PostSecretOnStage is a music theatre/performance art show that uses as a springboard some postcard secrets from postsecret.blogspot.com. Developed by Melbourne based composer Sasha Stella, PostSecretOnStage is a music theatre/performance art show that aims to elaborate, through choreography and stage action, props, lighting, video and text, responses to particular postcards taken from the website to form the 'scenes' of a live show. These responses will be by prominent Australian artists and will be mediated through a collaborative workshop process. The final staged work may have little or a lot to do in a literal sense with the postcards selected from the site as source material, depending on what happens in the workshop process. Scenes could be clearly and obviously based on a particular postcard, with visual and textual references, or merely derive their inspiration from a particular postcard, or use a postcard as one of several elements within the scene.
The principal aim of PostSecretOnStage is to create a work that invites and involves community participation on an international level, fostering links between the United States and Australia, and hopefully expressing themes that are common to people everywhere. These could be ideas, feelings, beliefs, experiences�whatever. The artists involved in this show hope to give voice to a wide range of aspects of what it is to be human today. Therefore the show will move beyond being a work of art and entertainment to also being a kind of social record. I also look forward to developing a new kind of artistic process which draws on the work of anonymous contributors from the other side of the world, and in this way extending my artform practise and that of the other artists involved in the project.
Profits from ticket sales will be donated to the Australian Salvation Army, an organisation that works to help people in need by providing clothing, household items, and accommodation.
At the present date Elisa Evers is confirmed as the writer for the project.
The process of creative development for this work is set out below in summary. It takes a long time to organise such projects; funding is typically secured in stages and the project�s progress through the stages is dependent on funding deadlines and approvals.
Stage 1
June-Dec 2005
Confirm creative team
Stage 2
Jan-Feb 2006
Select postcards to use as springboards in workshops
Stage 3
Mar-April 2006
Workshop period where postcards are explored
Stage 4
May-July 2006
Artists creatively develop their ideas individually
Stage 5
August-September 2006
Workshop period where artists collaborate on the staging of the work
Stage 6
September 2006
Preview showing in Melbourne for industry peers
Stage 7
October 2006
Implement feedback from preview showing
Stage 8
2007
Rehearsal and performance in Melbourne
SASHA STELLA
Sasha Stella studied piano with Mack Jost in Melbourne and composition with Peter Sculthorpe at the University of Sydney. In 1997 Sasha was performed his multi-media work Context Collage at the Context Performing Arts Centre in New York, then in Melbourne at the Moorabbin Arts Centre. In 1997 he performed his multimedia piece, Homage to Beethoven, as part of the 8th Sydney International Spring Festival. In 1998 Sasha began composing electronic music for the dance club scene. In 1999, having become a regular club dj, Sasha began organising his own weekly nightclubs Ephemeral Live Techno Club and Anti-Gravity, which secured him radio and television credits on Triple J Mix Up, Channel 31 and SBS's dance music program, Alchemy. On New Years Eve 1999/2000 he performed a live techno set of his music at Earthcore 2000 before an audience of six thousand.
In February of 2001 Sasha received Australia Council funding to compose a fifty-five minute contemporary dance score for orchestra and sampler, Plato�s Cave, for the contemporary dance work, OBJECT!. OBJECT! Was staged as part of the 2001 Melbourne Fringe Festival. Later in 2001 Sasha was engaged as musical consultant for Australian feature, One Perfect Day (Lightstream Films), and as composer for 35mm short, Enough (Ravenscroft Pictures.) Enough screened at the LA shorts fest and the Pacific Beach Film Festival in California, as well as local festivals. One Perfect Day opened nationally in November 2003.
In 2002 popular London based pianist Joanna MacGregor added Sasha�s Sugar Plum Remix for orchestra, piano and sampler to her repertoire for performance at the Warsaw Castle in July. Also in 2002 Sasha was chosen as a finalist in the THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY MUSIC COMPETITION �Citta Di Udine� held by TauKay music publishing for his string quartet, Remix d�archi. Sasha�s piano quintet Remix 2 was chosen as a finalist for the FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY MUSIC COMPETITION- IRONY held by publishers Tactus Fugit Edizioni Musicali and released on CD by Imperfect Records following its performance in Pescara in September last year. Later that year The Song Company invited Sasha to compose a six minute work Ave Maria (Victoria Remix) for a capella and sampler for performance in their ModArt 3 series in February 2003.
In December 2002 Sasha received a grant from the Australia Council for the Arts to compose Resonances, a 50 min. suite of pieces for piano, orchestra, vocals and sampler. In March 2003 Remix for 9 Strings, one of the pieces from this work won 3rd Prize in the FRANZ JOSEPH REINL-STIFTUNG PRIZE (chamber music section) in Vienna, and was performed in Munich in June 2003.
Recently Sasha was commissioned by The Tactus Fugit Ensemble in Rome through the Australia Council for the Arts, to compose Misterioso Remix, a piece for chamber ensemble based on Thelonius Monks Misterioso. In November 2004 Sasha was awarded an Australia Council grant towards the composition of Corruption in 2004. Corruption, a 50 minute cross media opera, is currently being jointly developed by Chamber Made Opera and Ballet Lab for performance in 2006.
