Baptiste Hilbert, choreographer for Shoot the Cameraman, talks about audience receptiveness to screen-versus-stage events

The piece sheds light on contemporary social matters mainly related to new behaviours created by the digital age. The makers have crafted new pieces of movement by combining choreographic art and latest technological innovation that leave the audience with difficult questions, depending on the socio-political environment of country they belong to.

In today’s digital age, where information available online can easily shape and reshape narratives dominating how we perceive news in general, Luxembourg-based Baptiste Hilbert & Catarina Barbosa’s production house, As We Are, embarked on an India tour with their latest creation Shoot the Cameraman.

The piece sheds light on contemporary social matters mainly related to new behaviours created by the digital age. The makers have crafted new pieces of movement by combining choreographic art and latest technological innovation that leave the audience with difficult questions, depending on the socio-political environment of country they belong to.

After successful shows in Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Bengaluru, and Delhi, Baptiste, the co-artistic director and choreographer for Shoot the Cameraman, speaks about the creation of his piece and his experience of performing in India.

“When we started in 2015, we were creating a lot of short pieces. Shoot the Cameraman is our first long piece that we initially created for European audiences and then decided to expand. Viewers from different countries can react to the same piece in different ways,” says Baptiste.

In the beginning of the creation process, the team were toying with the idea of how we perceive information from digital media — be it mobile phones or TV screens and how that can interfere with our focus. “Then, we wanted to dig deeper to analyse not only what screens mean to us politically, but also the objectives of people filming the content that we consume every day.”

Baptiste further spoke on how content available online has been weaponised through propaganda over time to suit the political narrative of a particular country. “Our idea was to tell a story with our performance showing all these perspectives.”

Unlike a traditional performance, Baptiste and his team came up with the idea of placing a screen in front of the stage, where they displayed a short film. “We presented audiences with a choice — watching the performers on stage or focusing on what is unfolding on the screen. It also challenged their attention span.”