Steve Dixon (actor)

The Chameleons group was a multimedia performance research Company directed by Steve Dixon. The company was founded by Steve Dixon and Paul Murphy, and performer Wendy Reed in 1994. It was established from within the Media and Performance Research Unit (Now the Music, Media, and Performing Arts Research Centre) at the University of Salford. The group consisted of Wendy Reed, Fiona Watson, Paul Murphy, Steve Dixon and Sara Bailes.^[9][10]

The aim of The Chameleons Group was to create multimedia performances. The company devised and toured with live 'film-theatre' productions, where live actors work in front of large video screens, interacting with film characters and their own 'digital doubles', and appear to move from the stage to the screen space. The company has also toured with many original theatre performances that experimented with the integration of video and live performance. In 2000, the group presented their most ambitious interactive cyber-theatre event ever staged, the performance allowed online audiences to direct the actors and write dialogue for the performances in real time.^[2][4]

The Chameleons group produced four performances, these were:

• Chameleons: The Dark Perversity of Chameleons
• Chameleons 2: Theatre in a movie screen
• Chameleons 3: Net Congestion
• Chameleons 4: The Doors of Serenity

As well as four performances Steve Dixon went on to create a two award-winning CD-ROMs which documented and analysed the creation and rehearsal process of the performances of ‘The Dark Perversity of Chameleons’ and ‘Theatre in a Movie Screen’. More recently Chameleons Group performers have collaborated with artists Paul Sermon, Andrea Zapp and Mathais Fuchs, on the telematic performance Unheimlich. Unheimlich was a telematic performance installation (funded by the Art Council) that was exhibited at conferences including SIGGRAPH which enabled the audience in the US to participate in an improvisation with live performers in the UK. The performance used Freud's notion of the uncanny, Unheimlich (at once familiar, homelike, but also strange, alien and uncomfortable) as its starting point.^[3][11]

The Dark Perversity of Chameleons was the first performance created by The Chameleon Group and directed by Steve Dixon. The idea was conceived and developed by the media and performance research unit at the University of Salford. In the summer of 1994 it was performed at the University of Salford and toured various venues. It was a technically ambitious project that involved the devising of a theatrical text and the shooting and editing of over six hours of original video material. The end video material was screened on five video monitors positioned in different places on the set. The devising process incorporated a composer (Steven Durrant) who wrote and recorded original music for the production.^[9]

The aim of the project was to attempt to explore the usefulness of Antonin Artaud's theories of performance in specific relation to postmodern theatrical and televisual forms. The production originally attempted to interweave and juxtapose Antonin Artaud's theories of performance with Eastern concepts of ritual and performance codification within and against modern popularist performative models. However, three weeks into the devising process it was evident amongst the performers that it was very difficult to practically realise Antonin Artaud's theories of the actor. So after three weeks of experimenting with Artaudian acting styles, Antonin Artaud's theories were largely abandoned. However, some aspects of Artaud's theories remained such as the use of stylised physical gestures, which were employed as a physical language system.^[9]

The performance was centred on ‘Five people sitting alone in different bedrooms watching television sets. The televisions transmit different sequences, depicting each character’s thoughts and memories, mixed with their inner visions – dreams, secrets and hallucinations...’^[9]

The performance contained five characters, these characters were: Rachel (Sara Bailes), Derek (Steve Dixon), Mike (Paul Murphy), Veronica (Wendy Reed) and Sophia (Fiona Watson). Each of the characters applied the physical language system to themselves. This meant that each character had four physical gestures which were repeated throughout the piece. As the piece progressed the characters also took on each other's gestures.^[9]

The second research project Steve Dixon and the Chameleons Group created in 1999 was entitled Chameleons 2 – Theatre In A Movie Screen and contained four core performers from the Group, Paul Murphy, Wendy Reed, Julia Eaton and Steve Dixon.^[12]

The narrative portrayed four characters in an imagined place and time somewhere between reality and a dream, who were striving to find a sense of self and their role within the external world. The primary research objective of the Chameleons Group was to bring a closer integration of the video and of live action.^[12]

Chameleons 2 evolved over an eight-week devising process in which practical approaches and methodologies such as hot seating were undertaken in the development of the characters and the devising of the show. Three months previously to this process each of the four performers documented their dreams which enabled the company to have an initial springboard for the creation of ideas.^[12]

The performance space contained a projection screen enclosing hidden doors and windows which live action could take place – the notion of a theatre within a movie screen. The openings in the screen had numerous purposes such as a door that was used an entrance however a window represented a cliff top.^[12]

In 2000 Steve Dixon co-directed and performed two individual cybertheatre performances alongside his performance research company, The Chameleons Group. The performances were entitled ‘Chameleons 3 – Net Congestion’, which contained the core performers of the Chameleons Group, Paul Murphy, Wendy Reed and Steve Dixon himself. Over ten days the performers collaborated with eight guest artists to create edited film footage to be played on screens behind the live performers.^[13]

The performances took place on three separate stages situated in a black-box studio theatre. The live actors performed on the stages in front of projection screens which played the pre-recorded edited footage; however, there were no live audiences present.^[13]

Instead the performances were filmed with a three-camera Outside Broadcast unit that relayed the performance over the internet. Audiences online were given the opportunity to log into the live event and contribute to become the performance. The online audiences were invited to type in images, characters and dialogue, providing material for the performers to improvise with. Throughout the piece this opened a gateway for the performers to not only show pre-rehearsed material but also improvise entirely using the online interactive audience as a stimulus.^[13]

The topic of live and mediatised performance was dominant in this research project undertaken by the Chameleons Group as live Cybertheatre questions this issue. The Chameleons Group aimed to explore the theories of liveness, forming distinctions between the live and mediatised and questioning them through performance.^[13]

Chameleons 3 – Net Congestion produced a unique interactive cybertheatre performance in which the nature of the relationship held between the performers and audience transformed as the spectators became participants in the online interactive performance.^[13]

In 2002 The Chameleons Group created Chameleons 4 – The Doors of Serenity, directed by Steve Dixon. Dixon also devised and performed the performance alongside Chameleons Group members Anna Fenemore, Wendy Reed and Barry Woods.^[14]

Four characters, a devil male escort, a genital-less femme fatale, a paranoid cyborg and a vampire bimbo played dangerous games through doors. Similarly to Chameleons 2, the performance incorporates multiple imaging and split screen digital video techniques with live theatre performed in hidden doors and windows within the screen itself. The Chameleons Group used this digital performance to explore the relationship between the esoteric and the populist; the disturbing and the comedic and the virtual and the 'real'. The multimedia theatre used aided the fusion of vivid dream narratives, surrealist comedy and the Artaudian techniques of the theatre of cruelty.^[15]

• Prof. Steve Dixon at Brunel University
• Prof. Steve Dixon at LASALLE College of the Arts
• Steve Dixon at IMDb