Dear Friends, Up Wakers, and Zeronomers - ZERO and its Green Team would like to thank you for your 7 minutes (and more) last Sunday. Let us Continue...., React with ZERO and let's together move, shift, change and shape our New Planet. 7 minutes every Sunday - 7:53pm to 8:00pm turn off all the lights and give the planet a break.
ZERO and The Green Team
Natasha made her public debut at age 12, adapting Shakespeare’s "Romeo and Juliet" into an original and modern comedy taking place in court. At 13, she discovered Courteline, a French novelist, and decided to memorize, interpret and direct his play "Peace at home". The success of the performance rooted her decision to pursue this career. Independently from her studies, Natasha was attending College level theater classes.
Natasha lived in London, France, Guatemala, and the USA. This gave her the chance to learn and fluently speak French, Spanish and English, though she prefers silence.
Upon arrival in Miami, Natasha studied editing with Mark Boswell at the Art Center of Miami Beach. At 16, she was invited to film and interview Miss World Jacqueline Aguilera Marcano and Miss World Guatemala, Maria Gabriela Rosales. Her documentary was awarded and previewed at the Benefit event of "Nuevos Horizontes" in Antigua.
Her early experience inspired her to explore the many facets of Production. From Film, to Theatre, she also tackled the Visual Arts in an original way. Inheriting the talents from her mother, Catherine de Saugy, acclaimed European painter, Natasha created in 1999, a psychedelic hand painted clothing collection presented by renown fashion designer Gerry Kelly.
She now uses her artistic skills to illustrate her books, create incredible make-up schemes and conceptualize her work through story boards.
She was accepted the same year at one of the nation’s top conservatory: New World School of the Arts and graduated with a BFA in the year 2000.
Natasha has now written 12 original works, directed 20 plays including her own and is the lead performer of nationally acclaimed performance troupe Circ X, a voice over artist at the premiere voice over studio: The Kitchen, a member of Octavio Campos' Hybrid Theater Company Camposition, has been working on her one person show "Up Wake" commissioned by Miami Light Project and co-commissioned by the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts since 2002. Up Wake World Premiered in Nov/Dec 2006 at the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts with a successful sold out run. While preparing to perform with Cirque du Soleil for the Super Bowl Opening Ceremony February 4th 2007, Natasha is currently working in taking Up Wake on a Worldwide Tour.
[ INTERVIEW ]
Natasha Tsakos is a Conceptual Director, playwright, actor, and a clown. She will be the first to admit the latter. I met Ms. Tsakos in 2000 when Kokoff was still living out of a suitcase; nothing has changed. Tsakos is a diverse talent who has successfully exploded onto the Miami theater scene with a sold out run of her latest production: Up Wake, presented and commissioned by the Miami Light Project and the new Carnival Center for the Performing Arts. A worldwide tour is now in the works. Dean Jorge Guerra of the New World School of the Arts has commented: “Better than Ionesco….,” and Octavio Roca of the Miami New Times says, “Tsakos is like a female Bill Irwin, or like Marcel Marceau on ecstasy.”
RP: Where is Kokoff the clown?
NT: Kokoff is in my closet, with Marceau, my cat. (Kokoff also secretly advises Zero... shhhhhhh... it’s our secret)
RP: Natasha, your performance world is infinitely at play. Tell us about that explosive chain of moments when you’re on the stage. Is it still a child like game for you to access your imagination or is it different now?
NT: A child. me hihihihihihihihihihihihihoiahahahahahahahahahaahhohohohhohoHohohohhhihihihihihhhhhhhhhhhohoihohhhhhhahahahahahahaahahahahaahahahahahahgigglegigglegigglegigglggiglgiglgiglgiglgiglgighihihihihihihihih.... ...yes, more than ever...
RP: What inspires you?
NT: Life. Dreams. Beauty. Greatness. And all that exists beyond our wildest dreams.
RP: How has traveling influenced your creative life?
NT: The physical travels? Or the mental travels? (I have many reward points for the last ones.)
RP: You studied editing with Mark Boswell. He was also a professor of mine at the Alliance Film & Video Co-op on Lincoln Road – Miami Beach. At the time of my meeting him in 1993 he was preparing to shoot his super 8mm extravaganza: The Subversion Agency. How and when did you get interested in editing and film?
NOVAKINO Presents: Mark Boswell's The Subversion Agency
NT: I think it was a natural progression at the time, from having a camera to wanting to edit…
RP: What was it like studying film with Boswell? Any anecdotes?
NT: My memory works in a strange emo-synthesis process, a sort of consumption-absorption- to-sensation metamorphosis (without the psychological weight). Mark Boswell: Hmmmm.... I remember: gray- hair- spiky- American- cool- far- creative - mission.
RP: What films were you watching at the time? Any influences there?
NT: My life was one... still is!
RP: You made a documentary after your film studies. Is this field a further pursuit of yours? What have been some of your experiences working outside the theater? Filmmaking on your horizon?
NT: We are currently making a documentary about the making of Up Wake, which consists of 4 years worth of footage, and will be submitting it to Sundance next year. Yes, I am interested in all realms of Human Inventions: Architecture, Science, Physics, Philosophy and the Study of Pink Elephants.
