COLLISIONWORKING

Greetings, Fair Reader! Last week, a trio of shows by Gemini CollisionWorks opened at The Brick, and today we present the first of a series of posts exploring their genesis and development. GCW has been responsible for many memorable shows at The Brick, most recently the Film Festival hit The Magnificent Ambersons, By Orson Welles: A Reconstruction for the Stage. Please enjoy this introductory note provided by the artists themselves...

AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE FROM GEMINI COLLISIONWORKS

Gemini CollisionWorks is Ian W. Hill (arts) and Berit Johnson (crafts).

Gemini CollisionWorks has been around since 1997, at least as a name that IWH has been putting as a “production company” on all his theatre (and occasional other) artwork. The first play produced by GCW was Richard Foreman’s Egyptology (my head was a sledgehammer) as part of the No Strings Attached festival of plays by Foreman at NADA, which was also produced by IWH as GCW.

Berit became IWH’s partner in life and work in 2000, and GCW has been the two of them since 2001.

GCW became involved with The Brick vaguely in 2004 (IWH acted in a Summer Festival show), more strongly in 2005-2006, and became the tech direct ors of the space in 2007. Somewhat in return for their work in this position, GCW gets the month of August (at least for last year and this year) to do what they want, and what they want is to put up a lot of work. Last year, it was four plays on three programs, which was a bit much.

So, Gemini CollisionWorks is presenting “just” three shows in rep right now at The Brick. Of course, two of them this time were originals that were being created around the performers right up to the last minute, which were harder than almost any other shows GCW has produced.

This is somewhat foolhardy for a two-person company that does everything themselves, and drives us to the point of madness, but what the hell, we got it done and we’re pleased with the shows.

Well, Berit is pleased with the shows – Ian is too close to them to judge them in any real way and just has to keep asking Berit if any of them are any good or not . . .

IWH writes about the work as it happens at his blog, CollisionWorks, but has been asked for more info about the shows to promote them here on The Brick’s own blog.

So, in the next week or two, IWH will be looking at aspects of these three shows, how they were created, why they were created, and what they mean to us.