By Mariah Davis

The world premiere of Syntax of Undoing by Raymond Pinto, Matthew Jamal, and Team Rolfes was presented at the MAXMachina weekend event at MITU580, located in Brooklyn, New York. This one-night-only performance took place on November 1st, with the host acknowledging the audience’s efforts to make it to this special night following Halloween. Director and performer Raymond Pinto takes the stage in collaboration with musician Matthew Jamal and visual directors Team Rolfes in a reimagining of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

What I witnessed that Saturday night was an intensely passionate multimedia performance that merged the physical and virtual realms, bending reality in real time. Raymond Pinto opens the set by turning on a projector screen located at the back of the stage and takes a seat on the side as he begins to read a monologue. He states in his speech that he seeks a “threshold without edges” and invites himself into a collaboration with the virtual world and the reality he is encompassed by. It is a connection to Mother Nature that he desires and emphasizes becoming one with a storm to seek higher enlightenment. During Pinto’s monologue, Matthew Jamal and Team Rolfes make their peculiar entrance onto the stage. Jamal begins an overly exaggerated stretching session, which I later find out was fully improvised five minutes before the performance, and takes his place at the setup electric cello and soundboard opposite where Pinto is positioned. Team Rolfes is in the back of the stage, suiting up in gray jumpsuits and taking their position at a table decorated with a plethora of equipment in front of the projector screen.

Pinto transitions into a quiet, interpretive dance segment and lets the calming music and visuals on the screen guide his movements. They are fluid, yet rigid at the same time, and he twists and turns in such swift movements that it is hard to keep up with him. He increasingly becomes more agitated as the music tempo picks up, and I can feel his emotions through the dance. Simultaneously, Jamal is playing the cello using quick strokes, accompanied by Team Rolfes controlling the camera inside a virtual reality world’s landscape. I did not know who to focus my attention on and found myself watching each person for a fixed amount of time in order to understand everyone’s respective role. The scene is chaotic, yet cohesive, and if given no context on the performance itself, I believe one would not know that this intriguing performance is referencing Shakespeare.

Pinto exits the stage for some time as we watch Team Rolfes explore the virtual reality world they created. Using handheld controllers, motion capture lenses, and wired hand gloves, we are taken through a beautifully constructed virtual landscape. The sounds of thunder and rain that play throughout the theater, along with Jamal’s soft humming and ringing of his cello, make it feel like we are in an actual storm. This segment gave me chills, and I loved how the sound design played such an important role in immersing the audience into this story. The device used by Team Rolfes is typically seen with video game consoles, and seeing it used in multimedia performance art was a delight and showcased the versatility of technology within art.

Pinto eventually enters the stage again, puts on the wired gloves, and begins his final segment, where we witness him physically and figuratively become one with the storm. His hands now control the virtual reality world like a puppeteer, and his body is a moving canvas for us to interpret and feel the intense storm through him as animations are displayed on the screen. I particularly loved how the performance opened with a monologue, and everything witnessed after is expressed non-verbally. It felt like the actual opening of a play, and to transition into a hybrid piece with unique digital visuals paired with an abstract dance number allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of subjective art. This beautiful interpretation felt very raw with emotion, and also, the skill set needed for handling the various tech equipment was acknowledged.

Following the end of Syntax of Undoing, a salon conversation with all the performers was conducted and moderated by Peter Mills Weiss, who had also directed and performed in Have A Great Night!, the second showing at the MAXMachina event earlier that day. This Q&A provided background on each of the cast members and highlighted Raymond Pinto’s inspiration behind his performance tonight. An interesting note he mentioned was that he inquired about an ASL interpreter when choreographing the dance segments. Pinto stated he wanted to emphasise the “vocabulary of the body” and approached this through learning non-verbal communication and unlocking a deeper understanding of body language. He states that his goal was for the audience to see an experience on stage rather than a person, and in collaboration with Matthew Jamal and Team Rolfes, he was able to bring this unique interpretation of Shakespeare to life.

The technology aspect of the performance was semi-improvised by Team Rolfes as they explained how they created the virtual world and simply controlled the camera movements and branches of the animated trees with no planned motions in mind. They wanted to visually represent the brewing of a storm and felt as though navigating through the world unscripted was the best creative outcome. It is interesting how the full performance felt so choreographed and well-intentioned, just to be told by the cast that the majority of the actions were entirely done on a whim, and really showcased how art can be made with no blueprint behind it. Pinto makes a great point that technology is not seamless, and approaching it unprepared allows room for errors and creates new possibilities to be discovered. An overarching theme from this performance was recognizing different forms of expression, along with the importance of unique experiences. The team behind Syntax of Undoing executed and presented an advanced form of visual storytelling through multimedia that transcended art and technology.