Dictating Focus and Feeling - Annotation
This post discusses a video document:
Papaioannou, Dimitris. “The Great Tamer.” Festival d’Avignon. www.festival-avignon.com/ en/shows/2017/the-great-tamer. Accessed July 26 2017. Video.
The trailer for “The Great Tamer” creates a collage from different parts of Papaioannou’s production. The images he focused included the astronaut, the covering and uncovering of a body with a white sheet, the man walking on his hands with roots extending from his feet, the recreation of several art pieces, balancing upon a world and upon each other, dismemberment of bodies, the arrows of wheat, and a small section of what each characters play. Some images repeated multiple times: the man with the roots on his feet, the astronaut, the skeleton falling to the ground, and the uncovering of different bodies. The music played throughout was the slowed classical song that played in different variations of distortion throughout the play; in this video paired with a ringing in the ears that exemplifies a sort of discomfort.
The moments highlighted in the video highlight a type of narrative that Papaioannou presumably wants an audience to follow and expect. The boy who we followed in the play, who had the cast, is marked as a central character with his tendency toward nudity among others in black clothing and his wonderment in his movement, and he appears in more frequency as the video continues. The body being covered by the white sheet is paired mid-video with the first appearance of the skeleton (1:06), which suggests the uncovering that discovers beautiful live things, as well as dead ones. The skeleton, the “physical” and metaphorical taking apart of people, and the sensitivity of the boy point toward the inspiration for the piece: the boy who killed himself after being bullied. The boy balancing on the earth and the wheat arrows being thrown are environmental images that show beautiful human violence through discovery – these discoveries are shown with wonder rather than malice on the actors faces. The clear image of Rembrandt’s “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicholaes Tulp” appears mid-video, appealing to the more “intellectual” side of the piece.
This curation of images, moments, and the invocation of feeling through timing, music, and pairing of clips, exemplify how Papaioannou curated his piece visually. Each symbol was consciously chosen, as one can find different metaphors and stories depending upon which clips you focus on. Nonetheless, the video’s quick clips, disturbing but fantastical music, the actor’s commitment and wonder, and the clear images of symbolic objects paint a picture that accurately represents the show, and marks a visually inclined creator.
