ATP offers stylish look at Eadweard Muybridge’s troubled life
Ever since seeing Studies in Motion: The Hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge not once but twice I’ve been raving about it to friends and family. Produced by Electric Company Theatre the play is Alberta Theatre Projects season finale.
Studies in Motion directed by Kim Collier explores the life and work of Eadweard Muybridge (Andrew Wheeler) a photographer who in the 1880s conducted an extensive study photographing animals (including humans) in motion. He pioneered new camera technology that allowed him to take several pictures in less than one second. Consequently he was able to capture still images of an animal at split-second stages capturing a greater range of motion.
“I have stopped time” he explains in the play noting that “Knowing that a horse’s four hooves leave the ground is far less interesting than knowing we can know it.” (It is these pictures of horses in movement that are the most well-recognized of Muybridge’s work.)
Studies in Motion captures the wonder and excitement of early photography and the thrill of discovery and innovation that I as an audience member found contagious.
The play is written by Kevin Kerr a member of the Vancouver-based Electric Company Theatre. This is the third play by Kerr on Calgary stages this season following Unity (1918) also at ATP and Theatre Calgary’s Skydive .
Studies in Motion also explores the personal life of Muybridge through a series of flashbacks interwoven seamlessly throughout the play. These “hauntings” reveal a man obsessed with his work. He’s so consumed with stopping time in his photography that he forgets to acknowledge the real-time existence of his own life. This leads to tragic consequences revealed slowly throughout the play with his wife Flora (Anastasia Phillips) her lover Henry Larkyns (Jonathon Young) and a child named Floredo (Julien Galipeau).
These glimpses into Muybridge’s life make up most of the play’s “story.” Much of the rest of the production is an exploration and demonstration of his body of work.
The play also touches on the idea of being and some of the difficulties and struggles that result in trying to view people as animals stripped of their humanity. All the models who pose naked for Muybridge are assigned numbers. For example Susan (Dawn Petten) who appears frequently throughout the production is known dispassionately as “Model No. 6.”
But when Muybridge calls upon one of his assistants Blanche (Juno Ruddell) to model it becomes hard for the young man who’s in love with her Henry Bell (Kyle Rideout) also one of Muybridge’s assistants to accept her as a mere number. Despite Blanche’s argument that no one will really see her just a piece of paper it brings to light the question whether one really can separate an image from its human identity.
Multimedia elements play an integral part in this production with projected pictures used as set backdrops and changing images of Muybridge’s actual photos suspended onstage interacting with the actors.
Punctuating the production are several interludes of Crystal Pite’s outstanding choreography. The dance and movement sequences are crisp innovative and executed to perfection. Patrick Pennefather’s original score has a rhythmic primal feel to it reflecting Muybridge’s driven and obsessive personality.
The special effects in the production including lighting and sound that mimicks cameras clicking in rapid succession are also stunning.
Often I find these elements — multimedia special effects choreography — self-conscious “add-ons” that detract from the overall arc of the production. Not in this case however. All the elements work together seamlessly to produce an integrated sensitive and poetic whole.
There are however two warnings to accompany my unbridled enthusiasm: one you can’t be offended by nudity because there is bare flesh — and lots of it — though always depicted in a tasteful non-eroticized context. Two the story does not move at a breakneck pace. The play takes its time to develop and likely could have benefitted if it was 15 to 20 minutes shorter.
That said the production left a deep impression upon me. On one hand I’m in awe of a man who had such dedication to a single purpose. On the other I’m sad that that purpose seemingly stripped him of some of his humanity and deprived him of some of the joys human experience can bring.
