Video Trailer

“Lightning Never Strikes The Same Place Twice” is a multimedia performance based on the true story of Roy Sullivan, the man with the Guinness Record for being struck by lightning seven times.  Next performance: December 12-13 2009 in San Francisco.

Video Shoot #3 in SOMA

Videographer Loren R. Robertson directs Mica Phelan and Brandt Adams in SOMA.

Interviews with Catherine about “Lightning”

From: With movement and image, Catherine Galasso pays dual homage

By Michael Fox, December 7th 2009 on www.sf360.org

“I’m interested in using film and video in ways that can help to bring an audience inside of a dance. I agree about Americans having an ‘addictive’ relationship with moving images—but I’m interested in tapping into that addiction and transcending it. I think that film is a form of communication that we’re all very accustomed to and comfortable with. I think integrating this more familiar form of communication into more unfamiliar and abstract vocabularies of movement and visual landscapes helps an audience to experience the work on multiple levels. I’m not necessarily trying to make my work accessible. I want to tap into each person’s way of experiencing things on multiple levels simultaneously.”  Read the rest of the interview.

From: Dance Flash: Catherine Galasso’s “Lightning Never Strikes the Same Place Twice”

Becca Hirschman, December 9th 2009, on www.sfappeal.com

“We call it remounting because there’s a degree of updating going on… Not necessarily making the piece more “current” in terms of trend, but bringing it up to date according to the aesthetic development of myself and the rest of the cast.

“Three members of the original cast are reuniting for the purpose of this show, and one is brand new. Three years later we are different people, and it’s interesting to sort of go back in time, and examine who we were then through the lens of the piece. The reason I wanted the original cast is because I built the characters around their personalities. I enjoy working with different types of performers – friends who inspire me. Brandt Adams, who plays Roy, is an actor and teaching artist in New York City. Satya Stainton trained in ballet and modern dance, and currently administers a meditation center in upstate New York. Kathryn Shearman is an SF-based musician, visual artist, and performer under the moniker “Kazoo.” Jesse Hewit, the new member of the cast, is a director and performer, and a current artist-in-residence at CounterPULSE in San Francisco. Each member of the cast provokes and challenges me in different ways, which keeps the process exciting.

“The videos are being re-shot and edited by local video artist Loren R. Robertson. Together we are looking at what worked in the original video in order to make slight improvements. With both the live dance and the recorded video, we’re trying to strike a fine balance between preserving the original vocabulary of the piece and going deeper with it.”  Read the rest of the Interview.

Meet Lighting Designer Elaine Buckholtz

Super excited to be working with Elaine Buckholtz on the remount of “Lightning” in San Francisco.

Elaine’s most recent work utilizes video and light in relation to sculptural forms, digital prints, and preexisting sites in architecture and nature under the cover of darkness.  She has shown work at The Swiss Technorama Museum, Winterthur Switzerland, Yerba Buena Center For The Arts, San Francisco, California, The Claremont Museum in Southern California, Pierogi Leipzig, Leipzig Germany, The Luggage Store in San Francisco,The San Francisco Arts Commission, California College of The Arts, Stanford University, The Wexner Center For The Arts, Sun Valley Center For The Arts, and Fusion Art Space, San Francisco, California.  Elaine attended The California College Of The Arts on a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship from 2002-2004 and received her MFA from Stanford University in 2006. She currently teaches at Stanford University in the Art and Art History department as an adjunct faculty member. She has worked as a Lighting and Visual Designer in the bay area for 20 years and has also worked with Merce Cunningham and Meredith Monk recreating their visual environments internationally. She continues to tour with Meredith Monk as a Lighting Designer.  www.nighthouse.org

New York cast members Brandt and Satya explore SF

For the remount of “Lightning”  in San Francisco this weekend (Dec 12-13) we flew in 2 cast members from New York: Brandt Adams and Satya Stainton.  On their day off between rehearsals, local cast member Kathryn Shearman gives them a tour of Sutro Baths and Ocean Beach.  Kate is building the horns for the “Testosterony Pony” character, played by SF-based performer and director, Jesse Hewit.  She took the horns along so she could finish them on the way…

Video Shoot with Loren Robertson

We just did our first video shoot with Loren Robertson today.  We are recreating the original, and adding a few flourishes.  We call this the talking heads section.  Jesse is the new bird in the group: I think he and Brandt are really hitting it off.

