Tacita Dean's film for the Unilever Series at Tate Modern.
25th October 2011

Aesthetica Magazine Blog: Once Upon a Time: Fantastic Narratives in Contempo...

Aesthetica Magazine Blog: Once Upon a Time: Fantastic Narratives in Contempo...: "Review by Katerina Valdivia Bruch The Guggenheim Museum Berlin presents in Once Upon a Time: Fantastic Narratives in Contemporary Video ..."

Nostalgia is Dead

The play was performed on the 21st and 22nd June 2011 and was very well received. The first performance was in Caffe Nero on Hope Street in Glasgow, which was primarily a test run to a small audience. At this stage we were still shifting parts around and Mark and Katrina were further defining their characters. The second performance was specifically for National Theatre of Scotland's Five Minute Theatre which started at 5pm on the 21st and ran for a full 24 hours until 5pm on the 22nd. It was a hugely ambitious project and one that has proved to be very successful. There were around 350 online viewers for Nostalgia is Dead (22nd June at 3.30pm) as well as a small audience present at the Doocot Cafe bar in the Lighthouse Building in Mitchell Lane Glasgow. 

The understanding that there were over three-hundred viewers was hard to grasp simply because they were not physically present. It would be impossible to determine how many viewers actually engaged with the work, felt some empathy with the characters, or were just counting down the five minutes. That said, streaming the work online opened the project up to an international audience.

The Real Virtual Me was the working title of the play at the time of applying to Five Minute Theatre. It was changed to Nostalgia is Dead as the content was reworked and the title had less relevance. However the question of what differentiates between the real and the virtual self still applies to the play and will be reintroduced as it develops over the next few months into a full length play.

The actor

I sat today watching Mark Richardson and Katrina Evans rehearse for Nostalgia is Dead. This is a new experience for me, writing a play. I have worked with actors before during my time as a film and video artist, but acting for theatre requires a different sensibility. Initially I was interested in observing how they would portray the characters that I presented to them and project them for a live audience. That interest was soon dispelled when a strange feeling came over me. Watching them rehearse I came to realise that they were taking my characters away from me. I had flashes in my mind of what they might look like and have even heard them speak. In a sense, I was close to them but their transcendence in to reality was the moment at which I felt them slip away.

 For a short while I was struck with a sense of loss as they began to feel like strangers to me, but by the third or fourth run through (on day one) something incredible happened. Both Katrina and Mark became the characters, but not the ones that I conceived. Just as my own life and experiences informed their realisation, so to have the life experiences of the actors informed their interpretations. In a sense, it was a cross fertilisation of experiences and perceptions that resulted in the two central characters. Although they are now strangers to me, I find them utterly compelling. This is the craft of the actor.