An animation inspired by the absurdist play The Birthday Party
by Harold Pinter.
The play is an allegory for the resistance of the individual to
the state and incorporates themes such as ambiguity of place
and identity, invasion and the destruction of the individual.
The play shows two sinister strangers who come to throw
the protagonist a birthday party, even though it is not his
birthday. They harrass him into a catatonic state and take him
away.
My intention was to create a sense of anxiety about invasion
and an underlying feeling of horror mixed with comedy.
The stop-motion puppets embodied all the connotations of
manipulation and the sense of being controlled by the state.
I created a number of outcomes for this project, working
with silhouettes and GIFs to create ambiguity of place and
identity.
