At The Door (Death & The Deceased)
Commission for drag performers Ava Ryss (@ava.ryss) & Von Void (@thevonvoid)
This act changed the way I think about burlesque— and performance & theater in general
The first time I saw Ava Ryss and Von Void perform as Death and The Dececased, it brought me to tears— something very few prestige theatrical productions have ever done. It is rare to see an expression of death and loss that is this earnest and untrivializing, and even moreso when that expression isn’t just negative. This performance showed the beauty that can come from loss, from letting go.
The things it made me think and feel completely changed the way I view drag and burlesque, as an artform of the reveal. Sometimes that reveal is physical, but other times it is emotional, philosophical, and vulnerable.
The camera was set up on a slider I created and rigged up along the set, and I pushed that along each frame as well, with a ruler secured underneath so I could push it by exactly 2mm each frame. Everything sat in front of a green screen, and the background was a composite of several layers of fractal noise, plus some atmospheric fog.
The moss is real, and the "water" is a slime I made with borax and glue. Everything is sitting on a platform I built with wood and a large glass window in the center so I could light the river from underneath and get that nice ethereal glow. The lantern and door hinges were made of copper wire, so I could adjust them frame by frame, and I made a mold for the wave shapes I wanted, which I would press into the slime as I went along. Both the doorframe and the lantern were bolted to the wooden stage.
The lantern post and door frame are both made from balsa and other scrap wood pieces, the lantern itself is a wire frame dipped in black paint and skinned with bits of this vellum-esque translucent plastic sheet, and the light is an itty bitty LED suspended inside. The top of the lantern lifts off so the batteries can be replaced, and is attached via magnets on either side.