Kate in the babouska (sp?).

Video Shoot at Shenandoah Natl. Park

Today, Brandt Adams and I went on our first shoot for the 2009 remount of “Lightning.”  We decided to shoot the video of Roy Sullivan running through the woods at Shenandoah National Park, where the real Roy had worked as a park ranger for 30 years. I guess one could ask why we would need to go all the way to Shenandoah National Park in Virginia for a woods scene, when actually we could probably go anywhere in the northeastern United States and find the same kind of look. But going to Roy Sullivan’s old stomping grounds felt like a pilgrimage, a way of connecting to the real person.

When trying to re-create an old piece, it’s difficult to not become obsessed with trying to replicate it exactly. I was pretty fixated on what I felt the shots should look like… since I am very attached to the original look. I missed having the snow contrast with Brandt’s costume, so that his body really stood out against the wilderness. But three years later we don’t have snow, we’re using a different woods, and Brandt is older; 3 years in New York City have changed him. We were excited to take advantage of the opportunity to improve the original, but I’m not sure what this new version will become. We’ll just have to wait and see what Loren Robertson and I can come up with in the editing room.

Here is a clip from the outtakes. Brandt with the sign at the entrance to the park.  It was a chilling 4o degrees… with a bitchin’ wind.

 

About Composer Michael Galasso

Lightning Never Strikes the Same Place Twice features a complete score by composer Michael Galasso.

Michael Galasso, internationally acclaimed composer, violinist and musical director, was born in Hammond, Louisiana in 1949. Beginning as a violin prodigy, he started his career composing music for Robert Wilson’s “The Life And Times Of Joseph Stalin,” “A Letter For Queen Victoria” (for which he received a TONY nomination for Best Musical Score), “The $ Value of Man” and “Ouverture,” and in 1998 for “Donna del Mare” and “Dreamplay.” Recent collaborations with Wilson include “Les Fables de La Fontaine” for the Comédie-Française, and “Quartett” starring Isabelle Huppert which premiered in Paris and toured to Berlin, Geneva, Milan, Athens, and New York.

Galasso has constantly stretched the boundaries of contemporary music: from his early use of evolving music technologies, to working with Iranian, Indian, South American and African Musicians. He has performed more than 300 concerts all over the world in groundbreaking places; the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, The Kitchen in NY, the Médersa in Marrakech, the Roman Amphitheatre in Malaga. Galasso’s work has been presented in such festivals as the Festival d’Automne in Paris, The Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy and the Festival de Musique Montreux-Vevey.

Galasso’s compositions have been commissioned by many choreographers, including Andy DeGroat, Lucinda Childs, Karole Armitage, Paola Rampone for the Roma-Europa-Festival, and Carolyn Carlson for the Venice Biennial. His works have also been included in the repertoire of the Paris Opera Ballet.

In film and video, he has written scores for “My Chauffeur;” Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai’s “Chun King Express” and  “In the Mood for Love” which won the European Critics Award and the César for the best foreign film, and for Ella es el Matador by San Francisco-based filmmakers Gemma Cubero del Barrio and Celeste Carrasco.  In 2009 he was awarded the CESAR for BEST ORIGINAL SCORE for the film “Seraphine.” Michael Galasso passed away at his home in Paris, France, on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2009 at age 60.

Vistit michaelgalasso.com for more information.

“Lightning” Strikes in San Francisco!

The San Francisco Film Society has commissioned a remount of “Lightning” as part of it’s Kinotek program, curated by Sean Uyehara.

