By Byrne Harrison
Photo of Roi Escudero by Valentin Ewan
Production photo by James Ewan
Name: Roi Escudero
Show: Artaud...mon mômo
Relationship to production: Producer/performer/writer/designer/director
Website: http://planetconn...
By Byrne Harrison
Photo of Roi Escudero by Valentin Ewan
Production photo by James Ewan
Name: Roi Escudero
Show: Artaud...mon mômo
Relationship to production: Producer/performer/writer/designer/director
Website: http://planetconnections.org/artaud-mon-momo/
Conceptual performance artist Roi Escudero was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her award winning inter-media work, as designer, songwriter, dramatist, and director of documentary-visual theatre and video, is internationally known. She is the creator of performance-art-cinema™. Her vision paved the way for new media-theatre through her Connected Series BUBULINOS’ DREAMS. In the USA her work has appeared at The Art Museum Council Gallery, at Los Angeles County Museum (LACMA), Los Angeles International Open Festival, at The Charlie Chaplin Space L.A., The Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, The New York International FRINGE Festival, The New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF), The Midtown International Theatre Festival, FRIGID New York, and other cultural and artistic events. Escudero's performance-art productions B=Essence, (2012) The Matra India (2011) and 11 seconds of ecstasy!(2010) presented at Planet Connections Theatre Festivity, won the PCTF 2011 and PCTF 2010 Awards for Outstanding Performance-art, Multimedia Event, Use of Projections and Special Effects. Escudero's plays received a total of 14 nominations. This includes Outstanding Overall Production of a New Play.
Quotes Playwright/Critic Mario Fratti hailed Roi Escudero as “a director of the third millennium” Martin Denton of nytheatre.com wrote: “Roi Escudero —"Bubi" to anyone she's ever met and anyone who's ever seen one of her extraordinary shows—doesn't believe in walls. She's against barriers of any kind: artistic ones that would attempt to put any of the multitudinous disciplines that make up her work—music, dance, poetry, mime, mask, puppetry, fashion, architecture, video, and others…” Alfred Weiss of The Italian Voice praised the “Convincing ensemble guided by Ms. Escudero’s masterful direction…” Producer and Entrepreneur John Chatterton calls Roi the “Ultimate visual-dramatic artist.” Artist Sue Grillo said: "On the imaginary canvas of the stage, Roi Escudero paints with light."
How did you first get involved in theatre?
I was involved in theatre since I was a little girl. I grew up in a creative family. My parents constantly gave theatrical "tertulias" at home. My aunt, my uncle, and my parents were amateur performers. My father was a extraordinary comedian and my mother a ballerina and designer, as a designer she became well known. My mother made the most amazing costumes and accessories.
Who are your biggest influences?
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Antonin Artaud, Jean Genet, The Instituto De Tella, The Living Theatre, Maria Fux, Guliano Vasilico, Prem Rawat, Salo Vasochi, Lucille Ball, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, Quentin Tarantino and everyday life.
What is your show about?
In the final period of Artaud's life, he is living in an abandoned pavilion in a park convalescence clinic at Ivry-sur-Seine, surrounded by 406 school children's notebooks. The pages are covered with drawings and cutting edge text: "a body without organs". The drawings depict sexuality and terror, screams and gestures, and the paper is scarred with strokes of piercing knife-blade incisions. Artaud 's radio play To Have Done With the Judgment of God has been banned. It is Mardi Gras, Jacques the poet, masked as "el Diablo", brings chloral to Artaud. The drug transports Artaud into an imaginary transitory zone in his mind that materializes the assorted places of his memories. Artaud's hallucinations and flashbacks bring him to his mother's womb, his childhood next to the sea, Paris, the silent cinema, the Surrealist movement, Genica, and The Théâtre Alfred Jarry. Artaud also flashbacks to his journey with the Tarahumaras pe