Macromatter and its central creator Robert Leveroos, High Water
This full-length performance will take place around and inside the tabletop fish tank. A single performer (Robert) assembles a landscape within the tank. At one point water slowly starts filling it and the rest of the performance is a play of cause and effect as various materials react to the rising water level and the performer continues the task of building the scene in the face of the precarious circumstances. Some objects float, others sink, some dissolve and disappear, there may be a chain reaction, or maybe something’s trapped. It is an epic record of civilizations and historic events masquerading as a cheap party trick. The work will be scary, humorous, and a precise choreography. Lighting and sound both focus and expand the scenes. The materials that are chosen, text, and the larger reference sources are to be discovered. Robert is interested in exploring themes of transparency, submergence, inevitability, and human hubris when it comes to our interactions with our environment.
PTC is engaged in helping Robert and his collaborators shape a narrative with or without words that will tell a story yet to be determined. For us, it’s an opportunity to work with an artist whose non-linear imagistic approach to theatre-making demands a new vocabulary from Dramaturg Kathleen Flaherty. The first stage is to find out what happens to a lot of different objects and materials when you subject them to a watery environment. And what happens to the water?
Macromatter takes things seriously, but not too. Under this moniker, multidisciplinary maker and insatiable tinkerer Robert Leveroos creates scenographically driven work incorporating live art, animation, and handmade objects. Macromatter aims to strike imaginations and skew perceptions by exploring worlds where weight is given to the minute, the understated, and overlooked to uncover something recognizably human. With a flexible collective of interdisciplinary artists, Macromatter creates original performances and collaborates in processes that encourage curiosity, discovery, and play.
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Credits:
Creator: Robert Leveroos
Dramaturg: Kathleen Flaherty
Robert Leveroos creates performance pieces for all ages and collaborates as a performer and scenographer with a number of Vancouver and Canadian companies. His work has been presented at World Stage Design, Taipei, Taiwan (2017), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota (2016), Surrey Art Gallery (2016), Kunstlerhauser Warpswede, Germany (2015), rEvolver Theatre Festival (2014, 2015), The Queer Arts Festival Art Party (2013), Theatre Skam’s BikeRide (2013), The Dance Centre (2012), Tremors Festival (2012), BC Buds (2012), The Gam Gallery (2012), and Zone Homa Montreal (2010). His book works include A Lion in the Bedroom, and Adrift/À la derive, which was produced with support from Minnesota Centre for Book Arts.
For ten years he trained with The Children’s Theater Company in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and graduated from The National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal (acting 2008). Robert served three seasons as Youth Program Manager at The Cultch in East Vancouver, and continues to work with young artists. He holds an MFA in Performance and Design from Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University. www.macromatter.com