OVERVIEW: Lauren Sandersen traveled with a four person film crew to shoot a short experimental film during the week she was there. With this project in mind, she traveled to Jamaica wondering how I would put what we captured on camera in play format. “Behind the Scenes a Play”
Artist’s Statement
Lauren Sanderson
Bull Bay, Jamaica, 5am
Through the form of the written play, we’ve studied and interrogated theatre — from contemporary American, West Africa, the Caribbean, the Middle East, India, China, and Japan. I’ve taken on that form as an expression of my recent experience in Jamaica, mid-March of this year. I travelled with a four person film crew to shoot a short experimental film during the week we were there. With this project in mind, I travelled to Jamaica wondering how I would put what we captured on camera in play format. I was surprised to learn thw to shoot a short experimental film during the week we were there. With this project in mind, I travelled to Jamaica wondering how I would put what we captured on camera in play format. I was surprised to learn that what was most striking was actually behind the camera; the way our identitiesas travelers were challenged and changed as a result of our global displacement. at what was most striking was actually behind the camera; the way our identitiesas travelers were challenged and changed as a result of our global displacement. Though the names of the characters are distorted for privacy and protection, the stories addressed in the monologues are real. Listed below is a summarized version of the characterization each of the four of us were most conscious of:
Nicole — The first time experience of existing in a place as a minority.
Max — Identifying with a sexuality and general expression of gender that is not tolerated in Jamaica. Understanding the source of the close mindedness as rooted in colonial oppression, but still feeling a omnipresent threat to physical safety.
Marcus — With an extended stay abroad, identifying visually as a racial majority, yet still feeling separated through nationality.
Alex — The pressure of an artist, how to translate the beauty and brutality of the black experience from script to screen, and how to make it universal.
It was through the act of performance, as we asked the actors to execute a specific characterization on camera, that I became aware of our inherent and automatic performance of identity. There is a performance we bring to our performing, to our creating, to our consumption and our spectatorship. What ends up on screen or on script is a collision of conscious and subconscious performance. The subconscious performance is fluid, ebbing and flowing the forces it faces. For each character in the play, their identity was challenged and influenced by its reception in a globalized context. This is the story of how.
Behind The Scenes – Lauren Sanderson
Please enjoy a preview of the film, using the footage we accumulated during our trip:
