Directed and written by Erika Latta with dramaturgy by Hannah Schwegler, along with text developed with the actors.
A new multi-disciplinary site-specific theater work exploring the theme of human desire. Set on an indoor film set, the story follows the director and his film crew making a film. Taking the audience through the landscape of the set, we glimpse into the spectrum of desires, following the crew both on and off the screen. In the search for perfection, from take after take, the team loses contact with the outside world. The director becomes increasingly deranged as the days go by in his search for perfection. In a humorous attempt, the crew desperately tries to find their way out of the loop of perfecting. But, the need to be preserved and remembered drives the team to continue in extreme circumstances in order to finish the film they set out to make.
Blurring the lines between film and theater and taking inspiration from films “Day for Night / Le Nuit American” by Truffaut, “ The Exterminating Angel” by Buñuel and Samuel Becket’s short play “Catastrophe” among others, this international collaboration aims to question our need to make, record, capture, and conquer what we desire.
The final project will be a collaboration with director Erika Latta (WaxFactory), Ivan Talijancic (WaxFactory), composer Benedikt Schiefer (Basel, Switzerland), and dramaturg Hanna Schwegler (Oberhausen, Germany), writer/peformer Dion Doulis (Marseille, France), video designer's Antonio Giacomin (Trieste, Italy) and Peter Norman (New York, NY) with costume designer, Ellen Hoffman (Berlin, Germany) and lighting designer Urs Schoenbaum (Munich, Germany).
STRANGE JOY was given residency at WELD in Stokhom, Sweden under the Artistic Direction of Anna Koch in February 2010 to develop initial ideas with the design team.
Erika Latta received a Bogliasco Fellowship to develop and begin writing STRANGE JOY at the
Luguria Center For Arts and Humanities
in Bogliasco, Italy in April and May of 2010.
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