About KinoTek

The KinoTek programming stream presents cinematic works that illuminate the ways in which burgeoning technologies alter the production, distribution and exhibition of media. The program highlights new technologies, cross-platform works and interactive elements and explores how these platforms help create new aesthetic and social experiences. To date, the KinoTek program has presented live cinema, VJing, mobile media, games, user-generated content, interactive animation, locative media and more.

 

Attend a Performance
December 12-13, 2009 at 8pm
SomArts Cultural Center, San Francisco

About San Francisco Film Society
Through its annual San Francisco International Film Festival and an assortment of equally anticipated events such as the yearly San Francisco International Animation Festival, New Italian Cinema and French Cinema Now, bimonthly SF360 Film+Club multimedia presentations and Film Arts Forum filmmaker gatherings, and frequent benefit screenings and film premieres, the Film Society shares the best in global moving-image arts with tens of thousands of viewers who are eager to explore images and ideas beyond the mainstream multiplex.

A full slate of Filmmaker Services programs, including professional development classes, grants, residencies, fiscal sponsorship, publications and networking events, keeps the Film Society in close contact with local filmmaking talent… Read More

Kosovo performance pictures

“Lightning” tours to Kosovo!

Catherine and the cast of “Lightning” traveled to Prishtina, Kosovo in November 2006 to perform at the International Theater and Film Festival, Skena UP.  Bob Turner replaced Harlan Work as the Testosterony Pony, and we were all excited to be bringing the piece to a foreign audience.  We managed to raise the money for five plane tickets, and flew to Prishtina by way of Vienna, for 5 days of rehearsal and one climactic performance.  The judges at the festival were very pleased with our performance and we received TWO awards: The New Spirit Prize for Original Outreach in Theater and Best Actor.

“Lightning” wins awards in Kosovo

Lightning Never Strikes the Same Place Twice was performed at the International Theater and Film Festival (Skena UP) in Prishtina, Kosovo on November 14, 2006. It received two awards: The New Spirit Prize for Original Outreach in Theater and Best Actor (awarded to Brandt Adams).

About Skena UP Theater and Film Festival:
Every year since 2003 the Kosovo festival has provided vital cultural-political exchange between the coming generation of film and theater producers, directors, writers, actors and audiences from Kosovo and other nations around the world. Sponsored by cultural and peacekeeping councils the festival is also attended by prominent and influential members of the political and cultural elite of both Kosovo and neighboring nations, as well as the Kosovar and European public. It is widely recognized as the most important international cultural event in Kosovo since the war, promoting international peace and mutual understanding. The festival’s website: www.skenaup.com

Praise for “Lightning…”

In Lightning Never Strikes the Same Place Twice Catherine demonstrates the dedication and seriousness of the most promising of artists. Weaving through critical issues of aesthetics and politics, she carefully examines them through a narrative structure which she continually shapes and refines without ever losing the rigor of the form. Her thoroughness gives the work with its many sections its coherence and emotional strength, its disparate parts modulated perfectly by feelings of lost, whimsy, bodily pleasure, wit, and companionship.

-Jumay Chu, Cornell Department of Theater, Film, and Dance

Cast of Characters

Lightning is a critical, virtual journey through Sullivan’s psyche, as he encounters and falls hopelessly in love with the enchanting Hot Wire Honey, a woman made of glow-in-the-dark electrical cords – a symbol of both the high voltage violence that afflicts him and his own undeniable vital energy. Sullivan is also partially seduced by the flamboyance and graceful sophistication of the possibly inaccessible, cosmopolitan Ballerina Internationale, who seems to promise global inclusion. Sullivan’s adversary/rival, the prickly and competitive Testosterony Pony, flaunts a masculinity that Sullivan can never achieve, and also steals his love.

Costumes for “Lightning…”

Cornell faculty member Sarah Bernstein designed the costumes for Lightning Never Strikes the Same Place Twice.” Here are her preliminary drawings: