THEATRE – 2
*****

‘Healing Hearts’
A 40 minute promenade theatre piece.
Text: The Balcony Scene from Romeo and Juliet with
additional texts by Dante, Angiolieri and other 13th century vulgarians.
Direction and design by Chris Channing.
Text research and dramaturgy by Monica Varroni.

Set in a psychiatric hospital.
Romeo is a patient. His therapist is Juliet.
She and a chorus of ghosts from his past,
represented as pregnant and baby cradling nurses,
take him through his first day of treatment.

*****
‘Babar the Little Elephant’ by Poulenc.
Orchestral concert.

For the Arena del Sole, Bologna.
Narrator – Alessandro Bergonzoni.
Chris Channing – stage director and lighting design.
Aikoros Orchestra / Maestro Fabio Marco Brunelli.

*****
‘Memories and Obsessions’
A 60 minute dance-theatre piece made for ten performers: five dancers and five actresses.
Direction, choreography and design by Chris Channing.
Original music score by Andrea Montalbano.

The piece uses dance, mime and vocal & physical acting as well as recorded speech and soundscapes
to create a collage of images and atmospheres.
It is based on archive records and photographs of the “hysterics”, “mad women”
and women committed for “social reasons” to mental asylums and similar institutions during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Performed originally in a sunken pit ‘stage’ of a former factory surrounded an audience on a higher level on all sides.

*****
‘Sweet Distortion’.
Dance piece in two versions:
a 40 minute theatre show or a 15 minute cabaret act.
Original Title: ‘Dolce Stoltezza’
One man show.

This show is a movement piece, performed on one spot.
It builds from a disjointed walk. through minimal, bony, and angular “Rubber-Man” movement
into an eccentric free-flowing serpent-like dance.

*****
‘Italy for Beginners’.
explaining Italy, its history and its connections with the New World.

Made by Chris Channing and Francesco Bifano (of ‘Slava’s Snow Show’).
A one hour theatre show commissioned by a group of Americans holidaying by Lake Garda.
Performed to them in the Salone of their villa.

A clown situation:
A duo: one presumptuous intellectual / one naive.
An historian and his assistant.

The show uses absurd props, puppets, quick change, masks, songs and interrupted exposition.

Episodes include:
Christopher Columbus and the Queen of Spain / Atlantic voyage / The ‘discovery’ of America.
Ellis Island and immigration / The gifting of the Statue of Liberty.
The Mona Lisa and Michelangelo’s David / Country music and the tarantella / Vegas and the Rat Pack.
Julius Caesar / The Medici / The Borgias.

*****
‘Something like a Life’
Theatre show.
A life, danced in 15 minutes.
Staging by Chris Channing

A body builder in a doctor’s white coat carries the performer onto the
stage in a cotton bag where he is suspended from a hook over the stage.
He cuts his way out of the bag, and emerges wearing a business suit
with the middle completely cut away between the ribs and hips revealing a pink corset.

Music:
Swan Lake ‘theme’ played on glass harmonica (Birth)
The Beatles – Number 9 (Life)
Henry Purcell – Dido’s Lament (Death)

*****
‘The Music of Revolution’
Artistic direction, staging, script and design by Chris Channing
A 90 minute theatre show made for 30 young dancers, singers, band, actors
(all aged 16 to 26)- mixed professionals and amateurs.
Choreography by Jon B
Musical Direction by Massimo Orlandini
Dramatic coaching by Chiara Mori
Administrative co-ordination by Andrea Candeli

Theme of the commission: the history of music.
The show was themed on the fact that every ‘modern’ musical and dance genre
has caused scandal: waltz, can-can, ragtime, blues, rock etc.

A commission from ten adjoining borough councils and the ‘Youth anti-Dependence Coordination’
sharing funding and requiring one performance each.
Venues: indoor and outdoor, traditional and improvised.