Oberon White

I have created performances, circus, theatre, from factories to ports, harbours, supermarkets—everywhere. My desire to create work in non-conventional places, my desire to create work in what became a label, ‘site-specific’, comes not from a trend. I’ve been doing it for 25 years. And why? Because live performance—and I’m not calling it theatre or otherwise, I’m calling it live performance—is 150 years behind the visual arts. Live performance is still very much, in terms of how it is being read, is very much that proscenium arch left-to-right without ever challenging the thinking process of the viewer.

Design material for ‘Earthquakes in London’ at RWCMD, photo by Nicola Cioni

So there will be a stand of people that say ‘Oh Firenza stop creating these shows where you have to move around, I don’t know quite what I’m supposed to be looking at. Can I not just sit down and have a good pre-packed show?’ So there will be one strand of people that will say that and that will say ‘You’re very disrespectful of the audience, you never make them feel comfortable.’ And then there’ll be another strand of people that will say actually I respect the viewer as a creative human being and I would like not to stop them at a fourth wall and say from here to here it’s mine and from here to here it’s yours—but to say I would actually like to bring you into my world, into my image, to the risk of dirtying my image. Because I like as a director—of course I like to create an image and keep it clean, and wallow it and go wow isn’t this image great, but I would like to bring you inside it, to breathe it, to smell it, to be part of that experience and to allow you to make your own narrative.

Of course there is a narrative, of course there is a vision; there is research, there is a lot. But also, like true poetry, like true music, like true whatever, it has to have different correspondences. It has to be that even if I see a shape now, that maybe you reverberate and think about something else. And within its smudged at the edges quality, within this quite raw and raucous way of creating work, there are people that come to me at the end and say ‘It’s so emotional or powerful, there’s something about it that I can’t quite explain’. So it does obviously appeal to a less rational human being, and what I always say is it’s not just you guys being the performers but its also the audience that has to fasten their seatbelts and enter the space.

- Firenza Guidi on theatrical space for: http://sideshow-circusmagazine.com/

Club Pimpelipom! - Tonight!

Come see me at ‘Club Pimpelipom!’ tonight, performing Oberon White’s ‘Cabaret of Desire’. Hopefully see you there!

Paper Dress Vintage, 114-116 Curtain Rd.,  London, EC2A 3AH

https://www.facebook.com/events/225699780864771/

Here’s a pretty rocking playlist wot I made as a precursor to Tribe of Frog.

Yes, a playlist so earth shatteringly good that it warrants it’s own hastily made graphic on paint, using the beautiful visage of Lauraisfrank.

Enjoy at your own peril, fellow amphibiophiles.

Amphibiophile