An intrepid homage to a Star Trek fan club through intersensory movement and space-time translations.
~~~~~“…derelict in uncharted space…”
In 1974, an amateur Star Trek fan club in San Francisco launched Project Communicator, a non-profit initiative to bring the wonderment of Star Trek to blind audiences, through descriptive radio plays. For their pilot, they chose the episode ‘Is There In Truth No Beauty’, which guest starred a blind telepath character.
Despite being endorsed by the Star Trek cast, and narrated by Trek actor James Doohan, Paramount perceived the project as piracy. The pilot was never released, and Project Communicator was abandoned.
In this world premiere season—five live performances, and a digital season of five audiodescribed radio broadcasts—a stellar collaborative of dancers, artists, writers, musicians, and designers pays homage to the creative innovation and collective ethos of Project Communicator. We invite you to join us for an ambitious movement performance that experiments with possibilities for inter-sensorial translations, beyond the boundaries of perceptual norms, and the boundaries of space-time.
By Lloyd Mst and Fayen d’Evie, with collaborative contributions from Nelly Kate, Rebecca Bracewell, Georgina Kleege and Benjamin Hancock
Commissioned by Chunky Move and Melbourne Fringe, Radical Access Commission 2023. Performed 11–14 October 2023 at Chunky Move, Naarm. Broadcast 25–28 October 2023.
“O brave new world...”
Image description: Luke D. King is kneeling on grey tarkett, his ginger curls illuminated. He wears a flowing, silver-grey top with loose bat-wing sleeves, and white pants. He is turned towards the right, looking with concentration at his hands, which are clasping one wrist of Benjamin Hancock, who is in drag as Miranda. Miranda is lying on the floor, looking upwards, but not at Luke. A pair of high heeled shoes sit neatly to one side of them; to the other side, metres away in the background, Rebecca Bracewell sits calmly upright. A red sheet of transparent plastic pours down to the floor from above, liquefying the sight of what’s behind and in front of it.
Photo: Gianna Rizzo
Image description: Fayen d'Evie stands centrally in the image, spotlit on a circular, off-white mat with an abstract, black shape over top, which resembles an insignia or large-scale calligraphic writing. The shape is slightly raised; Fayen is feeling this tactile surface with her bare feet. Fayen holds a white mobility cane with a black and red tip in front of her. She is gripping the cane with one hand, lifting it in the air in front of her body, resting the tip on the open palm of her other hand. She is wearing a flowing tunic with a lush print of bright green, deep burgundy, and deep indigo blue. Behind her is an overhead captioning screen; a pale rectangle with text in black reads "[ controlled hover: speckles of starlight ]".
Photo: Gianna Rizzo Image description: A wide angle of a stage in the round. The edges of the stage are delineated by raised wooden lengths, arranged to create an irregular angular shape. Screens glow various shades of blue; on two hung from the side walls, the words ‘Sometimes I can’t stee a thing through the fading stars’ appear in pale yellow. The stage is lit in purple; Luke appears frustrated, his fingers curled near his bared teeth, while Benjamin – as Miranda – lunges forward, long brown hair whipping around her slim bony shoulders, fingers flared behind her.
Photo: Gianna RizzoImage description: Rebecca Bracewell sits cross-legged on a solid black geometric platform, leaning gently forward; between her fingers and thumbs, she holds what appears to be a small jar into which she's inserting a thin end of a hearing aid. She wears a bejewelled black vest and black trousers, and her cheeks blush in the soft martian glow filling part of the otherwise flat, dark space. There's a microphone on a short stand in front of her, and a box with cables and plugs coming out of it, and a collection of jars on a textured round mat. Also on the platform, we see a laptop showing the grey rows and coloured highlights of a mixer, and a shiny metal box that looks like a lamp or a newspaper vending machine.
Photo: Gianna RizzoImage description: In this dark photo of the stage in the round, the silhouetted outline of Luke, Fayen and Benjamin (as Miranda) forms a green, aqua and purple huddle at its centre. Above them, and to the distant edges, screens are lit up with permeations of floral colours and textures. Directly above the stage, on the largest screen, Georgina Kleege balances a white mobility cane between shoulder and neck. She has a bob of white hair and her arm is outstretched, casting a shadow of her fingers across her face in the kaleidoscopic green and pink projected image that otherwise illuminates her.
Photo: Gianna RizzoImage description: Luke, Fayen, Rebecca and Benjamin (in drag as Miranda) stand back-to-back in a circular formation, illuminated by a single spotlight above. In dim light, the front rows of the audience are less than 2m away, some cross-legged on the floor, others seated on a bench; one woman is watching the performers intently, another has her phone camera directed towards the scene. Luke faces forward, eyes closed, in the midst of making the AUSLAN sign 'Peace'. His hands are held in front of his body, at mouth level; palms open, thumb and forefinger in the act of closing. To his left and right, Fayen and Miranda are making the same sign. The light is illuminating the sequins on Miranda’s dress, like stars in the night sky. Rebecca is behind Luke, only her spotlit hair and the back of her neck are visible.
Photo: Gianna Rizzo
Concept by:
Fayen d’Evie and Benjamin Hancock
Created by:
Fayen d’Evie, Benjamin Hancock, Rebecca Bracewell, Luke D. King, Georgina Kleege, Nelly Kate, Andy Slater, Lloyd Mst, Jon Tjhia, Alex Craig, Anastasia La Fey, Aaron McPeake, Ashley Buchanan, Olivia Walker, Marco Cher-Gibard, Anna Seymour, Sheereen Perrin, Jake Bonin, George Thomas, Lorena Zapiain and Sheri Wells-Jensen, in association with Antony Hamilton, Kristina Arnott, Vitae Veritas, Bryan Phillips, Madeleine Flynn and Charles GushueJon Tjhia, Kalinda Vary, Khalid Warsame, Lorena Zapiain, Madeleine Flynn, Milly Cooper, Nilgün Güven, Rachel Edward, Rosemary Forde, Xinyuan (Caesar) Li, Zeno d’Evie and Zoe Scoglio
Acknowledgments:
Co-commissioned by Chunky Move and Melbourne Fringe and supported by Arts Access Victoria as part of the Radical Access program. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory funding, and by the City of Melbourne through its Arts and Creative Investment Partnerships Program. This project received Cash to Create through the Fringe Fund as part of Radical Access and Cash for Equity as part of the Ralph Mclean Microgrants program
“Everyone will say dream hard and you can have everything you want. But dreaming is dreaming … and dreaming might be a power source, but it won’t get you there.”
– Sheri Wells-Jensen
This captioned, audiodescribed digital broadcast performance of our final show aired on October 28 2023. Audiodescribers: Jon Tjhia, Lorena Zapian, Madeleine Flynn, Nilgün Güven, Rachel Edward, Rosemary Forde and Zeno d’Evie
Edit: Jon Tjhia
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