The Chocolate Factory Closes SELECTIVE MEMORY 9/18

The Chocolate Factory has announced its fall 2010 season beginning with SELECTIVE MEMORY, September 8 through 18 at 8pm.

Selective Memory is a real time video performance about nostalgia for relationships that never took place, events which never happened; a film which was never made, but which everyone remembers; exploiting the misappropriation of "real" sounds and images to confound, distort, remake and ultimately erase the truth. Inside a claustrophic "film set" comprised of computer-controlled moving cameras, a shapeless dioramic background, embedded monitors and microphones, performers will establish a hyper-intimate relationship with the cameras; and a simultaneously elusive/remote relationshipwith the live audience.

Using simple cinematic techniques - extreme closeups, slow pans, jump cuts, and tiny movements - all executed in real time - the performers will cycle through a series of meticulously choreographed gestures in tandem with composed "shots" designed not to construct a narrative but rather to suggest an endless number of possible narratives, creating an enormous blank space in which thespectator will imagine characters, relationships, conflicts and emotions that are never literally present. Through the gradual repetition and manipulation of images, the "literal" materials of cinema - locations, backgrounds, sets, establishing shots etc. - will be discarded, leaving only the camera and the performer in a sustained, neutral but intensely focused exchange that resembles a high wire act or an oscillating sine wave; erasing the distance between camera, performer and spectator; and in the end, erasing all traces of meaning, leaving only light.

SELECTIVE MEMORY's creative team includes direction and sound design by Brian Rogers, performance and video by Madeline Best and Brian Rogers, Technology design by Mile Rugnetta, costumes by Maggie Dick, sets by Brad Kisicki and lighting b Chloe Z. Brown.

Other fall shows include BRAVE NEW GIRL and THROW. For a complete listing of The Chocolate Facotry's season visit http://www.chocolatefactorytheater.org/