KEY POINTS:
When the lead actor's head wouldn't fit through the door of Wellington's Bats Theatre, designer John Verryt slit his throat.
That is not as murderous as it sounds - the lead actor in Head is just that, a 4m 3D human head carved out of polystyrene and coated
with acrylic resin.
Carved by sculptor Kate Lang under Verryt's watchful eye, Head began life as a series of drawings, then as a miniature clay model before growing to such proportions.
Often in pieces, Head has been transported from Auckland to Wellington and back again, and bears the scars of those journeys, but Verryt believes he can - with sanding, Polyfilla and paint - patch him up in time for AK07.
"We originally wanted a fibreglass head which would have been lighter and easier to move around, but that would have cost around $25,000 so it was out of the question," he says.
Head was created in 2005 for Bats Theatre's STAB commission, a programme which allows theatre practitioners to make experimental and revolutionary work.
A strange and fantastical tale described by its creators as a "philosophical piece that doesn't philosophise", it won the 2005 Chapman Tripp Theatre award for most original production.
The 50-minute show starts with Head announcing that he cannot react spontaneously to anything that happens on stage. The joke is that he appears to do just that throughout the performance as he contemplates his life.
It's humorous, in the a black and wry sense of the word, say its creators, and attempts to consider the interplay between humanity and technology and the disconnectedness of the digital lives we lead. That doesn't mean, they stress, that Head is a lecture or a didactic rant about the nature of high-tech societies.
"It is what it is," says co-creator Chris Jannides, "and the audience can take from it what they will."
Ben Crowder, director of the Theatre Stampede Company, recruited Carl Bland, Peta Rutter and Jannides to work on the project which plays with technology, multimedia and live performance.
While Head's decapitation at Verryt's hands was painless, actor Carl Bland has had to suffer possibly greater indignities in the name of art.
As the face projected on to the head, Bland must stand still for the duration of filming which takes place in a garage. Bland invented a brace, bolted to the wall, in which he stands with his head locked into place to prevent movement. The film of his face is then magnified and projected on to the sculpture.
"Working on experimental theatre means there is hardly any money and it's always time-consuming," says a straight-faced Verryt, "but it's always good fun. I prefer to work in the absurd."
* Tomorrow until Monday at Galatos.
