Brook Aidan Rosini, Germanics

Contact barosini@u.washington.edu

Verfremdungseffekt: Mauser Chor

Our course, German 304a, presents an extended collaborative
project focused on experimental German-language theater pieces, which
we will perform on June 3 & 4, 2010, at the Ethnic Cultural Theater.
Our collection is entitled Verfremdungseffekte, which loosely
translates as Alienation Effects. Our overarching theme is that of
alienated or alienating people, situations, places, and language,
which we hope to direct toward an interrogation of what it means to
participate in theater at all. One of our thirty-minute one-act pieces
features an ex-revolutionary facing a military tribunal, which we have
decided to develop as an intermedial display. We will project footage
from a German Nazi propaganda film by Leni Riefensthal entitled
Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will behind the action of the
scene. The military tribunal is represented by a traditional Greek
Chorus, which we have chosen to alienate by recording the dialogue, so
that it will emanate from behind the audience members in a voice of
God fashion. Moreover, the internal monologue of the ex-revolutionary
will be recorded, to set her internal voice apart from the voice in
which she delivers her lines live, and to alienate it from traditional
theatrical conventions by externalizing it in pre-recorded audio,
rather than by traditional performance delivery. This project was
completed in part with the support of the Center for Digital Arts and
Experimental Media (DXARTS) at the University of
Washington.