Job Specifics:

Details:

The Picture of Dorian Gray

By Oscar Wilde


"Now and then a complex personality took the place and assumed the office of art; was indeed, in its way, a real work of art, life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture, or painting."

Rehearsals begin: w/c 30th June
Previews begin: w/c/ 21st July
End of the run: 2nd November (TBC)
Salary: National Minimum Wage

The Alchemic Order Consider The Picture of Dorian Gray one of the most important works of Western Literature. The values of The Alchemic Order's inaugural production are to reflect this view.

Our guests shall journey through time, space and imagination into the world of Dorian Gray. From Aristocratic Victoriana to the decadent underworld of a Gothic nightmare, the experience is one of sensual, intellectual and philosophical transfiguration to the metaphysical propositions of the novel.
Our guests shall be received into our house, a Georgian Townhouse built in 1773, which will once again become a 19c Salon. A recreation of the temporal circumstances enfolds and evolves, arousing the atavistic imagination. As guests move through the action, time mutates, spaces transform, character and object manifest strange auras.

Transcending the elements of promenade, site-specification, pop up; this is real action, in real time, in the real settings of the story; a garden, an Artists' studio, a study, a dinner party, an attic, an opium den, a salon. The protagonist's changing circumstances will be shared by the guests as naturalism transmutates into eerie stylisations, pertinent to Dorian's odyssey.

Our production is not conventional adaptation, neither is it permissive experimentalism; This is an evocation of aesthetic experience; a heightening and sharpening of the senses. It is testimonial, both Wilde's and of the Artists involved in creating this production.

Assembled is a remarkable company of Artists, from interconnecting professions; Architecture, Stage Design, Sound Design, Composition, Contemporary Dance and Costume Design, Painting and Magic. We are utilizing some of the most cutting-edge technologies in the world; some for the first time ever.

Our aim is artistic and philosophical. We are demonstrating an origin and a future of theatrical art. Inviting guests into our home, we propose a new ritual, resonating with paradox; art creating life, personal uniting public, exclusivity and inclusivity as one, regardless of political, economic, industrial forces at work. We aim to manifest and build upon the highest artistic ideals, offering a model of artistic excellence without the prescribed notions of detachment, engineering, commercialism that masquerade as professionalism.

This production is to take on a complex persona all of its own, as Wilde did, as Dorian and his portrait do, as we intend to; genesis, symbioses, metamorphosis.



Character description:

Dorian Gray

Playing age 16 - 21

Dorian is a sensitive and curious young man. Orphaned as a baby, he was a lonely child, raised by distant, antiquated relatives, within a conservative aristocracy. Upon leaving Oxford, Dorian becomes the sole muse of celebrated Painter Basil Hallward, whom introduces him to libertarian Lord Henry Wotton.

Under Wotton's spell, Dorian embarks on a journey of self-discovery and exploration, experimenting with everything and anything, developing an insatiable taste for experience, adventure and pleasure. Charismatic, otherworldly, almost magical, a cult surrounds him that disrupts the establishment of elders but excites the youth of Victorian London.

Dorian is imaginative and delights in new ideas, sensations and particularly, aesthetics. Part Romantic rebel, part martyred saint, he quickly becomes the icon of his times.

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