Zulu Time (1999)

Ex Machina - ZULU TIME – 1999 VERSION

Technical specifications and requirements


Venue and seating

• Audience sits on both sides of performing area.
• First five (5) rows of seats must be on floor level.
• All other seats should be set in staggered rows and allow for good sightlines.
• Staggered rows steps’ height: minimum: 0.15m (6”) maximum: 0.25m (10”)
• First rows on both sides must be at 3m (10’) from the set.
• Specifications suggests Promenade theatre, Audience seated on both sides of the performance space

What is it about?

(http://lacaserne.net/index2.php/theatre/zulu_time)

• Very Artaudian in the sense that the play was to attack all the senses and explores deepest darkest secrets “synthetic sounds, strobe light flashes, spasmodic robots, trash video, acrobats dropping from ceilings and sultry contortionists” (From the La Caserne website)
• About how we as people get so caught up in the present and our own lives that we neglect a lot
  

General Notes

This link provides the source for the following notes and review (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1589/is_/ai_83451276)

• Lepage refers to the piece as a “techno-cabaret”
• Set in an airport
  Inspired by Lepage’s fear of flying
• Very cryptic play, final plot point is Plane crash
• Coincidence/fate that Lepage was opening the play in New York a week after the 9/11 attack.
• Lepage draws inspiration from social issues often
  Visited Hiroshima and became fascinated with the effects of the first nuclear bomb
• "I was working on getting information on terrorism, and I spoke with political science professors to ask, `If a flight were to blow up today, who would be responsible for that?' So we spent a week researching terrorist training camps in Kashmir, looking into suicide commandos, totally immersed in this subject matter. We kept wondering if we had the right turban, if the guy would wear a beard. Then we sent all of this stuff off to New York just five days before the attacks."
• Idea of terrorism comes through Zulu, plot revolves around terrorists who plant a bomb on a plane
  

Did you know?

• 'Zulu time' is more commonly known as GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) by the navy in particular.
  (http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.co.uk/info/zulu.htm)
• Robert Lepage was the first North American to direct a Shakespeare play at the Royal National Theatre, London in 1992 with “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
• 'Zulu Time' was performed in;
  
  - Zurich Switzerland in 1999,
  - Paris,France in 1999
  - Quebec City, Canada in 2000
  - Montreal, Canada in 2002

Posted by Matt Mckeever and Dan Mahathir