Jmes Cameron's Avatar in Real-D

Why is it every time I go to a dance oriented theatre event it's always too close for comfort and kind of frightening? Avatar is an exploration of internet personality and video logs. The Theatre Centre on Queen West is small. We walk in on floor where the lights are and descend into an open pit where the stage and seats are. There's a laptop and stool combination out front with a projection screen in the back.

Our sole actress appears first as a shadow on the computer projection, and then walks out in front of it. She alternates between lurching around in front of the projection screen and hunching in front of her Mac laptop and camera setup. (For some reason she's got tape a little tape over the apple logo) With her hair draped over her face, her strange movements, and her appearances on the screen, (With copies of herself!) she brings to mind the ghost from The Ring. She'll get worse though. Much of this play is dancing set to strange audio and alongside the images of Youtube videos on the screen. Eventually the actress sets up a bluescreen off to the side, and then begin applying freakish makeup. Drawing eyes on her eyelids and a toothy grin on her mouth. Putting on a wig and suddenly I'm not happy about being in the front row.

(This was mere feet from me)

After playing around with the bluescreen and some more dancing around, the actress starts talking again. (Previously, she talked while making her intro video-log) She talks like some veteran v-logger; very banal. (Thank you subscribers, I got a new computer, is this recording? etc) Then she decides to reward her viewers by answering questions. So we've reached the common, interact with the audience portion of the play. After answering a few questions with vague and strange responses, the character begins removing the disguise, becoming more shy and nervous as she does so, (A welcome change from the Barbie Marshall Applewhite actually) leading to the end of the latest log and the play.

Pretty good. It wasn't entertaining all the way through, but it had some strong moments. Maybe it could have been shorter or had some additional narrative bridge in the second half.