Jeremy Knight
theatrical projection design and videography
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Bonjour M. Gauguin
West Edge has redeemed itself with Jeremy Knight’s art-centered production and Yannis Adoniou’s direction and choreography. Abetted by Streshinsky’s dramatic acumen, the men ensure that projections of Gauguin’s wondrously varied and compelling art works dominate the stage from beginning to end. Rather than employ conventional supertitles, they further underscore the supremacy of Gauguin’s art by projecting quotes from his writings, as well as comments by his fellow artists and contemporary art critics, on the bottom of the canvases...
[T]he mind flashes to an especially brilliant video projection that constructs one of Gauguin’s nudes right before our eyes while his character explains the rationale behind the painting’s construction. It’s only one of many brilliant flashes of inspiration in West Edge’s must-see realization of Carlone’s captivating opera.
The show, which Streshinsky co-directed with Yannis Adoniou, isn't even really an opera, but rather a sort of hybrid multimedia work that incorporates modern dance (by Adoniou's acclaimed Kunst-Stoff company), immersive video projection (by Jeremy Knight), and spoken text along with more traditional elements like instrumentation (performed by musicians from the local collective sfSound and conducted by Mary Chun) and singing (with Anders Froehlich in the title role, standout Shawnette Sulker as his inner voice, and three narrators).
Best of all are the visual projections by Jeremy Knight, a stream of paintings by Gauguin and others that offer a telling visual counterpoint to what the audience is hearing.
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