Gopala Davies

Gopala Davies (born 14 May 1988) is an actor and director. He is best known for his intermedial theatre production Barbe Bleue: A story about madness, which won a Standard Bank Ovation Award at The National Arts Festival in 2015, and the Best Student Director Award in 2014. Quotes I was able to dismember the body and choose to portray only a floating head, or I could multiply the body by presenting the live body adjacent to its recording. In this investigation, I also became aware of the temporal changes that were made possible through the incorporation of video. Here I could speed up an ‘uneventful’ scene or slow down the climax, or I could loop a part of the footage to replay an important action that had just occurred.” In both productions, actors speaking directly to their (own) recorded bodies or the recorded bodies of others, whilst others were also performing live, activated a spatiotemporal entanglement of spaces, time(s), bodies, actors, film/live performance and imagery that destabilised established notions of theatrical absence and presence, whilst progressing the narrative content. Through the depiction of recorded material shot in various exterior locations (with their own histories and meanings) that were brought into the theatre space; recorded performances of the actors projected on the cyclorama simultaneous to, or as a reflection on their live performances on stage; and the interspersion of vivid visual imagery complementing or contrasting the ideas performed/recorded, [the performance] expressed the complex intersections between past and present, exterior and interior, and virtual and visceral – an intersection where live actor and recorded body meet.” External links category: living people Category:Actors from South Africa Category:1988 births