*** the two gentlemen of verona (nos do morro)

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Nós do Morro

http://www.nosdomorro.com.br/eng/institucional.htm

The Pit

bite08

http://www.barbican.org.uk/news/artformnews/theatredance/nos-do-morro

The Barbican brings the Brazilian theatre company Nós do Morro to London for the first time with its production of Shakespeare’s comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona directed by Gutti Fraga. The production was originally commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company as part of the Complete Works festival in 2006 where it received a one-off performance following collaboration with Cicely Berry and now comes to the capital for 11 performances. Switching effortlessly from comic to serious, the energetic young company infuse the text with song, movement and capoeira in a beautifully uncomplicated production. Location and mood are indicated through the use of the actors’ bodies and simple props take on a life of their own. The Two Gentlemen of Verona is performed in Portuguese with English surtitles. It is presented in association with People’s Palace Projects.

Nós do Morro (Portuguese for ‘us from the hillside’) was founded in 1986 by Fraga and is based in Vidigal, one of the toughest favelas in Rio de Janeiro. It provides young people from this disadvantaged community an opportunity to experience culture, art and citizenship through the theatre and visual arts. The company has achieved significant public recognition, won several awards and now runs a theatre and cultural centre. It aims to provide training in technical skills and creative work for theatre and cinema and many of its actors have appeared in TV series, soap operas and films including the 2002 award-winning City Of God.

Coinciding with the Barbican run of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Nós do Morro and Theatre Centre present an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest entitled Knock Against My Heart written by Oladipo Agboluaje and directed by Michael Judge. Knock Against My Heart tours the UK from 18 September – 20 November including a run at the Unicorn Theatre from 7 – 18 October.

http://www.theatre-centre.co.uk/index.php?plid=64

What a wonderful joyous funny warm experience was this!

The lights come up in one corner from a blackout to show a tightly clustered group of young performers singing - and instantly we know we are in the company of troubadour players about to make a show for us with just themselves, a few instruments and some motley scraps of cloth they will use for costumes and the many letters that feature through Shakespeare's story. This is his first play and - as with Chekhov's Ivanov - it's great to be able to see so many of the characters and ideas he will recreate again in his later plays: Julia who dresses as man - brilliantly achieved and utterly convincing as a disguise with a stretch of cloth over one eye so attention is grabbed by the disability rather than a sense of recognition - and heads off from Verona to Milan to teach her man how to love (As You Like It); there are balcony scenes (Romeo & Juliet), Julia lists her suitors for her maid to strip of their vanities with gleeful cruelty (The Merchant of Venice), and her initial dismissal of Proteus reminds of Kate and Beatrice; there's a there is even a Friar Laurence.

It is somehow an easy step to accept these young performers as the young lovers – they convey a freshness and vitality that exactly suits Shakespeare’s characters. And something i have never before seen so effectively achieved is the way all the performers step instantly in and away from their characters, so that even those playing leads manage to completely lose every hint of their characters to meld seamlessly into the ensemble. So I found I was even searching for actors who seemed to have disappeared in the chorus scenes, and conversely people I had barely noticed before would suddenly emerge as apparently unmissable large and dynamic presences when they stepped into an individual role.

The staging uses a variety of disciplined simplicity: performers bond together to make human architecture and furniture - seats, walls, doors, headless busts, a balcony, and a dangerous forest is conjured with lighting, a smoke machine and another length of cloth. We get a mimed slow motion duel or contest in the early scenes while Valentine & Proteus are all devoted and true friendship forever more that physically lays out everything the story of these two young Veronese gentlemen will unfold. And we get live music - instrumental and singing - to both move the story on, take us too new places (memorably from Verona to Milan), and to underscore or change the mood.

From start to finish this show vibrates with spirit and exuberance so you feel swept along and caught inside the performers’ zest and drive to bring their story, and yet for all their youthful energy there is nothing amateurish or unfinished and the moments of poignancy and realisation arrive with a crystalline focus that is deeply moving and utterly true. And then just as seamlessly the moment is gone, moved on and we are delighted and laughing again or surfing the story or beaming off the radiant music and movement.
And one more jewel I have to record for permanent remembrance: the performance of the dog is everything this show has encapsulated: truth, humour, discipline, spirit, delight, poignancy, immense fun and quiet understated sadness. Brilliant!
It ends with a final bright song, through which the players take their smiling bows, and then they again converge into their tight and tightly lit ensemble spot - all individuality again extinguished. Blackout and they are gone.

