The DJ who gave too much information_Sonnet J Blanton

PME Art

The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information (CA)

A turntable and a pile of records. For each record we have at least one story at the ready. These stories have come from hearsay, internet research, books, magazines, friends and our personal lives. One after another, we put on the records and tell our stories about them, each story growing out of the last and into the next.

The audience can casually have a drink, stay for a while, come and go, exploring the way music – and the stories that surround it – infiltrate our personal and social lives, affecting our ongoing understanding of love, work and how we think society should operate.

It never ceases to amaze us how important and resonant music can be in our lives. Often connected with childhood and adolescence, it is difficult to imagine the modern world without the songs that form its continuous soundtrack. We have almost two hundred records and stories about each one: historical facts about the bands, gossip, anecdotes, things that happened to the artists, their friends, or us. Each time we perform, we find ourselves playing the records in a different order, creating new, on-the-spot connections between the music we love (and even a few songs we hate). For three to thirteen hours, a loose, improvised yet consistently effective journey through art, politics, love and work; all seen through the lens of every kind of music. A place to come together and listen, think about where songs take us and what we take from them.

Presented in parallel to the performance, weinvite the public to bring a song of their choice and tell a story about it duringBring your own Record/Listening Party.

Other variations of the project exist, such as a Vinyl Party (FTA, 2012), where PME-ART artists used the show’s record collection to get the crowd dancing.

This project is part of the Hospitality cycle, an extended period of research on the theme of hospitality.

Created and performed by Caroline Dubois, Claudia Fancello, and Jacob Wren, continued and performed by Marie Claire Forté and Adam Kinner. Technical Direction: Mathieu Chartrand. Interns: Mélanie Cadieux and Séléné Caron.

A co-production with Forum Freies Theater (Düsseldorf), in collaboration with Studio 303 (Montréal) and Noorderzon Festival (Groningen). With the support of the Canada Council for the Arts (touring), the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Conseil des arts de Montréal, and the Kunststiftung NRW (Arts Foundation of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany), as part of Tallinn 2011, European Capital of Culture.