this performance (however, anyone wants to judge the success). Gernot's
use of the sun and shadows in the beginning was simply fantastic.
Among the other people I would like to thank are: Wolfgang, who looks like
he would remain calm during the end of the world. Karin, a great
production manager with a wonderful smile. Ulli, a sensational costume
designer. Martin, our videographer and all around good guy. Michael, who
came in and helped out at the Cafe Stein, and Mischa who was a wonderful
presence at the Sky Cafe.
I also want to thank Twyla, Boris and Jim for hanging in there with us at
so many strange times for the rehearsals. You all did a superb job. And
now, a special thanks for Juli. Even though we weren't able to do
everything we wanted with the MOO and it was not as central as intended, it
still proved very useful to the performance. I know you have concerns over
how the MOO was used in this performance but it really was planned to have
it be of primary importance. I will write more about this later but I saw
that we had the biggest MOO audience of all time and that certainly is a
good sign. Juli, you are to be congratulated for making the ATHEMOO
available to all theatre artists even if their view of how things should be
done for a particular performance happens to differ from yours.
Anyway, from what I hear AI was one of the more successful events of the
last two years at Ars and something for which we can all be proud. Of
course, I know there are those with contrary views who will write to the
list and I look forward to also seeing their views.
Very tired and fighting a cold in Wien,
Lee