One Wired World

t h e . w o r k . o f . l a u r i e - s h a w n . b o r z o v o y

What a handful Mrs. Borzovoy's little boy Laurie-Shawn must have been. After making his first film when he was eleven, he was already thinking up ways to use a simple little camera to express himself. By his teens he was learning about photography. In film school, he realized that if film was to be used to its full potential it needed to be informed from a theatrical perspective, and it was at that point that for him the lines between film and theatre began to blur. Now, nearly thirteen years later he is an established multimedia artist, who combines film, video, theatre, lighting, and slide projections to create single harmonious experiences.

His company, One World Productions, based in Toronto, is the manifestation of the ideas he has developed over the years. His most recent works include Bluebeard's Castle and Erwartung for the Canadian Opera Company, directed by Robert Lepage and designed by Michael Levine; Hamlet for Theatre Plus at the St. Lawrence Centre, directed by Neil Munro; Second Nature and The Great Debate for VideoCabaret, written and directed by Deanne Taylor; and The Cook's Tale for Claudia Moore at the Betty Oliphant Theatre. Borzovoy is the director of Electronic Media Design at the Associated Designers of Canada, a Canadian organization of professional stage designers.

Why don't we start with One World Productions. How long has it been around and what kind of work have you done?

One World's been around for about six years or seven years now. I've been doing multimedia performances for about ten or eleven years, that being live theatre performances that integrate video projections, slide projections, and interactive technologies such as interactive video and audio technologies. Or the same thing but done for a video productions, so that it's something that is staged for a video recording, either in a studio or on a set, that having been going on in some version or another for the last ten or eleven years.

What productions have you done?

I've produced a performance for the Eveta Corporation in Minnesota, Minneapolis in the newly renovated theatre that they have there. And before that there was the opera for the COC that I designed projections for Bluebeard's Castle and Etwartung directed by Robert LePage. And there was a few VideoCabaret productions that I did recently, Tory, Tory, Tory, and Second Nature. And my own works, Propaganda being the most recent, and before that the various Fossil productions which I've done, the first at The Rivoli in '84, then the Theatre Centre in '85, the last one having been in 1990, I think.

When One World started was the multimedia mandate something that you set out in the beginning or was it something that evolved over time?

No it was something right from the beginning because my background has been quite strong. I had studied film in university and theatre at the same time, so even from my earliest days of having to thought of theatre and film, even from before college, even as a child there was always an integrating of video, theatre, film, or projections.

Why do you choose to use multimedia? What kind of a tool is it for you?

I suppose there's a few points that need to be made and one of them is that I feel a kind of responsibility as an artist in terms of looking at the tools that we use in our lives -- and especially the technological tools that we use -- and one of my concerns is that we need to take new tools that we've been developing and make them more ...more humane, shall we say? I have tried to develop very creative uses of technologies that have other uses at times. I'm trying to make a statement that we need to integrate these things into our lives in more fashions than what is given when we take them out of the package, and we need to shape them to ourselves rather than be shaped by them as much as possible. So at times I've tried to add a little colour, and if computers are boxes I've considered changing the shape of the box to be something more ergonomically correct, something more aesthetically pleasing, because these are things that are sitting in front of our faces every day. So that's part of my concern is to look at technology from other points view rather than just efficiency and practicality only. That is part of the use of media and technology in the work is to say, "Look how playful and creative it can be, it can also be a very wonderful tool. It doesn't have to be an alienating and cold experience. It can be something else."

The other thing is that part of the mandate, even if it was unspoken, is the concept that anything that works should be used in one's day-to-day routine, that being our work as artists, so if it works with the kitchen sink then do it, if using projections helps to create a sense of importance to some sort of visual meaning in the piece then use that. It's a whole other set of theatrical tools, so for me it's no different than saying now it's time for us to design the lighting, it's time for us to design the costumes. Well, if you can project things on the set then why not, you know those tools are available to us. So I feel that if those tools aid the production -- only if they aid the production, if they're not a distraction to what you are doing, if they are seen as being appropriate -- then definitely one should use them.