Roberta Vaz

presentation

This is me

Unfortunately I can not be present this week as I had planned rehearsals already, but I’m really looking forward to meeting you all soon.

I am a performance artist and have started a collective called ‘The

Typewriters’.

These are some of our projects:

‘Golden Record’

The Golden Record was a performance inspired by a phonographic record of the same name which was sent on orbit by NASA on board of the Voyager II spacecraft.

The record was made with the intent of portraying life on earth to whomever find it in millions of light years ahead of us.

The performance plays with the idea of a time-capsule and delves into themes such as reproduction, estrangement and connection.

‘3021’

‘3021’ was about control and communication.

A dystopian view of a future where humans have outlived their usefulness and kept in a confinement.

Themselves unaware of what makes them humans.

‘Dear John’

It was a site-specific performance consisting in writing a 90 meter long unscripted Dear John letter from a balcony in Bermondsey Square.

My interest was the performers’ experience and the subtle interaction with audience when the paper reaches heads’ level.

The paper ripped and was carried across town by the wind. It was great to realise that people might have found pieces of it and read the letter totally out of context.

An idea for the programme

Inspired by the fact that this is a group project, I thought we could do a little performance where we all stand in a line (side by side) and act some gesture based choreography.

The line would impose its shape at all times, making turns something which needed an spatial rearrangement and a diverse speed and travel length for people who stand in the middle and people who stand on the edges.

Small gestures can look big!

And should be fun too…

A quirky idea for marketing

I thought we could take “the line” (previously mentioned) in the

streets!

Maybe a smaller one.

Groups of 3 people who walk same way and do the exact same gestures.

(it will need a bit of rehearsing)

One of the gestures could be offering passers by a little something (could be just a piece of paper with a word

in it).

And then we can slip in a flier of the event.

It would only work locally, I imagine…

But I’m interested in engaging the community in the event.

Creative way to generate income

Make workshops for the local community and ask for small

donations.