Same Difference is a mixed media and interactive piece in development at Theatre Conspiracy lead by Associate Artist David Mesiha. The project is a multi-faceted undertaking with a large number of components including Audio / Visual Interactive installation, immersive performance piece, a newly created chamber piece of music as well as a podcast series.

 

Same Difference examines how identity is created through perceptions of Sameness and Difference, how we develop a sense of belonging. It delves deep into themes of self alienation, isolation, togetherness and otherness. The team will be using interactive and immersive audio visual design to place the audiences within the world of the piece. The immersive design will constantly challenge audience notions of self, self-awareness, self-alienation and perception of what’s real and what’s not. The most basic assumptions about how we view ourselves and others are to be completely undermined and challenged.

 

The piece examines all these themes through the viewpoint of the immigrant and refugee experience. The content of the piece is being derived from a large number of interviews performed by project lead, David Mesiha, with a wide range of immigrants and refugees.  David Mesiha has completed several interviews so far ranging from experiences in Northern Ireland in the '70s to Serbian and Bosnian stories during the Balkan War in the '90s, and more recent ones from Afghani, Columbian and Venezuelan immigrants and refugees. We are continuing to pursue opportunities for more interviews with a diverse population of immigrants and refugees as well as opportunities to engage their larger communities.

 

The interviews serve as inspiration source materials, at times verbatim text and the audio recordings will be used in the show as well as eventually released in their entirety as their own podcast.

 

The Design language and methodology of the piece are a continuation on the work created by David Mesiha and Parjad Sharifi in Leaky Heaven’s 2011 Project (X).  It is an integral part of the installation as well as the immersive performance.  Visual design and multichannel audio form the language through which audiences’ perceptions of the self are to be challenged. Audiences, at all times, will be experiencing different materials and view points from each other. The design serves as the main viewpoint through which narratives are deconstructed and reshaped into sensoriums where experience is the story.