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Excerpts from an INTERVIEW with Cyber-Director, Tito Alberto
(or, "Karla Ptacek Ponders Blindness, Directing and Casting in Cyberformance")


INTERVIEWER: You have said that your blindness has been an advantage to you in the Palace. Could you elaborate on that?

TITO ALBERTO: Its easier for me to feel that I am a young and very beaaaautiful presence.

INT: Ha Ha.Ha.

TA: That is no joke.

INT: Ah. But as to directing.....

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TA: In terms of directing, my lack of sight enables me to imagine my performers more deeply. This imagination is an electric thing, it connects to them, and they rise to this challenge. But the imagination can also be a fearful burden.

INT: How so?

TA: I have bad dreams sometimes. This is hard to speak of. But there is in these images, appearing before me....at times... a third dimension.

INT. THREE dimensions!!

TA.  Indeed, it is shocking. There is depth, and substance, and here you must just trust me, sometimes even MASS.

rehearsal(silence)

INT: That is insane, surely?

TA:  Please, don't call me Shirley. Insanity maybe, but it reaffirms my two dimensionality. I am lucky to be grounded in this world. A beautiful little roundhead with few, very few costume accessories.

INT: Your blue hair....

TA: My hair is always a focal point, my hair is a thing of lovelienss too, and yet it is just an accessory.

INT: You were saying.....

TA: So I am of the Palace properties, I am not a fantastical import. Not something exterior. Here is my strength. Everything else is immaterial.

(Pictured at right: the great cyber-director, Tito Alberto (AKA Karla Ptacek) at work on a scene from "No IT" with Valet (Helen Varley Jamieson) and Costume (Vicki Smith).)

... and onto the controversial topic of casting ...


INTERVIEWER:   And of course that show was banned in 5 countries

TITO ALBERTO:    Whose counting?

INT:    And they blamed Victoria Delrapzo

TA:    She was just acting out the exaggerations of the playwright you understand. Maybe it wasn't even her. Maybe we lost something in the 2 dimensions.

INT:   But you cast her in the role.

TA:    I never cast. This is not Equity. We are not (expletive deleted) livestage actors. We do not have to do that (expletive deleted). We are free in cyberspace to act or not to act.

INT:   You mean you don't do a casting call.

TA:   Never. People play what they want. Sometimes I have two people or three, scattered around the world, all playing the same role. Sometimes actors go to lunch or to the toilet or leave home never to return and then we just have the empty shell on the screen. This adds new textures to the work. Ophelia she gone for a crap. You know what I mean?

INT:    And skill, don't you look for a particular skill?

TA    (Expletive deleted). What you talking about! The skill can be the speed of the fingers. it can be technical knowhow. It can be quick mind and funny talk. Mostly it just people who know how to play. People who show up to play. No, casting is not important.

 

 

 

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