Artist-in-residence July 1-14, 2020

Blue Waves (Work-in-Progress)
Moira Lael MacDonald

This summer, Automata is hosting a series of individual artist’s residencies—a program we launched to serve creative process and new work development in the field of puppetry and object performance, while we are unable to gather for events. Each Resident Artist has 24-hour access to the full space, allowing for uninterrupted work-time and focus.

Moira MacDonald was the second artist-in-residence in the series.  During her July residency, MacDonald further developed her original puppet theater work Blue Waves, which uses toy theater and shadows to explores the complex friendship between Lily Golden and Svetlana Alliluyeva in mid-sixties Moscow.  Golden was a scholar of African-American and Jewish descent.  Alliluyeva was a native Russian writer — and the daughter of Joseph Stalin.

MacDonald created the visual and audio aspects of 4 scenes, including 3 toy theater scenes and one shadow scenes, and designed and built the main Blue Waves set, inspired by the Brutalist architecture prevalent in the 1960's Soviet Union. MacDonald designed a window installation with two wood & neoprene puppets of Lily Golden & Svetlana Alliluyeva that were compelling exhibited against background video of scrolling text (in Russian) from the respective books of each writer.

Blue Waves  is conceived, designed, and directed by Moira MacDonald, and the scenes are performed by Moira MacDonald and Jesse Kingsley, with Photography and Video by Gina Marie Napolitan.

Watch documentation of Blue Waves work-in-progress:

Documentation of Moira MacDonald's Blue Waves, a work-in-progress.
Video by Gina Marie Napolitan.

From Moira MacDonald:

"This residency helped me understand how to progress with Blue Waves. Seeing the images materialize, that have been in my head, has been a catalyst for moving forward with the piece. During the residency, I came to realize that the visuals of the piece will not “illustrate” the spoken words, but will move parallel to them. My next steps will be to complete the text/audio elements of Blue Waves, and begin to organize the images with the sound.

Automata has always felt like an artistic home to me. Whether developing my own piece or working in collaboration with others, just being in the space activates my creativity and my excitement about puppetry."

July 1–15, 2020

MOIRA LAEL MACDONALD
Moira Lael MacDonald is a multidisciplinary theater artist. Her most recent work, Selkie, was performed at Automata in February 2020, and was previously featured at the Skirball Puppetry Festival. Other work includes Blue Waves, Margery and Me, Anatomy Lesson, Amaranth, The Life of the Bee, and Letter from the Bees. Her short hand-processed film, The Visible Woman, has been screened at the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts and Concord Space. Moira holds an MFA in Puppetry and Integrated Media from CalArts, and a BFA in Acting from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She teaches at Pasadena City College, Moorpark College, and the Ventura Youth Correctional Facility.

Website :: www.moiralael.com
Instagram :: @moiralael

The 2020 Automata Residency Project is made possible with generous support from The Jim Henson Foundation and the LA Arts Covid-19 Relief Fund, funded by the J.Paul Getty Trust in partnership with the California Community Foundation.

Our Residency Projects are also funded, in part, through the ongoing support of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and the LA County Arts Commission.

All residency activities are conducted safely following CDC and California guidelines.