Please Hold

Performance

Performed entirely over a rotary dial telephone, Please Hold is a performance installation that recreates the sensation of an international call; whispering in another’s ear but being 24 hours from touching them.

Using vocal performance, illusion and live sound design, Please Hold examines the intimacy and solitude facilitated by telecommunications. Does such technology encourage us to be further apart by their assurances of bringing us closer together? Invited into a time when telephones were only in hallways and on street corners, a single audience member is engaged in conversation by an unseen other. As narratives of children and domestic disaster move and ensnare, an unexpected shift occurs towards a stunning finale.

With new print technology, customised phones and a team of Melbourne’s finest award-winning performance makers, Please Hold promises an effective and moving escape for the over-communicated.

Artist/s:

Declan Kelly (Sound Design and Systems), Halcyon Macleod (Writer/Performer), Alison McNicol (Design), Sam Routledge (Original Concept/Director)

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About the artist/s:

Declan Kelly has been an active member of Melbourne’s music community for more than ten years. Through DJing, producing, touring international artists, writing and presenting his well-received community radio programs, Declan has gained a reputation as someone who cares about sound and constructs it as such.

A collaborative effort with Richard Campbell and James Cecil (from Architecture in Helsinki) was released through Soul Jazz Records in the UK, and in 2006, Declan completed the postgraduate Sound Design course at the VCA. In 2008 he will be in development with My Darling Patricia and working towards finishing his debut EP.

www.r-n-d.net

Sam Routledge is a Melbourne based puppeteer who has been working in the creation of visual theatre, for both adults and children, for over seven years. Sam’s projects include the object theatre work Men of Steel (earning the Festival Director’s Award at 2006 Melbourne International Comedy Festival), which completed a month-long run at London’s Soho Theatre in December, and the new media/puppetry production Operation, which was presented as part of Full Tilt at The Arts Centre last year.

Recently, Sam undertook skills development with Danish visual theatre company Gruppe 38 in Aarhus, Denmark, and is currently developing a full length machinima/puppetry production for young adults.

Halcyon Macleod is an animateur, performer and writer who creates cross-modal performance events with performance group My Darling Patricia, who have created three works incorporating puppetry, film, and installation: Kissing The Mirror, Dear Pat and Politely Savage.

In 2006 Politely Savage won the Melbourne Fringe awards for Best Production and Best Design, and also won the Adelaide Fringe Festival award for Best Theatre Production in 2007. In 2006 Halcyon studied Animateuring and recently visited La Caserne in Quebec City to observe the processes of Robert LePage. She is currently working on the development of My Darling Patricia’s new show The Night Garden.

Alison McNicol has been working as a designer for architectural and theatrical space since 2003. Her design work includes Y at the 2006 Next Wave Festival and Blood Policy’s Operation (a work playing recently as part of the Arts Centre’s 2007 Full Tilt Season). Alison was production designer for the short film Mittens screened at ACMI, and designer for Rubber Dog Production Company’s 2007 Chapel Off Chapel Season of Dogs Barking. Theatrical installation work includes designs for Punctum Theatre Company’s SHACK – Endangered Species.

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