In Julia, the theater is integrated live and the cinematographic structures are exposed. With pre-filmed footage and live footage, the film is built in the presence of the public every day. The actors make a movie and at the same time act as the characters of fiction. The setting consists of split movie screens, which move during the action, revealing parts of a bedroom and a kitchen, sets for live footage. The projectors follow the movement of the screens, creating a movie in motion. At the beginning of the play, some scenes being shot and projected simultaneously are seen through the gaps of the panels by different parts of the audience, but as the action progresses the panels flip open what was behind the screens, in a direct analogy with what is happening with the characters/actors themselves.

This is the first work that integrates video projection and camera to the scene. The video projection and the presence of the cameraman are deeply linked to the dramaturgical construction. There are pre-shot scenes, which were shot in real locations, and timed footage shot simultaneously. The film is assembled in real-time, and as in a film set, it is cut and redone sometimes, in multiple takes, either through the command of “action” and “cuts” of the cameraman or by the relation of the actors, by becoming more extreme, it breaks “fiction”, generating new interpretive layers. Like the “fractures” existing in acting and space, the movie screen is also split, sometimes composing a large screen of 16:9 and in others forming two screens of 4:3, with different and simultaneous video projections. The various layers – space, acting, the junction of the theater with the cinema – in their overlaps converge to create a third and only zone, which reveals the structures of the scene, the cinema, and also the actors/characters.

Christiane Jatahy is an associate artist of the Odeon Theatre de l’Europe, CentQuatre-Paris, the Theatre National Wallonie-Bruxelles and Schauspielhaus Zürich.

Directed and Conceived by Christiane Jatahy. Premiered at the Sesc Copacabana Space in Rio de Janeiro in November 2011 and at Sesc Belenzinho in São Paulo in October 2012. Winner of the Shell Best Director Award in 2012.

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This post was written by Directed by Christiane Jatahy, based on the play by August Strindberg, Cia Vértice de Teatro (2011), Brazil.

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