Dimitris Papaioannou discusses "The Great Tamer" - Annotation
This post discusses a video document:
Laporte, Arnaud, and Papaioannou, Dimitris. Dimitris Papaioannou for "The Great
Tamer", Avignon Festival, 18 July 2017, Cloitre Saint-Louis, Avignon. Press
Conference.
Dimitris Papaioannou describes his process of creating, the way he incorporates ideas into design and performance, and what constitutes the language of his productions in a press conference hosted by Arnaud Laporte for The Great Tamer. This video is featured on the Avignon Festival’s website in a section dedicated to the production. Papaioannou sits in the middle of a table with a microphone in his hand, Laporte to his left and a translator to his right. To begin, Papaioannou apologizes to the crowd for being unable to understand French. As Laporte asks questions, the translator speaks them softly to Papaioannou, away from the microphone. Luckily for any English speakers out there not well versed in French, Papaioannou’s microphone manages to pick snippets of sound out, as he quickly responds in English. He reveals that he works with a visual storyboard in an ever-changing production to develop the altering goal of a “mosaic”, the collaborative process of composing a piece, and his notes for design in which he uses images instead of words.
An important aspect of this source is that I receive Papaioannou’s direct opinion -nothing on paper to be written down and nothing getting lost in translation of one language to another. It was a problem not being able to hear some of the questions, but from his answers I could gather what ideas he was trying to communicate. It’s similar to the program for Die Kabale in the way that I am receiving information that would be impossible for me to substantiate based on my own claims and observations alone. I get first hand details of how he builds the performance text and all the particular goals he tries to achieve with this piece, which is useful because the performance is rooted in abstract body language. Although he doesn’t reference semiotics explicitly, the ideas and philosophies behind his method of working with performers can be viewed in a theatre semiotic framework. The exploration of this claim pertains to my research as I am seeking to explore the production of meaning with a focus on languages; it’s informative to see this production through the lens of its creator and what kind of focus and importance he placed on language in a movement based performance text.
