News & Notices
PQ 2011 Award Winners Invited to USITT Conference
Designers of the award-winning exhibits at the 2011 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space are being invited to participate in sessions as part of the USITT's Annual Conference in Long Beach next March.
Photos/Alexandra Bonds
This is the second in a series of articles about the 2011 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space. The Last Word in this issue describes Scenofest's Six Acts from a participant viewpoint.
The PQ 2011 Awards Ceremony was held June 20 in the Nova Scena Theatre, formerly known as the LaternaMagica. The Golden Triga Award went to the joyous and colorful pink display from Brazil, "Characters and Frontiers: Brazilian Scenographic Territory," curated by Antonio Grassi. The jury admired the exhibit for "a vivid sense of the national identity and the vital spirit of creativity that animates Brazil: a current that flows from its cultural sources and continues spontaneously to open new scenographic horizons." The works included "gave equal space to street theatre art and site-specific interventions, socially-engaged performances, puppet theatre, and conventional forms of theatre." The USITT International Committee has offered Mr. Grassi an invitation to speak about the Brazilian exhibit in Long Beach in 2012.
One of the productions within the Brazilian exhibit was also awarded the Gold Medal for Best Realization of a Production. Teatro da Vertigem's BR-3 expressed the issue of discovering one's identity and national character. "This extraordinary urban intervention transforms the main artery of the city with creative use of unconventional space: the banks of the Tiete River, the river itself, and the barge on which the audience traveled and where much of the dramatic action occurred. The audience was completely immersed in a performance that brought to life and further provided a social critique of the landscape it traverses."
The Gold Medals for Stage Design and Use of Theatre Technology were awarded to a team of designers from Croatia, Numen/For Use for the "creative use of stripped-down, essentialized [sic], and compelling scenography created in collaborative theatre projects... (and) clarity of vision that challenges stage directors to see their art in new and bold ways." The two industrial designers began designing furniture and transformed into stage designers creating architectonic spaces using sliding panels and mirrors. The jury singled out their design for A Midsummer Night's Dream using a curtain that split into panels to form the forest, providing a unique playground for the fairy world.
USITT's Scene Design & Technology Commission plans to host these designers, Sven Jonke and Nikola Radelljkovic, for a session in Long Beach.
For further information about the members of the jury and the PQ Awards go to www.pq.cz/en/pq-jury.html.
