Development
Founded by director Caden Manson in 1999, Big Art Group has produced seven original works, CLEARCUT, catastrophe (1999), The Balladeer (2000), Shelf Life (2001), Flicker (2002), House of No More (2004), Dead Set #2 and #3 (2006-7), "The People" (2007). The first two works, Clearcut Catastrophe and The Balladeer, explored the development of new vocabularies for performance and trained the ensemble in physically rigorous methods of stagecraft. Clearcut Catastrophe fused ideas from Chekhov's Three Sisters and the documentary Grey Gardens through methods of improvisation. These experiments evolved into a trilogy of works: Shelf Life, Flicker and House of No More. In these pieces, Manson invented an integrated spectacle which he dubbed ‘Real-Time Film’, a hybrid of film and theatre in which actors recombined formal ideas of performance through the use of simultaneous acting on stage and for live video using complex choreography, puppetry, and autobiography.
Thematically, the trilogy began with an acidic critique of consumerism with Shelf Life, which also marks author Jemma Nelson's debut. The sister piece, Flicker, used two storylines to create a linked examination of violence and commodity. The trilogy concluded with House of No More, which dismantled ideas of theatrical narrative, and attacked the idea of spectacle.
In 2006 the company began a series of experimental video art, musical collaborations and reality performances, Dead Set #2 and #3 and The People. Dead Set #2 and #3 continued Big Art Group's experimentation with live theatre and video, set and costume design to comment on themes of trauma and popular culture. The People was an expansion of real-time film that moved the theatre to the street, combining local participants, documentary research and site-specific creations and also fusing avant-garde performance with community expression. Retelling a contemporary version of the Oresteia, The People was simultaneously projected and broadcast into the public square of the Italian town of Polverigi.
Caden Manson has been recognized as a Pew Fellow for his work with Big Art Group. Major funding for the company include grants received from the Rockefeller Multi-Arts Production fund, The Greenwall Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Art and the Florence Gould Foundation. In the United States, Big Art Group has performed at such venues as Performance Space 122, The Kitchen, The Wexner Center for the Arts, The Walker Art Center, and REDCAT. Performers include Heather Litteer, Farrad Mullins, and Theo Kogan. Their work is also in the permanent collection of the Yale Drama Library.
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