The Actual Sho

In 1986 and 1987, collaborating and improvising with the George Coates Performance Works, and photographer Charles Rose, I helped create scenic projections for The Actual Sho, a “new music theater spectacle.” My photographs of architecture, railroad tracks, a train tunnel, and a manhole cover became key elements in the stage tableau. In addition, with the aid of a Lumena computer, I was able to develop complex patterns which when projected, enveloped the stage performers in visionary spaces of pure color. The Actual Sho was the first theatrical production to use computer created imagery in its stage design.

“Actual Sho is new music theater spectacle, formed by a synthesis of familiar performance techniques with emerging ideas and technologies. The work was created through the collaboration of performers, technicians, engineers, designers, composers, architects, and craftspeople from developing industries and cultural institutions in the San Francisco area. From October 1986 through June 1987 the participants met daily to pool resources and to influence each other. From these investigations a theater of phenomena is created through the interaction of talents and technology.” - George Coates

“No single identity or individual serves as a fundamental protagonist or antagonist. In Actual Sho “hero” is replaced by “interactive network” of physical forces and human influences. Behaviors are effected through interventions of sound, light and gravity within the context of oratorio. Performance conventions of the oratorio serve as points of departure from a form of cultural expression familiar to Western audiences- the choral concert- to emerging forms of creative expression which evoke, rather than provoke.” - G. Coates

Actual Sho : Performance History 1987. Theater Der Welt, Stuttgart, West Germany, June 25 & 26; Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, August 6-16; State Department Sponsored Tour of Eastern Europe: Yugoslavia: Belgrade International Theater Festival, September 28 & 29; Poland: Wroclaw Eighth International Meeting of Open Theater, October 3 & 4; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Sponsor: Herbst Theater, San Francisco, December 2-6.