The writer and director Anthony Hampton formed Rotozaza in 1998 and joined with performer Silvia Mercuriali shortly afterwards to make the second show [DUE] in Milan, Italy, 1999. They have been working together in different ways - and in different countries / languages - on over 20 Rotozaza productions since then, from early site-specific work in Milan and Paris through to a more recent strategy of selecting performers, different every night, who agree to take instructions, live and unrehearsed. Since 2003 the work has involved particularly close collaborations with Neil Bennun, Greg McLaren and Melanie Wilson.

Their show Five in the Morning was awarded BEST TOURING SHOW by the Austin Critics Table last year as part of Fusebox.

ARTIST STATEMENT

To be laughing without quite knowing why, to nurture that kind of laughter - the kind that can easily snowball, or turn out to be something else entirely.

In general, we see the most important cultural work today in any field as that which achieves a confusion of what we know as real and what we believe is constructed. Rotozaza, performative at heart but by nature multidisciplinary, is firmly part of this because we see that confusion as the truest reflection of the world as it is, and of where it's heading. To expose, embrace and perform the fears asscociated with this, along with the antidotes: where and how do we find comfort? What is happening today when we sleep, and how does it differ from before? To ask such questions as - What about those people for whom 'reality' is still the only media? At what point did it become a minority choice for Western entertainment? And what does it say about human aspiration that, globally, the 'developed' minority are the only ones living in this privileged confusion?

Above all, to pursue phenomena which can only be achieved and witnessed in what we still manage to identify as 'live, in the real world'. Notions of collectivity and shared experience sometimes forming part of this but no longer defining it. To instead juxtapose and compare these phenomena with the screened, removed and quasi-fictional worlds which we allow to dominate our waking lives on both a personal and social level.

Rotozaza are based in London and Brighton, UK.

ARTIST WEBSITE:

http://www.rotozaza.co.uk/home.html