Trailer "The Great Tamer" - Annotation
This post discusses a video document:
Papaioannou, Dimitris. "THE GREAT TAMER (2017) / a New Work by Dimitris Papaioannou / Trailer." Dimitris Papaioannou - THE GREAT TAMER. Onassis Cultural Centre, 2017. Web. 26 July 2017.
This video document I selected is the trailer for The Great Tamer directed by Dimitris Papaioannou that played at La Fabrica during the 2017 Festival D’Avignon. This video source is three minutes and two seconds long, and it captures a good amount of the performances essence by displaying the stage, the acrobatics, and fragments of the relatively iconic melancholic and graceful scenes, such as the beginning where the man gets a sheet placed on and blown off him repeatedly in a Sisyphean style. Most importantly for my research, this is the only source I could find that includes segments of the performances soundscape, and it also puts the sounds of the amplified breathing, ringing, and the slow paced version of Johann Strauss II, An der schönen blauen Donau, Op. 314 in the spotlight.
Within the production program, Papaioannou describes in an interview how he set out to reveal the small tragedies and great absurdities of modern lives on the quest for grace and beauty through the medium of circus, including clown and acrobatics. The use of the Strauss piece in particular demonstrates aurally a bit of what Papaioannou was setting out to accomplish in terms of incorporating this overall theme of absurdity, as it was played at a haunting and unsettling slow pace. This change in speed altered the songs tone dramatically, and with this choice, I believe there was an allusion to its use in Stanley Kubrik’s, 2001: A Space Odyssey. The production trailer even opens with the scene including the astronaut character as they walk slowly across the bare space-like stage taking a faintly familiar scene to then later deconstruct it. The scenes in the trailer only get progressively more absurdist from there as well, clearly inspired by Samuel Beckett’s fragmented art style, which was also mentioned in the production program. The trailer presents the performance’s scenes in a fragmented manner just as the scenes of the performance text themselves were but fragments.
In terms of limitations, I was unable to find the creator of the trailer, but it can be found on Papaioannou’s main professional website, which adds credibility. Furthermore, in terms of my research this video is lacking in the sense that it does not document the many instances of foley sound that were used throughout the performance. From my recollection the use of sound hoses, also known as whirly tubes, and what I believe were kazoos were incorporated to add to the strange other worldly soundscape.
