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Monna Lisa in Delirium Totus’I worked on the repertory and some of the arrangements for ‘Horizontal Heroines. Sleep, Death and Madness in Opera, Poetry, Music and Popular Song’, a Recital for voice, accordion and piano with Denise Leigh and Stefan Andrusyshyn. The show was made initially for the 2008 Dada Fest at Liverpool City of Culture.Rep includes work by Purcell, Handel, Aznavour, Mama Cass, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Yoko Ono and new English translations of ‘Sempre Libera’ from Verdi’s La Traviata, ‘Verdrai Vedrai’ by Luigi Tenco and ‘Bugiardo Incoscente’ ( ‘Unthinking Liar’), originally sung by Italian singing actress Mina. Click for More Images Video coming soon |
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‘I Remember Me’ / ‘MiRicordandoMi’Performer: Patrizia MarcatoDirection/choreography/design: Chris Channing ‘I Remember Me’ / ‘MiRicordandoMi’ is a one person acrobatic dance show for Padua artist Patriza Marcato based on the work of variety star Victoria MaBel (1904- 1976). The show includes a ‘recreation’ of her signature piece, the number ‘Song to the Moon’ which was (is again) an adagio dance piece performed to the famous operatic aria from Dvorak’s ‘Rusalka’ in which the heroine calls on the moon to bring her lover back to her. It is danced entirely in an upright metal circle 2m in diameter. This is the number that took MaBel from being just another acrobatic dancer in a team of girls to being a featured artist and sometimes a star in her own right. She performed this number for years on and off well into her old age, first of all on tour in the States and then, after coming to Europe in 1936 in most of the principle clubs and variety theatres in London, Berlin and Paris. ‘MiRicordandooMi’ or ‘I Remember Me’ is a 40 minute piece made for the ‘dance theatre’, ‘new-circus’ and ‘variety’ festivals. The premise is that she is an old lady at home in Paris with her home-made footlights, her acrobatic apparatus, wearing her early costumes and flitting through her old numbers and memories between cigarettes and gulps of whisky from her thermos. Music includes, ‘Blues in the Night’, ‘Song to the Moon’, ‘Forever Young’ (Bob Dylan) and ‘Guinevere’ (Crosby, Stills and Nash). Click for More Images Video coming soon |
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‘Horizontal Heroines’I worked on the repertory and some of the arrangements for ‘Horizontal Heroines. Sleep, Death and Madness in Opera, Poetry, Music and Popular Song’, a Recital for voice, accordion and piano with Denise Leigh and Stefan Andrusyshyn. The show was made initially for the 2008 Dada Fest at Liverpool City of Culture. |
Rep includes work by Purcell, Handel, Aznavour, Mama Cass, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Yoko Ono and new English translations of ‘Sempre Libera’ from Verdi’s La Traviata, ‘Verdrai Vedrai’ by Luigi Tenco and ‘Bugiardo Incoscente’ ( ‘Unthinking Liar’), originally sung by Italian singing actress Mina. |
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Christmas CarolScrooge is born of ‘gothic literature’, an identity preserved by the director with images and theatrical dressing in sympathy with the redundant spirit of Dickens’ creature. His derivation is made all too clear by the use of noise and shadow (both fixed & marionetted) woven into symbolism and disappearance of masks & objects and the playing with mirrors which evoke the anguished world of Scrooge, producing a theatricality which recalls aspects of the expressionism of Reinhardt and Welles.The exasperation of the interior and music, the appearancorld of Scrooge swings between dimensions real, non-real and surreal giving ‘reality’ a dream-like quality where anything is possible and so, gives life to the imposing sculptures identified as the spectres of the tale and seen to inhabit the soul of the sorry protagonist. The impact is modern and immediate, and this immediacy presents the quality and freshness guaranteed from the experience of a well-rounded artist like Channing. Click for More Images |
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Healing HeartsThe Balcony Scene from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (unchanged) with additional texts by Dante, Angiolieri and many unknown 13th century vulgarians. - Music: "Love is a many splendid thing" in four different versionsRomeo is ill… addicted to love and sex. Leaving a stream of pregnant Juliets in his way he wakes up one morning in the observation room of a clinic for the sick at heart and tired of genitalia. An unseducable therapist and a chorus of ghosts from his seed sewing past take him through his first day's treatment. • Director and text compilation - Chris Channing • Literary research and "scientific" prologue - Monica Varroni • Word/soundscape - Beppe Acito • Actors – Monica Varroni - The Psychologist / Juliet Marco Galignano – Romeo Click for More Images |
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Something Like a Life
Music: Theme from act two of Swan Lake by P. Tchaikovsky played on the crystal harmonium by Gian Franco Grisi. "N°9" - a sound collage by John Lennon. "Dido’s Lament" from Dido and Aneas by Henry Purcell. |
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Electric MusicalsEight ‘flower children’ -musicians, actors and singers tell the stupendous story of the rock musical.This show recreates the emotion, the music, the freedom and the joys which were expressed in music theatre from the moment it opened it’s heart to the music and the people (and the protests, European and American) of the great Summer of Love of ’67. Re-working theatrical, social and musical references of the recent past, recreating the moment when avant guarde theatre embraced rock music and was transformed into the rock musical Concieved by Andrea Candeli, with direction and design by Chris Channing, the evening tells the story of the modern rock musical taking a journey via the most important theatrical developments and composition choices from the 1960’s to the present day: Click for More Images |
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Tony VincentTony Vincent iii is a character created and performed by Chris Channing.Tony Vincent iii is a light parody of the type of singer who wears too many sequins, uses too much mouthwash and not quite enough deodorant. The men and women who have seen Tony Vincent iii in concert love him. There are no comparisons. "The Magic Of Me" is a theatre performance in concert format. Tony Vincent iii was born 32 years ago in Brighton. He spent most of his life in the caravan park sparrow-land' on the south coast. his father GIuseppe and his uncles ran the park while his mother virginia sparrow (ex Miss Brighton) ran the sparrow show-bar where tony at 15 took those first magic steps into showbiz, first with his group "The Sparrow Hawks and later, for ten years as the soloist headliner. After the death of his father he went into a professional crisis but he was persuaded by his mother and uncles to enter a local TV talent contest. spotted by the owner of the Maribu Hotel, Las Vegas he has become a part of the historic floorshow at the maribu: "Wow". On the night Frank Sinatra died Tony and his girlfriend (showgirl Lilly May Pity) were -blessed with a son: little Franky. Click for More Images |
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Memories and Obsessions… is a project that is building slowly towards realization. It will be a full evening's performance of dance-theatre staged with around 4 or 5 female dancers and the same number of actresses and based on writings on and by and studies including some of the few existing photographs of the hysterics, 'mad-women' and women committed for 'social reasons' to mental asylums and similar institutions during the 18th century. It will use dance, mime and vocal & physical acting as well as recorded speech and soundscapes in order to create a collage of images and atmospheres. Effects will also be used on the live voices of the actresses and dancers. A large part of the musical 'soundtrack' is already written and recorded by classical and electronic music specialist Andrea Montalbano.Already staged (as a point of departure for the fuller work to come) simply as a dance piece using the full 60 minutes of existent music it will be staged in the round where possible and (as in the case of the dance piece) for preference in a sunken pit below the audience. |
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