Julius Onah ’04 and Evan Kultangwatana ’04 have been working hard to get their performance, “Meditations/Love Story” which opened last night. They took some time out of their tech preparations at the ’92 Theater on Wednesday to discuss “Meditations” with me. I interviewed each separately so rehearsal could continue without down time as opening night rapidly approached. I began with Julius…
Wesleyan Argus: So, you’re directing “Meditations/Love Story”?
Julius Onah and Evan Kultangwatana: I’m co-directing it with Evan. There’s four different elements to it. There’s the theater element, there’s film, there’s original, and there’s dance. The piece was put together mostly by improvs based on scripts and scenarios that we created. There’s two different types of films. There’s an actual film that has somewhat of a narrative to it and was created using a script and characters. There are stories told through voice-overs. We essentially created going to a shrink’s office- we sat in a dark room with a red light and a mic in your face and the actor talked. That was also done with the dancers to create a number of dance films and a number of actual films, so the way the show works it’s sequential- film, dance film, film, dance film, film. The piece examines relationships, life in college, stuff like that through these various different forms.
WA: That’s really complicated. Was it hard making it all fit together?
JO&EK: It was extremely complicated and we don’t even know how successfully it all fits together. We were both working on two different systems and trying to put it together has been an absolute pain. The hardest part has definitely been trying to get the films to gel together and the stage material, some of the fabric we’re using to do so.
WA: So there’s film, but there’s also a live component?
JO&EK: Yeah, the live component is the dance. There’s actually 25 minutes of dance that’s been choreographed. The entire thing is about an hour long so half of it is these film sequences and half of it is dance, but the dance is also happening with film being projected behind it. Everything gets tied together at the end with a theater scene.
WA: So basically every type of performance art you can think of.
JO&EK: Multimedia, everything you could possibly think of. And all the music- that’s one thing were pretty proud of- that all the music in it is completely original. Will Swafford and I put together the music, recording it and mixing it in the film sequences. Evan created all the music for the dance, in addition to choreographing the dance and making the dance films. I acted in the film and edited those films. We’ve both been working on the technical stuff in the theater scenes.
WA: So how did you get the idea-
JO&EK: To do this? Last semester we worked on a piece for Terpsichore in which Evan had a film being projected with a dance that he choreographed. We thought it was a cool idea. It was something I’ve been wanting to do since my freshman year- to bring more moving images into a performance. But, I didn’t quite have anybody to collaborate with until me and Evan really started working with each other. He knew I had done film work and video work. We started going around and shooting stuff and then we decided to come up with this piece for Terp. So, we had this eight minute piece last semester and decided to take it a little bit further and create the hour long piece.
WA: I actually saw the Terp piece, so now I’m starting to get the visual of what’s going to be happening.
JO&EK: So now you see, exactly. It was the one with the little kid and his mom, but this time it’s not going to be a little screen on the stage. It’s actually a huge screen that’s going to be up high above and then more will be below. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that it will all come together. We’re here right now trying to simplify some things. We’ve had one complete run-through and we’re having more tonight. We open up tomorrow night so it’s really going to be a kind of trial by fire thing. I’m a little nervous but we’re pretty confident that it will come together nonetheless.
Julius then went upstairs and sent Evan down for his interview.
WA: Okay. I know this is an over-simplification, but you’re kind of the dance/music part of bringing this all together so how did you get involved with that?
JO&EK: This is the first time I’ve tried to do music, dance, and film together. This is the first time I’ve tried to score a soundtrack. I guess second time I’ve worked with film. Dance is something I’ve had some experience with, but this is definitely the first time I’ve had all three put together. It has definitely been a challenge because I wouldn’t say I know much about any of them. Maybe it was a little overambitious to try and tackle all three at the same time. I figure it’s my last show, I’m a senior, and I don’t know when I’ll have a theater to myself again, so it was worth a chance.
WA: How’d you get the idea for the story?
JO&EK: I think the original idea was basically to tell a love story, or something like a love story, I’m not sure how much of a love story it actually is. We tried to create a love story- which is difficult in itself- but have it be something that people our age can connect to, and understand the issues related to it. I ended up doing some recording sessions with my dancers where we would just talk on tape unscripted, just discuss issues, which ended up being rather cool because stuff just flowed out. Rather than try and fabricate the story or tell a fictional story, it was just really engrossing hearing ourselves talk, discussing these things, trying to wrap our hand around it and seeing how we could try to package it all together into a show. A lot of the music and dance and the film sort of came out of the interview sessions and what we thought would be something people could connect too. So it’s a very honest show. Our interviews are actually part of the soundtrack, so it’s pretty out there.
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