Combining art and science: Documentary being made about The Weather Project

Posted 8/21/12

HIGHLAND LAKE, NY — If you missed the NACL Theatre performance of “The Weather Project” last summer, don’t fret; a production company from New York City is now in the process of creating a …

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Combining art and science: Documentary being made about The Weather Project

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HIGHLAND LAKE, NY — If you missed the NACL Theatre performance of “The Weather Project” last summer, don’t fret; a production company from New York City is now in the process of creating a documentary film about the show. Frank Kuzler, the executive director of DecadesOut, said, “The documentary goes perfectly with the mission of our company DecadesOut. The mission is to foster the dialog between science and the arts as they relate to current issues. ‘The Weather Project’ fits perfectly into that.”

The film came about after NACL artistic director Tannis Kowalchuk asked Kuzler to film rehearsals, events and the final performance of the play during the past year. Kuzler, along with local filmmakers Isaac Green Diebboll and Conor Stratton, gathered a lot of footage the week leading up to and including the performance. Afterwards, Kuzler was inspired by the project and decided to turn it into his own independently produced documentary. Now he will be filming interviews with Kowalchuk and “The Weather Project” cast members as well as gathering more footage. Kuzler said the film will be less than 50 minutes long.

“It’s not our project anymore, which is pretty cool,” Kowalchuk said. “Now, there’s a whole independent film being made and we’re the subjects, but I’m not directing or leading it, I’m not telling the story. Frank is telling the story about what we’re doing.”

On a recent snowy weekend, Kuzler and his crew came to the theatre in Highland Lake. Kowalchuk said they worked under “extreme conditions” as they braved the snow and then conducted the shoot in the freezing NACL Theatre, which has been shut down for the season. People’s breath could be seen as they did their interviews. “They turned the space into a gorgeous theatre,” Kowalchuk said, “with the sets and our costumes, and it looked like a really cool rehearsal space. They did an amazing job of lighting it…. It looked beautiful in the camera.” During the interviews, Kuzler asked cast members questions about their experience with the project, their views on climate change and the environment, and how living in this area affects both.

The next day they trekked to Milanville, PA to the home of John Roth and Laura Moran to shoot more interviews and visually interesting film. Some of the cast members donned their costumes and, holding umbrellas (a central prop in the show), paraded up a snow-covered hill and into the woods singing songs from the show. Once in the forest, they were met by the stilt walkers (characters depicted as a storm in the show) among the trees.

Kuzler and his crew will be back in the spring to do more shooting, and hope to have a finished product by the end of the year. They will enter the documentary into the 2016 film festival season. Kowalchuk said they hope to get shots of the environment here in all of the seasons.

The mission of DecadesOut is to “raise public awareness of the cultural impact between science and humanity and transform the discourse between them through an artistic platform.” “The Weather Project” deals with these themes as well, as it integrates science and art; it takes a serious topic—the negative impacts of climate change to our world—and presents it in a creative way.

“This film explores the themes of art inspiring civic action, while it helps translate an important message,” Kuzler said. He went on to say, “The film will start out by exploring what the current state of climate change is, what the science is, without being in any way a dry dissertation on data. In an entertaining way, it will explore what the issues are and give a strong foundation for the fact that it is an important issue, one that is real, and whatever side of the issue you fall on, it is something that needs to be addressed.”

Kuzler said the film will also explore the community and the people in it, because “The Weather Project” comprises community members who may not have had any performance experience. He said the people who joined the project “begin to learn about the issues, get more informed and personalize the issues, and that personalization leads them to action.” Sullivan County will also be a central focus of the film. “One of the most important themes that we want to explore is how on a local level you can have global impact,” Kuzler said. “It will be looking at Sullivan County as this microcosm of this greater global issue.”

[For more information on DecadesOut, visit www.decadesout.org; for more information about The Weather Project and NACL Theatre, visit www.nacl.org.]

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