This newly opened multifunctional theatre, music club, gallery, training halls, rehearsal room and gym is the new venue for performances by the Prague-based contemporary circus company Cirk La Putyka, who are bringing back to vibrant life these former market halls. The photo below shows the hall adjacent to the theatre, which houses the bar, exhibition area and stage for music performances where we were providing the visuals to accompany Vložte kočku’s concert, which took place on Friday night after the circus performance in the theatre.
Our beautiful new Epson 6000 full HD projector (which can be seen mounted on the tripod on the right in this photo) was ideal for the venue, giving bright, clear images and lovely luminous colour – and that was even before the house lights were dimmed for the performance!
Although Dima was busy programming the stage lights during the performance he also found time to take some photos for the blog…
This programme was slightly different from the recent tour, featuring old material as well as music from the new VK album. I got a short break from drawing when Dima showed the video to accompany the song, ‘Kone’ but to accompany the rest of the concert I produced a changing sequence of drawings.
Before it was time for me to draw at Vložte kočku’s concert in the bar, instead of having to wait backstage for the circus performance to end, the director very kindly invited me to come and see the show – and I had a front seat view as well, which was really great! Do check out La Putyka’s website to see a list of their forthcoming performances – and try to see them if you can!
To end this post – one of the circus performers arrives for the after-party at the end of the concert…
Monthly Archives:
April 2015
All the photos in this post are from the concert at Anděl in Plzeň on Thursday night. (I had drawn there for Vložte Kočku’s gig in January and it was nice to make this return visit. The club has a very good atmosphere and there is a little balcony giving an unobstructed view of the stage – ideal for Tagtooling!) The programme featured the same music as at the launch of VK’s Hedvika LP at Akropolis but this time Dima took lots of photos of my drawings.
Below – drawing to accompany the song, ‘Život’.
Above – the strobe bleaches the drawing and illuminates the band.
Below – two photos of the drawing showing the beginning of a slow fade to black.
And then for the song, ‘2 nebo 3’ another monochrome drawing…
Because the projector beam covered a larger area than the screen, it was possible (as above) to use Tagtool drawing to selectively ‘light up’ the musicians.
Below – three photos of my next drawing – to accompany ‘Kroky II’…
….and three for ‘Ryby II’ – about fish swimming underneath the ice.
For the last group of songs in the programme I used full colour – first building an abstract background for the heads I would draw for, ‘Kostra’..
The transparency effect in the image below was made by starting with layers of opaque colour and then releasing and doing a partial fade of the drawing.
Of course it is very easy to ‘lose’ more of the drawing than you want using this technique! (And it took me some practice to learn to control this effect.) But then it’s also possible to draw into the faded image – as in the detail below.
The concert ended with ‘Hradec’ – a song that was obviously a favourite, so I ended with this piece of fun abstraction to match the mood of the audience.
Last night Vložte kočku celebrated the launch of their LP ‘Hedvika’ with this special concert at Palac Akropolis in Prague. For this performance, as well as my Tagtool drawing, Patrick, Dima, Lukas and Peter were controlling the full range of their stage lighting – and together they provided a really dramatic visual accompaniment for the music. Dima was all the time busy with the lighting so I don’t have many photos for the blog – these ones are for the song, ‘Život’.
Below – the lighting focuses fully on the musicians and for a few moments the drawing ‘disappears’….
….only to be magically revealed again – a nice effect, where it is the lighting that creates this ‘fade and return’ of the drawing (which of course isn’t possible to do using the Tagtool, where the ‘fade’ feature is always permanent!)
Below is a photo I took of our monitor on the lighting console.
I took the photos below during some of the songs where I wasn’t drawing. I think that only video could capture properly the full range of dramatic effects of the combination of the changing lighting in Krystof’s big electronics case reflected in Dima’s mirror, the stage lights, incandescent bulbs and moving lights, LEDs and strobes – but these photos at least give some idea of how the lighting completely changed the atmosphere and appearance of the stage.
To end this post here are some photos of another of my drawings – this time to accompany the song, ‘Kostra’.
