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Amit Drori (Israel)

MONKEYS

 

SÃO LUIZ TEATRO MUNICIPAL - Sala Mário Viegas

12 May at 9pm (Sat)
13 May at 5.30pm (Sun)

 

Portuguese Premiere

TICKETS ONLINE

Technique: Automata and visual theatre Language: English, with Portuguese subtitles For audiences over: +9 Running time: 60 min.

 

With the greatest care, Amit Drori and his team design and create robotic monkeys by hand, called “Electro-Monsters. It took five years of work for the developments of these puppets filled with technology half-way between man and machine. Through them, the Israelian stage-director questions the limits of the living. Everything is there for us to identify with the monkeys, and Drori plays on the strangeness of these creatures capable of loving one another, fighting one another, giving life and taking it away. Robotic monkeys were made to arouse in us a feeling of a deep identification, on the one hand, and trigger a reflection on how they differ from human beings and their “thoughts”, on the other. This wandering between compassion and distance creates the stage reality of contradictions and emotional tension.

 

The characters appearing in the performance will be hybrids of monkeys (the predecessors of human beings) and robots (the potential successors of human beings). More than 300 machines on stage provide a detailed presentation of the anatomical features and facial expressions of the characters. The project uses the so-called open-source technologies, EMG, traditional and contemporary techniques of wood and metal working and processing.

 

In his works Amit Drori creates a unique theatrical universe based on the use of mechanical and robotic wood-crafted artifacts, live performers, video projections and open source technologies.

BIO

The theatre director and set designer Amit Drori is the director of the Hazira Performance Art Arena, Jerusalem. In the last ten years, he developed a unique theatre of visions, characterised by performances based on one’s expression through images, animated forms and physical computing. In this process, he simultaneously develops dramatic and visual elements. During the performance, he then uses them on stage in a unique way. Amit Drori graduated from the School of Visual Theatre in Jerusalem. Since 2006 he is teaching there contemporary puppetry and image based theatre. As a guest lecturer he is collaborating with the MA in Visual Literacy programme at Hakibuzim Academy, Tel Aviv and Shenkar College of engineering and design. 
He has been a recipient of the Rozenblum Award for excellency in the performing arts (2012); Acre Festival awards for directing and design (2001, 2003); and has received grants from the America-Israel Foundation, the Jerusalem Foundation, the Israeli Lottery Council, Rich Foundation, Nathan Cumings Foundation and the Rabinovitz Foundation.
Amit presented Savanna at FIMFA (2014), which was considered one of the best shows of the year by João Carneiro in newspaper Expresso.

 

CREDITS

Direction and concept: Amit Drori Performers: Amit Drori, Sylwia Drori, Ofer Laufer Production: Hazira - Performance Art Arena Coproduction: TJP – Centre Dramatique National d’Alsace, Ljubljana Puppet Theatre, Théâtre Garonne, Scene Europeenne With the collaboration of: Maison de la Marionnette, Israel Festival, FEST׳ Factory, Bat Yam Photography: Amit Drori 

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