Glass Eye Shadow Pictures is a shadow-theater company, founded by Alisa Javits and AdamLipsky. The company has been touring and growing rapidly since its beginning in 2013. Their productions run the gamut from quick satirical vignettes to slow psycho-dramatic mood poems. Some of their storytelling techniques include “live-action” silhouettes and intricate paper-cuts, along with many shades and degrees of light. Glass Eye Shadow Pictures currently works out of Moxy Studios in Oakland, CA.
Alisa Javits is a visual artist, writer and fabricator. She is responsible for performing the shadow images in the productions. She steers the lights, rotates the props, and makes the visual scenes happen. Alisa is the primary designer and builder of the sculptural shadow art, which is used as props in the productions. Additionally, she has designed and built the structural materials used, such as suspension devices for the the props and remote control light boxes.
Adam Lipsky is a musician/composer, writer, actor and sound designer. He is responsible for the music and sound elements of the productions. He scores the performances live from a keyboard, using a combination of triggered samples, stereo field manipulation and original music. The original music is either prerecorded or performed live, depending on the needs of each scene. Adam watches and anticipates the shadow action, much like scoring a silent film.
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While Javits and Lipsky are the founders and the consistent core of the company, some of the Glass Eye Shadow Pictures productions have been the result of close partnerships with collaborating artists. These collaborations stretch into all corners of the process, including music, visuals, acting, writing, fabrication and publicity. Past collaborators include May V. Oskan, Nina Violet, Justin Taylor, Milo Silva, Max Judelson, Marlie Couto, and Courtney Mazeika.
The newest production ESSEX, is written and performed by Alisa Javits and Adam Lipsky.
The artistic goals of Glass Eye are to create strong, engaging experiences that are immersive, with our live 'cinematic' shadow theatre methods. The term 'cinematic' refers to our attempts in putting the audience in the camera, so to speak, as opposed to the common paradigm that an audience views theatre as it happens on a “stage”. While many theatre companies and performers have explored the parameters of what a “stage” can be, that is not the exploration that we are engaged with. Our exploration has to do with how near the audience can get to being inside the presented viewpoint. We aim to create opportunities for people to connect and engage with each other through experiencing these shared immersive and personal performances together. The viewpoint we are trying to achieve for our audiences is much like that of an engaging film or a dream. That is, a view that can be both hyperrealistic and surreal, loud and soft, blurry and clear, moral and immoral, in real-time and not, and almost always fully immersed, except for the brief moments of self-awareness.
