In Media Res: Why Multimedia Performance?

Eric Dyer co-founded Radiohole in 1998, with Maggie Hoffman and Scott Halvorsen Gillette. Since that time he has been a principle collaborator and performer in Radiohole's nine original performance works and two video works, Fast Girls at the End and More or Less Hudson's Bay, Again (with Chris Kondek and Victor Morales). The company is currently in the process of creating its tenth work to premiere in New York City at The Kitchen in June 2008. Dyer has designed sets and lighting for Young Jean Lee, Richard Maxwell, Elevator Repair Service, 3-Legged Dog, and The Collapsable Giraffe, to name a few.

Brooke O'Harra is co-founder of The Theatre of a Two-headed Calf and a freelance director with an interest in new and experimental texts. Recent Two-headed Calf productions include Chikamatsu's Drum of the Waves of Horikawa at HERE Arts Center, Rafael Spregelburg's Panic at P.S. 122, Lisa D'Amour's The Cataract at Perishable Theatre, G.B. Shaw's Major Barbara, Henry Fielding's The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great, and S.I. Witkiewicz's The Mother and Tumor Brainiowicz, all at La MaMa E.T.C.. Currently Two-headed Calf is developing a Macbeth for Soho Rep. O'Harra directed for Ruth Margraff and is developing Maria/Stuart with playwright Jason Grote at the Soho Rep writers and directors lab. She is the recipient of the NEA/TCG Developing Directors Grant, a Harp Artist in Residence, and a Drama League Directing fellow. She teaches acting at NYU's Experimental Theatre Wing.

Alex Timbers is Artistic Director of New York-based company Les Freres Corbusier. Directing credits include Dixie's Tupperware Party at Ars Nova, Gutenberg! The Musical! at The Actor's Playhouse, A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant at New York Theatre Workshop, Hell House at St. Ann's Warehouse, underground at Brooklyn Academy of Music, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and Heddatron at HERE Arts Center. He also wrote and directed Boozy, a comic fantasia on urban planning, which was named "Ten Best of 2005" by the New York Daily News and Time Out New York. His awards and fellowships include OBIE, two Garland Awards, Williamstown Directing Fellowship, Drama League Directing Fellowship.

This conversation took place in New York City on March 19, 2007.

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LUBER: Let's start with the big question: why use media in your pieces?

DYER: Well it seems like a natural thing to do. I remembered this huge thing in my life was when I was about 12 years old and I got a stereo. I had gotten this job and saved up all of this money to buy a stereo. There was this fascination with music and being able to play with it and in a way it kind of goes back to that.

O'HARRA: My interest in it comes basically because of the way we work collaboratively. I never thought, "Oh I want to work with a live band or a composer," until we were approached. We were approached by this guy who developed spy technology. Before approaching us he actually created a series of things that he thought might be interesting and showed it to me and then I gave him a script. So it was really just a way to work with an individual that seemed interesting to work with. Can't promise we're ever going to use any of this but let's give it a shot.

TIMBERS: It's a great way to dispose of the exposition.

LUBER: That's all fairly practical. So I'm sort of amazed that the term or the genre of multimedia theatre exists anymore because it just seems so second nature at this point.

TIMBERS: Yeah when two-thirds of the new plays on Broadway have projection designers. But theatre has always been a technical medium. Lighting is a technical medium and it's been used since time immemorial. So it's a weird issue to me why people sort...