by Sung Rno

performers: Ji-Young Kim, Haerry Kim and Laura Nupponen
directed by Hansol Yoon
choreaography by Sonja Kostich
sound and image by Liubo Borissov

Synopsys: Masks portrays a world in which the rules dictate that two friends find themselves as enemies during a war. A three act play, in the first act room-mates and best friends A and B learn that the government has announced a new nation-wide lottery according to which half of the population has to go to war against the other half. This time, the choice is based on the birth dates and the two have to go on opposite sides the following day. In act two, A and B meet at war, A has become a famous assassin while B is sent out to find and kill him. In fact, B has volunteered for the mission, which is successful. A and B have a long conversation before a tragic climax at which A purposefully provokes B to shoot him as he realizes the doubt and fear in his mind. Act three is B's post-war monologue delivered to an imaginary A sitting at the same breakfast table where the two characters were originally introduced.

In the realization, director Hansol Yoon goes beyond conventions to blur the lines between drama, dance and media performance. In this staging, at first, the three acts were delivered by actresses Haerry Kim and Ji-young Kim playing A and B in a more or less conventional setting, while a third mostly silent character played by Laura Nupponen slowly builds a structure on the stage which ultimately serves as a projection screen and contains a stylized cut-out of a dead body, revealed at the end of act two. After the first three acts are done (or Cycle 0), the silent character commands A and B to restart. This is done by a system of audio and video cues prerecorded on a DVD and projected on the newly constructed screen. The next cycle of the play goes through the same three acts but twice as fast, this time the actors repeat their movement but the sound is derived from a recording of the previous cycle. Sporadically projections appear, which are composed exclusively of body parts of A and B. Each consecutive cycle is delivered faster than the previous one, as gestures become dance, dialogue a river of sound and still body part images, a dense video stream. Similarly to the sound and visual elements, the choreography created by Sonja Kostich was derived entirely from snippets of gestures that the actors consciously or unconsciously expressed in cycle 0. There were about seventeen cycles, the last few lasting of about ten seconds which were interrupted at random by a decision made by the actors who were by then physically and emotionally at the point of a breakdown.

While the underlying structure was Sung Rno's play, the end result was a true collaboration between director, choreographer and media artist, a genuine melting of people and media, which made each component indispensable to the others.

For additional information, booking or to request a DVD, please contact purplemanhattan [at] hotmail.edu