Club Luz
"It's heavy content made to fit a lightweight form.
It's rock + roll. It's foreign and a bit Berlin." (Eddie Ladd)
Club Luz is the event, a short club night of electro
songs with visuals and choreography. Shock Corridor is the set, 12 numbers
based on Sam Fuller's cult B-movie from 1963. The movie features Trent, a black
inmate of a mental hospital, who believes he is white and a member of the Ku
Klux Klan. With Fuller's hospital as a metaphor for a nation, Trent is the
expression of a self-loathing learned by being on the wrong side of the
colonial adventure.
On stage at Club Luz are one of Wales most
charismatic and innovative performers Eddie Ladd - "I do Trent like if
he were Welsh and a girl" - and composer/D.J. Dewi Evans. Inspired by
Kraftwerk, The Fall, Bowie, Brel, Laurie Anderson, and Kylie, the singer at the
lone microphone leaves the film behind and walks the theme through 12 songs on
the colonised split brain, alienation, aspiration, grief, extreme solutions,
and the redemptive power of pop. The dark and haunting interpretation of songs
in English and Welsh, ranges from an ironic version of Those Were the Days,
a 1960's hit by Welsh singer Mary Hopkins to an unrecognisable take on the Beach
Boys' Surf's Up, and offers an enthralling speculative essay on the
'Welsh condition'.
Her utterly distinctive performance work, blending film,
high energy physical theatre, the innovative use of technology with an
exploration of complex, political themes, have gained Eddie Ladd international
recognition. Critics hailed her as 'exceptional talent', with 'angelic,
laser-sharp voice', admiring the utter control of her emotional expressions and
movements.
Club Luz won the Edinburgh Total Theatre Award (2003) and was featured in the
prestigious Battersea Arts Centre Opera Festival in London (2004). In 2002
Eddie was awarded a two-year fellowship from NESTA, the National Endowment for
Science, Technology and the Arts, to put her performance on the internet.
Appearing in festivals and at venues around Europe, she has taken performance
to unusual locations, from farms and fields to opera houses. Her works include
Callas Sings Mad Songs (1993), Once Upon a Time in the West (1996), Lla'th
(1999), a site specific event set in a farmhouse, weaving together the death of
Christ, Yuri Gagarin and the Welsh farmer David Finch, as well as Scarface
(2000), an ironic take on the American dream based on Brian de Palma's 1983
film, transferring it to rural west Wales, the region of her upbringing.
Eddie has been performing all her life: "It's just
the culture in West Wales, in the chapel, at home, at concerts. West Wales is
an area where the line between producers and consumers of culture is not
distinct. Maintaining that status is impossible now, as I have worked
professionally for 15 years. But in a way, the only difference between my
involvement and that of my family and friends is that I get paid."
Bettina Knaup
Music, film, choreography
Author and singer: Eddie Ladd
Design and stage management: Trevor Turton
Music: Dewi Evans
Film: Chris Nurse
Organisation: City of Women
In collaboration with: Zavod Bunker - Stara
elektrarna and Cankarjev dom
