Residency overview
Birds of Paradise Theatre Company (BOP) were initially drawn to the Telepresence Stage by the possibilities of working collaboratively with remote partners, as an embodied experience. They frequently work with disabled artists who, for a range of reasons, are unable to attend activities in person, and BOP saw the Telepresence Stage as a unique opportunity to overcome these barriers and bring people together to explore ideas and co-create in more embodied and playful ways. Remote working has always been a major access requirement for BOP and their members, even before the COVID-19 lockdown.
“Having our first demo with you … was a bit of a lightbulb moment for us, … and then going ‘ahh, this is what it is, and this is what the potential is’ … and we’re very excited about the channels that offers for a much more embodied and experimental space.”
BOP also saw the residency as an opportunity to build on their current international partnerships. In collaboration with ‘Arts with the Disabled Association Hong Kong’ (ADAHK), BOP commissioned and produced a new piece of accessible interactive digital storytelling for the British Council’s SPARK Festival 2024 in Hong Kong, hosted on BOP’s newly launched digital platform Locked World, a fully adaptable and accessible platform for digital artworks.
Techniques and solutions
The BOP Telepresence Stage residency commenced with a demonstration of pilot studies and experiments by the research team, using standard webcam headshots and background segmentation. Inspired by these demos, the team from BOP aimed to commission and co-create a telepresence performance and experience purely for audience participation. BOP adopted a unique approach to the Telepresence Stage residency, they produced an original outcome with The Importance of Sleep by Jack Li, which was both a live telepresence performance and an interactive digital art installation.
Reflections and outcomes
Deaf artist, Jack Li, was selected and commissioned to work with BOP, ADAHK, and the research team to develop an interactive Telepresence Stage public performance for the SPARK Showcase exhibition. The Importance of Sleep by Jack Li was a 7-minute telepresence video performance based on the Chinese folktale of Zhou Gong, the God of Dreams. In Jack Li’s performance, Zhou Gong cleans and restores the body’s organs whilst sleeping, assisted by two telepresent audience participants, who appear in playful reconstructions of the brain, liver, lungs, and intestines.
