Lightwork: Here's What I Did with my Body One Day

O'Connell has been an associate artist with Lightwork Image Performance since 2003, designing video and multimedia for productions. O'Connell has previously examined the part of multimedia in a variety of concepts such as Telematic performance, Verbatim Theatre and devised multimedia performances that contemporise classical drama models. As a company Lightwork makes theatre that fuses live performance and digital technologies to deal with twenty-first century perspectives and concerns. Lightwork is artist-led and all performances are collectively devised. The work fosters creative collaboration by involving a range of practitioners, performers, designers, technical specialists and writers as primary artists in the workshop creation of productions.

The productions accumulate meaning and effect through layerings of themes and theatrical shifts of time, place and persona. Working with video and multimedia design O'Connell seeks to find new methods to integrate digital and technological languages with performance. As part of the research process the work is opened up for sharing which allows opportunities for inter-disciplinary collaboration among designers and performers and solicits audience feedback which is seen as as an integral part of development.

O'Connell's aim within this production was to use existing technologies, such as live video feeds and motion graphics, to find a solution unique to the piece. The video design was incorporated into the process from the first rehearsal, with both this visual imagery and the text (by Dan Rebellato) simultaneously informing the development of the overall piece. The motion graphic that appeared throughout the entire performance had evolved responsively and organically throughout the rehearsal period.

Reviews in the Guardian, Time Out, The Stage, Metro and The Times, all drew particular attention to the design produced by O'Connell. O'Connell and artistic director Andrew Lavender led a presentation and workshop on this production at the Theatre and Science Workshop (13th May 2006), University of Birmingham.