experimental film theatre collaboration project "red hat"

The Red Hat was a film collaboration with playback theatre.

Dr Rea Dennis, Convener, Improvisation Continuums Conference, 2007 described this collaboration as a "groundbreaking film documentary." Film maker/ directors P.D. Casely-Hayford and Athena Currie teamed with visionary producer/film maker, Suzanne Nicholson and Dr Rea Dennis, Playback Theatre Specialist in "an experimental dramaturgy that explored improvisational story-based method playback theatre in performance in film, film making and storyboarding." The film project was a collaborative process between film-making practice and live performance. Playback Theatre re-counts personal experiences, which are re-enacted back to the participant offering their story by a group of Playback Theatre Performers. Often, as was the case with Red Hat, these experiences are emotional and evoke intense drama.

Red Hat focused on the personal traumatic and real experiences of a group of travelers captured by Banditos in Columbia, in the early 1990s. It was an intense experience for both actors and film-makers. What made this project innovative is that Playback Theatre is an improvised reactionary process. Every performance is going to be different, and often unrepeated. There are no rehearsals and there is no blocking of the actors movements on stage. For the film-makers, it's all one long take, which can't be broken. Gaining the trust of the performers was the main challenge. The film-makers immersed themselves on stage with the performers." It was an intuitive experience. They (Casely-Hayford and Currie) became part of the performance, shadowing the actors on stage with hand held cameras, capturing the improvisation.

After the shoot, actors talked about " how the film-makers became part of the ensemble." Their movements were choreographic. The film screened in early 2007 at S.C.A.I.P, Queensland, Australia, and later on in the year at the 10th Annual Playback Theatre Festival in Sao Paulo Brazil in August, 2007 as part of a session entitled, Enthnofiction, Re-enactment and Playback on Film.