#moonstone

MAY 30th - JULY 15th - PRAGUE - first rehearsing phase

Nanna arrives June 13, Thóranna June 23 in Prague, Tonda will join us June 12 - after his premiere.

AUGUST 22nd - SEPTEMBER 1st - PRAGUE - second rehearsing phase

Nanna and Thoranna will be in Prague from August 24.

SEPTEMBER 2nd - 3th - premiere + 1 performance in PRAGUE

SEPTEMBER 4th transfer to REYKJAVÍK

SEPTEMBER 13th + 14th performances in PRAGUE

CURRENT STATUS June 5th 2022

After first week of reading rehearsals we have final versions of the script - CZECH + ENGLISH version.

CURRENT STATUS: February 10th 2022

After the workshop in February in Prague, we have a technical script ready and we can plan the filming in Iceland based on that. In addition to this, mock-up set rehearsal and projection and sound tests have taken place at the Studio Hrdinů and dates have been set for the March 11th explication and April 14th production meeting.


























January 2nd 2022

DRAMATIZATION / SCRIPT

We are working on the script, which is already taking shape and is based on our discussions and research, watching the Les Vampires series and other source material gathered during our December meeting.

The first version of the dramatization in English will be available during January. The Czech version (in progress), which is the source material for the editing is available as shared document on the MOONSTONE google disk (you can use the link above).

We focus on the characters of Máni and Sóla and their relationship. We agreed that the basis of the future production would not be a text - in the sense of a spoken word / spoken language. We want to convey situations, images and states through visual and sound sensations and formats. We focus more on showing the inner world of the protagonist - Máni than on telling a narrative.

Máni perceives and experiences his own subjective reality, strongly influenced by experiences and perceptions from silent films. The events around him do not concern him in their own way and up to a certain point - he watches the events and happenings from a distance, as if they were happening around him and not through him. He is predetermined by his exclusion, by his life situation and by the conscious decision he made in his childhood. This decision allows him to be internally free, because he has and can have no influence on the events around him. He finds refuge in the world of his own fantasy and imagination. His inner world is a wasteland which he fills with his imaginations, projections and dreams.

"No matter how dire the circumstances, nothing touches the boy. For the first time, Reykjavík has taken on a form that mirrors his inner life. "

Only descriptions of relationships and interactions with his customers will be narrated / told by Máni as the only truly experienced / lived situations.

We are interested in the moment of mirroring/projection of various characters - real and those from movies - that merge and intertwine into Máni's own identity. He likes to be “someone else”, even seeing Sóla much more as an ideal image of herself than as a real and living being. His inner emptiness (inner infinity) can contain an infinite number of identities, characters and forms - he is "the boy who never was".

Máni can describe or literally stage his ideas and fantasies as film scenes. For example, the description of the encounter with the customers and their character, or the character of Sóla, into whom he sometimes transforms himself and she into him...


STAGING

We decided to work with the method of collage composed from various formats based on the silent films genre - VIDEO, TITLES, LIVE MUSIC. We further develop these formats through live action on stage, light design and reproduced music and sound and a soundtrack that can have an almost documentary character.

We don't always use the individual formats together, but we decompose and fold them in different ways. By mixing, layering and overlapping or, conversely, separating the individual formats, our narrative "language" is created.

We are interested in evocation and space for our own - the audience's - imagination. Step by step we uncover various clues, traces and fragments that in the end create a complete picture. A picture of the Máni's inner world is composed in contrast to the parallel "reality" of the outside world and the course of historical events and phenomena (the eruption of the Katla volcano, the declaration of Icelandic independence, the Spanish flu...).

We want to show historical realities through audio-documentary recordings or in text - through subtitles. We don't address and thematize them visually (costumes, settings, etc.), if only in hints and some unexpected context. For example, we move in the environment of contemporary Reykjavík and the (historically untouched) Icelandic landscape, but in which a detail or a strange figure acting according to its own rules can be embedded.

(I imagine, for example, Irma Vep ordering a beer in Kaffibarinn like a stylized character from a silent movie and then climbing onto the roof. In an Irma Vep costume, of course! Whatever that might be - just not in civilian street fashion.)


SET DESIGN

Tonda already has a proposal for the basic design of the space (maybe he could post some sketches here or on the google disk?). In February we will build a hint of stage design on the venue and tune the details.

The Studio Hrdinů, like Tjarnarbío, is originally a cinema. So that's exactly how we see the space - as a cinema. The auditorium with the audience will be part of the set design, as well as the projection screen and the projection booth.

We are also considering the possibility of reversing the perspective and moving the audience behind the screen - to the other side.

We're also interested in the possibility of using a curtain and using the space behind the screen, if we can remove it - which probably shouldn't be such a problem. (Could it be rolled up, like a roller shutter, for example?) Would that create something like a "room"...? Let's see!

So it is played everywhere - not just in the traditional stage/auditorium layout.


VIDEO

We are interested in the documentary way of shooting in the environment of contemporary Reykjavík and the surrounding landscape.

We can see places (and characters?) that actually exist, as described in the novel, but in some unexpected context of time, place and action.

We will be inspired by (or perhaps even "quote") moments from the Les Vampires series.

The video sequences, like everything else, depict the perception and subjective perspective of Máni. The emptiness of a city or a landscape without people is thus not only a reminder and association of the pandemic situation, but also an image/reflection of Máni's soul... Sóla in all its possible forms is perhaps especially present. Or we do not see faces of the characters on the screen... Or they are just those "projections" of Máni's ideas about people whose identities are intertwined with the film characters or projected into Mani's character...


SOUND

In addition to the live soundtrack, we are interested in the possibility of using the audio-documentary format - authentic sounds of the environment, landscape, city, inside the ship, but also the spoken word. Perhaps in this way we can thematize or process historical realities - from today's perspective. Combined with an abstract image on the screen or events on the stage, seemingly unrelated to the sound used, we can convey events running "around"...


TITLES

They can also work independently, as part of the space, not only on the screen. Like sound, they can complement the action on stage and bring a different perspective to the message.

Titles can be very helpful in different languages - we can use Czech, Icelandic, English...


COLLECTED IDEAS / MATERIAL

Daylight - timelessness - impossibility to determine time and season - weather, season or time of day described by subtitles

Sound "images" - evocation of a specific environment or event only through sound

Actors "act" as in a silent film - live action on stage, actors standing, looking at each other, and dialogue subtitles or sound image of the real environment

Connecting different images and sound (collage) - on the screen we see a landscape, which is complemented by, for example, the bustle of a city or a harbour, human voices...

Quotations from the contemporary press in the form of subtitles.

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Motorcycle engine as a musical instrument, sound generator

Projection of an on spotlight that serves as a light source

Climbing in the theatre space (the clues look like part of the interior) - Irma Vep climbing the walls

Shifted colour spectrum - colouring?

Using the original subtitles from the dialogue and situations from the Les Vampires movie

Yellow subtitles

Smoke machine, fog - disinfection of the cinema area, scene with sleeping gas from Les Vampires

Characters - androgynous appearance - Irma Vep - black silhouette - blending - transformations

Cosplay

SEPTEMBER 6th - 8th preparation in Tjarnarbíó

SEPTEMBER 8th + 10th preformances in Tjarnarbíó

SEPTEMBER 11th transfer in Prague