RP: You are currently preparing for a world tour of UPWAKE. Will this start mainly in the U.S? Tell us about the upcoming schedule and places you’ll visit?
NT: UP WAKE has been voted Best Performance of the Year by South Florida's Sunpost. After a successful sold out run at the Carnival Center (2nd largest Performing Arts Center in the Nation) UP WAKE will be touring Mexico in 2 weeks and has been invited to Asia's and India’s Largest Festival of Technology on January 08. UP WAKE will open the Sobay Festival of the Arts in Miami, in February 08. Currently negotiating Europe and my Moon Tour. Of course….
RP: What is the writing process like for you? Does it start with an abstract idea? Where do you write?
NT: When I write, I don’t write. The hand, finds the pen, the pen finds the hand, the fingers hold on, on holds the finger, the mind leaves, and all is suddenly better. When I am conscious of what I write, that’s when I know it is not worth writing. Right?
RP: What are some of the themes you have explored through playwriting and why?
NT: I love inventing language, re-de-un-structure grammar, tease our sacred orthography
and confuse myself immensely. I take great pleasure in sensical nonsenseness. Truth. Absurdity. Fool. Lunacy. These are words I may leave intact in the dictionary.
RP: Which are your favorite playwrights/writers?
NT: Edmond Rostand, Eric Emmanuel Schmidt, Christian Bobin, Antoine de Saint Exupery....
RP: What is storytelling to you?
NT: ...If you please: Draw me a Sheep.
RP: The Up Wake journey, what has it been like? Where did ZERO come from?
NT: Up Wake is still a Journey. Wonderful, Exhilarating and Magical. A great process, with amazing collaborators, deeply moving audience, and a fantastic roofless twilight school of ethics, imagination, spine, value and friendships.
ZERO comes from void and infinity. From the need to de-segragate and de-genderize ourselves, Zero is the pure form of a little, simple and vulnerable individual struggling to go from point A to B while an amalgam of frequencies interfere, elevate and distract him. Zero is the Little Prince of the 21st Century, a corporate clown, a simply delightful creature of hope and humanity. The perfect image of you and me.
RP: Production wise, behind the scenes, who are some of the key talented people on this great show?
NT: There are 19 people behind the Up Wake 3D curtain! Waow.... where do credits begin? I mean can I include my door who cried one morning, and the minuscule seahorse that rides a unicycle on the electric wire outside my window? Alright...
If you insist:
Octavio Campos (Co-Director, Choreographer)
Nathan Rausch / ZendeN Multimedia (Sound Designer)
The Lavoisier X-Perience (Original Tailor-Made Music)
Ray Aloy (3D Animator)
George Delacadena (3D Animator)
Melissa Camic (3D Animator)
Oscar Baracaldo (3D Animator)
Shattered Images Animation Studio (3D animation studio / Up Wake part II animation)
Travis Neff (Lighting Designer / Production Stage Manager)
Carolina Pagani (Production Coordinator, Installation Artist, Set Designer, Photographer)
Gerry Kelly (Haute Couture Costume Design)
Tammy Apóstol (Haute Couture Costume Design)
M. Tate Tenorio (Chair designer)
Aubrey Zappolo (Green Screen Project Director & Up Wake Documentarian)
Circ X/ Diana Lozano (Sponsor, Green Screen Costume Producer )
Jorge Valdes-Iga (Green Screen Director of Photography)
Capsule Media: Pascal Jaquelin (Animation Supervisor)
Capsule Media: Gigliola Gennaro (Animation Supervisor)
RP: How do you treat silence and where do you find it? Is it created?
NT:
Inside.
Outside.
Above.
Beyond...
in me.
and you.
Shhhhhh.......Lets’ listen to it...
RP: Is silence really golden?
NT: No. It’s an expression! Silence is silence.
[ NATASHA TSAKOS' MANIFESTO ]
I am alone, on a path leading toward a little light, walking with my suitcase and my theater. Together we create worlds of wonder, reverie and contemplation.
Theater is the listener of my passions, my dreams and my absurdities.
Sometimes the Musician of Life takes the simple instrument that I am and composes… At that moment, time is lost and I am found. At that moment, I know that my life is not a notion but a feeling that I experience.
Theater is intimate, personal yet universal. It is a mean of communication and we must use it to change and inspire Society.
No, theater is not dying. Theater is too comfortable, too rich and too corrupted, that is the truth.
As a believer of life, hope and humanity, I will keep questioning. I will keep making you dream. I will keep provoking you, the audience, the reader, so You can also reanimate values lost amongst Mediocrity and save what was one the ultimate of refinement.
Should the street be my only stage, so will I make it the best stage, and you, my best listeners.
Theater is not show business nor simple entertainment. Theater is poor, ugly, hard, profound and beautiful… I am not looking for fame or money, these elements are superficial, selfish and limited.
So I shall continue walking on that path alone, toward the light that justifies the sweat, the tears, the disappointments and the moments of joy, finding great minds and souls and sharing a world of purity.
Natasha Tsakos
Watch Natasha's amazing performance show, UPWAKE on YouTube.
