Gogolfest Laboratory for Solutions in Digital reinvents the theatre: ALONE [DIGITAL ODYSSEY]

Gogolfest Laboratory for Solutions in Digital. – the innovative project by the Dakh theatre team that creates a pioneering digital repertoire, producing the synergy of art and tech for viewers in Ukraine and worldwide.

ALONE [DIGITAL ODYSSEY]

What is the challenge?

In current times, after global lockdown, digitalization became the new black. But such a traditional and classic art as the theatre was paralyzed, losing the opportunity to interact with the audience outside of the institution’s walls.

Like every theatre in Ukraine and abroad, the Dakh team was looking for a solution that could blur the lines online and offline, catch the audience’s attention, and represent the groundbreaking transformation of society.

As the theater is a technology from the beginning of time which has 2 “technological” dimensions:

“telescope” through which you can study the galaxy of society.
“microscope”, under the eyepiece of which you can see a person and his motives and values (the subtlest movements of the soul of the individual).

ALONE [DIGITAL ODYSSEY]

What is the solution?

Thanks to the non-trivial director’s decision, the viewer has a unique opportunity to be on both sides of the screen, see and feel how “condensed theatrical blood” is created – the play “Alone [Digital Odyssey].”

On the first part: being a viewer of the online play and watching it on 4 screens (2 extra large and 2 big ones). Its exceptional visual series looks like as masterpieces of Olafur Eliasson and legendary Lars von Trier with the accompaniment of the magical DakhaBrakha
On the second part: being a viewer on backstage with all cameras, actors, remote control panel, projectors, etc., with precise accuracy of every movement of people, objects, lights, and shadows. And all play is immediately broadcast on screens: all in one as a conceptual narrative, powerful synergy of voices, melodies, shooting, playing.

What are the final results?

The performance “Alone [Digital Odyssey]” is a maxim of online and offline experience that has united theater, cinema, music, digital, capturing the viewer’s attention not only by visual magnetism (both on-screen and behind the scenes), but also by immersing it in reflection on himself and the world.

The viewer is immersed in the events through the eyes of the protagonist, identifies himself with him, and thanks to the appearance of the actors, looking as giants, as being transported into the world of Jonathan Swift. The use of cinematic technology, the allusion to the combined shooting of the early 20th-century, and special gigantic sets give a sense of grandiosity and immensity.

Mystical-shamanic ritual, which embodies human existence, is put on technological rails and launched to fly in the orbit of the digital age. A rich amalgam of feelings from what was seen / heard / experienced, and eternal questions, the answers to which are usually rhetorical.

“The theater is a team of people united by common values, meanings, and senses which they rely on stage / screen,” – Andriy Palatny, actor, producer, festival curator at Dakh Theatre and co-founder of Gogolfest_Laboratory_for_Solutions_in_Digital.