To Be Straight With You
Mixed Media Dance Theatre. Video Artists. 2007.
To Be Straight with You is a poetic but unflinching exploration of tolerance, intolerance, religion and sexuality. It incorporates dance, text, documentary, film and animated projections to create a unique piece of theatre.
KMA worked closely with Lloyd Newson and the entire DV8 cast and crew throughout the show’s devising period. This resulted in a series of scenes in which the projected video and the performers’ movements are coordinated, generating some highly original and arresting theatrical imagery.
DV8 Physical Theatre has won 16 awards over the last three years for its stage and film works including a Prix Italia and the Rose D’Or.
Performance History
2009 Europe, US, Canada tour
2008 Europe, US, Australia tour
2007 Premiere in Berlin
Press & Media
“Wonderful use of graphics… Jaw-droppingly beautiful”
BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review
“Projection… seems prepared as its own exhibit. It is a startling complement to what it accompanies.”
Colleen McLellan, Culture Spot LA
“Uri Omi’s set of movable walls and the combined theatrical wizardry of lighting designer Beky Stoddart and video artists Kit Monkman and Tom Wexler make for some magical effects and transformations”
The Toronto Star
“Lloyd Newson’s sinuous and painstakingly detailed choreography and Kit Monkmen and Tom Wexler’s ingenious use of video projection unite to deliver an impassioned plea for tolerance… In one of the most technologically stunning moments of the piece (and there were many), a globe is projected on a scrim in front of a performer”
Buzzine.com
“…breathtakingly clever, as bodies interact with projections”
The Financial Times
“Video artists Kit Monkman and Tom Wexler have devised some stunning visuals”
The Stage
“The show is wonderfully slick… mysteriously beautiful… full of visual surprises”
The Independent
“Newson and his designers have beautiful surprises up their sleeves”
The Times
“wonderfully creative, impressive use of graphics”
Irish Independent
“Here is the most beautiful geography class you’ll ever experience; a choreographed dance across the globe”
Irish Times
“Ces histoires vraies sont jouées par neuf danseurs-acteurs palpitants saisis dans les rets d’un design graphique (des vidéos d’animation qui donnent l’illusion d’un dessin en direct) d’une vivacité saisissante.”
Le Monde
“A live performer in a morphing projection of chalked rooms (by video artists Kit Monkman and Tom Wexler) puts out his hand, and a virtual door opens. Projected phrases penetrate a front scrim and appear in receding layers… In a devastating bit of theatrical magic [a performer] appears to rotate a transparent projected globe of the world.”
New York Village Voice
“The interaction between live action and animation is truly a marvel.”
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
“Staged with vivid imagination, daring and technological skill”
The Australian
To Be Straight With You, a work of pole-axing intensity… Among the many resonant images, the most remarkable is perhaps a 3D globe on which the countries where homosexuality remains criminalised are lit. With practised grace and magical precision, the narrator spins the globe… Expansively conceived and technically mouth-watering.
Adelaide Now
“Don’t ask how it works – it just does, courtesy of video artists Kit Monkman and Tom Wexler”
StageNoise
“Technically, this was the best production I have seen at the National. The use of projection was phenomenal… The extraordinary talent of the cast, the mesmerising visual effects and the scrupulously handled subject matter grip you, only releasing you after the 80 minute performance has ended …”
NationalTheatre.org.uk reviews