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Volume CXXXIII, Number 12 |
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Dieck seeks to freak audiences out
KERRY ELSON
STAFF WRITER
Like a "weird dream," Colin Dieck's performance art piece, Ampersand, enchanted and confused audiences Janurary 26 through January 29 in Wish Theater. Dieck '04 and collaborators Natalie Handel '04, Leo Landrey '05, and Adrienne Heflich '05 worked through the fall semester and winter break to pull together a show that includes film, pre-recorded sound, a fog machine, and student-performed monologues.
Dieck first got the idea for Ampersand while working on Masque and Gown's production of Into the Woods last spring. "With all the trees [on Woods' set]...there was a light with a color fader in it close to one of the trees and it was red and during one of the rehearsals I saw it....It was...like bloody death dripping down this sheet of burlap." That original inspiration is seen in Ampersand: at the beginning of the piece, textured fabric bathed in vivid hues of red, green and blue drips from the ceiling as the audience listens to a mottled mix of bleating sheep, a traffic jam and a baby's coo.
While Dieck and Handel insist Ampersand does not have one intended meaning, Dieck reveals that, for him, the piece explores growth. "It was just the idea of light and color and growth and long pieces of fabric," he said. "Continual growth, if everything grows enough, there's so much that it's simply impossible to comprehend." This concept is reflected in the piece.
At its start, the audience sits in complete blackness and ambient noise is barely audible; as the noise level increases, lights gradually come up on the fabric trailing from the ceiling. Three actors come into view and perform monologues, and the show continues to follow an entropic path: performers interact not only with each other but also with the audience, who is presented with props from the show and is encouraged to play in the space. Lights and sound are meanwhile increased to nearly blinding and deafening levels until it seems the environment cannot bear any further stimulation, at which point the theater blacks out and goes silent.
The creative process was as chaotic as the production itself according to Dieck. He said, "Each time we thought we knew what was going on, it changed and it got more complicated."
His feelings are shared by audience members. Desneige Hallbert '05 unraveled the show's meaning not only during the piece but also after she left the theater.
"I just remember sitting there in the dark and thinking this is a little long to be making your audience wait, but then I thought, 'Wait a minute, maybe that's the point, to make us be in just our heads right now'...I realized that it's like life, you know, sometimes other conversations are going on and you'll never be able to hear [them]."
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