ABOUT THE SHOW:

Is aggression vicious, virtuous, or both? We all have aggression in us, but what choices do we make to use our aggression for good or evil?

Intro: Instantly we are confronted with a face-off between two sides of aggression. Members are split into two clans, one representing honorable or virtuous aggression, and the other, destructive or vicious aggression. Using Marco Beltrami’s sound track from Wolverine, Spirit WP brings to life the aggression within Every Man. The lava floor, piles of trash, and a collapsed highway set the scene as members of the battery and front ensemble engage in hand to hand combat. During the fight, the two sides are overcome with the fire of aggression, and in the chaos, a member is killed in an act of rage.

Book 1: The tables are turned, and the show explodes into a violent intent to rip apart and destroy. Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays’ piece, Heat of the Day pounds at 212 as members whip around all areas of the floor and embody the disunity, agitation, and rage that’s pent up in destructive aggression.

Book 2: Is aggression only destructive? Doesn’t honorable aggression require equally strong force to combat evil? There is a beauty to aggression that’s used for good. Determination, zeal, and defense of the innocent, are all shades of honorable aggression. Lyle Mays’ piano solo in Heat of the Day expresses a bold lyric line, discipline, and horizontal longevity that equally matches the strength of destruction.

Book 3: Using Bela Bartok’s Mikrokosmos (vol 6 no. 146), the third and final movement, expresses pure aggression. Void of the complexities of human nature, it is impartial in its intent. It is neither good nor evil: neither destructive nor honorable. Spirit WP demonstrates a variety of techniques and musical features to encompass the simplicity of aggression.

The return of Wolverine, brings us to conclusion as we are reminded….of the internal struggle between two sides. Acts of Aggression are a part of humanity, and we must wrestle through the motivations and outcomes as the future choice is still left to be determined – Which will you choose? Spirit WP invites you to join in this journey of: Aggression!

Behind the Scenes:

Costumes:

The costumes are a large part of what communicates the theme and the story of our show.

With this year’s theme being about aggression, we felt very strongly that the costume should depict the positive and negative side of aggression: destructive aggression and honorable aggression.

As you can see, the costume is divided in half to clearly depict the two sides, and to also suggest that each of us have both sides in us. It’s up to us to decide which aggression we give into.

In the design process we discussed: What exactly is honorable aggression, or what is it that makes it virtuous? What makes destructive aggression, destructive and vicious? From there, we focused on what colors, materials, shapes, and fabrics represented these different facets of aggression.

We chose to use black, red, and grey for the destructive colors, angles for the shapes, and many different textures and fabrics (feathers, cross hatching, mesh, metallic) chaotically pieced together to depict the frayed, severed, and evil side to aggression.

We chose gold, blue, and silver for the honorable colors, squares, clean lines and shapes for the honorable side in hopes of clearly showing the disciplined, beautiful, heroic, balanced, and unified side to aggression.

If you look carefully, you’ll notice that the costume isn’t split exactly down the middle. There’s part of the black square that impedes on the gold side, and part of the black collar triangle that goes beyond center as well. This is to represent the fact that aggression isn’t black and white, and what could start out as an honorable intent, could turn destructive if we don’t chose to fight for good.

Set & Floor:

The set is a visual expression of aggression. the boiling lava floor represents pure or raw aggression, which is neither good nor bad, it just is. The entire set is placed in a post-apocalypse time period in the not-to-distant-future. The theme of aggression develops by breaking into at least 2 main forms which were defined as “honorable” and “destructive”. the honorable aggression is shown with rectangular shapes with a color scheme of metallic silver, gold and royal blue. the destructive side of aggression is shown as fragmented triangular shapes using a color scheme of orange, red, and black. On the far right you see a triangular air plane wing with triangle graffiti. As you view the set from the audience, the set piece on the far left is a broken highway over pass and is the prime example of honorable aggression with is blocks of concrete and cubes of recycled metallic trash.