Iddo.act
Iddo.act is a Tel-Aviv based company led by Iddo Gruengard with international participants. Iddo.act’s work uses the prism of disability to challenge different subjects, observing disability as the new avant garde.
Using this perspective, the group engages in various mediums: performance, video art, installation, fashion show, dance, architecture and theatre. Their work involves layers of meanings arranged by the different mediums around a specific space in order to immerse the audience emotionally and mentally. The technique of devising an overlap of a classic story and a contemporary one creates a collage into which the audience enters. Iddo.act’s main themes are trauma, memory, identity, intimacy and technology. Their work has been performed in the UK, Greece, Israel and USA.
Iddo Gruengard is a graduate of MA Performance from Central Saint Martins and an architect. He is a paraplegic T5-6 from a motorcycle accident in India in 1998 and a father of 2.
Contact details
Iddo Gruengard
Director
9 Yosef HaEfratist.
Tel-Aviv 6970819
Israel
Metamorphosing
Duration: 55
Description: Metamorphosing is a physical theatre mixed with video art. Using Kafka's Metamorphosis as a metaphor for the post traumatic experience after a spinal cord injury. The narrative jumps between Iddo's actual experience in hospital realising he is disabled to Gregor as his alter-ego who turned to a vermin. 3 characters experience a physical metamorphosis and dissolve with technology. The video art for the show has won awards in Natanya international festival.
Extra information: http://iddoact.wix.com/metamorphosing
People on road: 8-9 people - 5 performers, producer, movement director, costume artist, light designer
Freight: baggage
Freight details: 2 dismantled iron beds, table, 1 polyester net and 8 wooden frames of 2m length, projector
Pinter's Night
Duration: 40
Description: Pinter's Night is an audience participation event using Harold's Pinter sketch Night to experiment with audience participation. The work turns the classical sketch into a participatory performance and invites the audience as memories and betrayals. The audience becomes the scenography of the intimate relationship between the couple.
People on road: 4
Playback Paralysis
Duration: Cycle of 12 minutes video
Description: Playback Paralysis is an interactive video art installation about disability and the conflict in Jerusalem. Two wheelchairs connected via sensors to 2 plasmas, invite the audience to experience either Israeli Iddo's or Palestinian John's perspective while travelling in old Jerusalem. The two discuss in a third video the connection between paralysis, borders, body and city as they draw a neurologicl mapping o their body. The work was produced in residency in Musrara new media school.
People on road: 2-3 people. Director\producer, arudino technician, light designer
Freight: necessary
Freight details: 2 wheelchairs+base, electronic equipment, 2 computers (needs to be connected to 3 plasmas)
We can deliver workshops and post-performance discussions. Our workshops are: Performance as a rehabilitation tool, Immersive theatre, Performative video installation and Audience Participation Techniques. All workshops are 1-3 sessions of 2 and a half hours in English.
“Then there’s the rare third time, at which the director takes the writer’s words and, for a time as a reviewer, you’re sitting there thinking he’s playing Russian roulette – only with the gun pointed squarely at your face….They (Evans and Atherton) both give pitch-perfect, unsettling performances.” Views from the Gods on Pinter’s Night
“Metamorphosing is a carefully developed idea, worthy of a large audience. Gruengard makes clear that he does not believe in traditional theatre and is determined to challenge as well as entertain. The use of video is generally very well thought out, creating an uncomfortably claustrophobic atmosphere. Pacione’s very physical performance is disturbingly powerful, and undoubtedly one of the more compelling aspects of the play. ” Views from the Gods on Metamorphosing
“There are several subtexts to the work. The 40 years old Gruengard… has accrued a substantial educational bedrock to his current work. I look at how space generates social connections and generate certain hierarchies…” JERUSALEM POST ON PLAYBACK PARALYSIS
Latest Video
Interactive video art installation by Iddo Gruengard, starring John Elias Dabis. Produced in Musrara Art Residency in Jerusalem with the aid of Mifal Hapais. May 2016.
You can watch a trailer for Metamorphosing on Vimeo