And i'm still glowing from the experience they made for us.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/marktrezona/TwoGentlemenOfVerona#

'In The Brown And Red Water' by Tarell Alvin McCraney

In The Red and Brown Water

A fast and loose play

by Tarell Alvin McCraney

at Young Vic

http://www.youngvic.org/whats-on?action=details&id=2146

Direction - Walter Meierjohann
Design - Miriam Buether
Light - Jean Kalman
Music - Abram Wilson
Sound - Fergus O'Hare
Casting - Julia Horan CDG
Movement Direction - Ben Wright
Dialect Coach - Neil Swain
Assistant Direction - Patrice Etienne
Cast:
Adjoa Andoh
Camilla Beeput
Sheri-An Davis
John MacMillan
Cecilia Noble
Javone Prince
Paul Thornley
Ony Uhiara
Ashley Walters
Abram Wilson

I have a dream...

Martin Luther King

The sweltering heat of Louisiana.

Two guys, one girl

And a love so strong it drives you mad
Oya dreams of competing alongside star athletes. She never feels so right as when she’s burning up the track.
As a girl she must choose between her dream and caring for her mother.

As a woman, she’s torn between the man she lives with and the man she can’t live without.
It’s like I got more love in my hands

Than the world got air to breathe.

We are the ones we've been waiting for.

We are the change that we seek.

Barack Obama

A new play by the ‘explosive’ Tarell Alvin McCraney whose The Brothers Size had Young Vic audiences on their feet.
With live music from New Orleans trumpeter and vocalist Abram Wilson.

Most of the space is flooded ankle deep
A piano and a drum. A blue plastic crate.
Around the outside motley chairs on a chipboard platform. And us. Audience also above looking down on the reflecting pool. And sitting waiting in an atmosphere of buzzing excitement - the is a large group here tonight that I think are people in Young Vic's facebook group - the bank of audience opposite are reflected in a gentle shiny shimmer.

The performers enter splashing through the water to make a circle - clocking us as they arrive. Oya in the centre. A hum of male voices over which the women's voices start the story chorus style:
"they say
"i heard
"she screamed
"she cried out
... (from memory and probably not accurate)

This is a story of ordinary / extraordinary black people making and living their lives. It includes Okun Size (from McCraney's previous play The Brothers Size) and his trademark storytelling techniques - characters saying their own stage directions, which give them moments of heightened self-awareness; use of song to both add texture and to move the story forward - and in this the New Orleans jazz man Abram Wilson is an integral part of the story - adding musical comment and dueting with Legba, Oya's wisecracking surrogate brother (also from The Brothers Size?).
As well as splash and reflective shine the water gives the place a complicated wrongness: it is both fluid and heavy, it both floats and holds down, it is playful and oppressive. And the performers inhabit and use it with apparent ease, sometimes explicitly for what it actually is, sometimes as if it wasn't there or its being there was the completely normal condition. And of course it has to make us think of New Orleans after the floods.

A problem with this play though is that the moment of greatest tension when Oya has to choose staying at home with her dying mother rather than take up a running scholarship happens early, and from then we watch life happen (literally) around her as she sinks into an increasingly angry realisation of 'this is all there is': her gentle but unfired relationship with Okun Size, her ungentle but haphazard and powerless relationship with the soldier, her inability to conceive while other's babies surround her. And so somehow her final violent act of defiance misses the shock and emotional punch it should have: dramatically it makes sense, visually it convinces, and yet it fails to hit the solar plexus. This might be because for the first time Oya is required to speak her dialogue from off-stage so we know to expect something and noticing this takes us out of the story flow and we are too primed for a theatrical effect; or perhaps it is that the company are still finding their orchestration with the audience and the right build of focus and varying intensities through to this coup de theatre; or it may be the moment needs to have something more arresting from lights and sound? I liked Oya enormously and felt for her throughout so i'm still puzzling about why her moment of greatest pain left me believing but unmoved.

Nevertheless this is again fine storytelling and again at the Young Vic it's a joy to be part of such a diverse, relaxed and spontaneously responsive audience.

McCraney again makes a play that is universal and resonant and enlightening in its themes of trying to make a life less ordinary from ordinary times and moments; and how to live true to your values in a post-modern disaffected world entirely uncaring, unnoticing and ungiving to any sacrifice however virtuous.

'in-i' - akram khan + juliette binoche

in-i
by Juliette Binoche and Akram Khan

with

visual design by Anish Kapoorand

music composition by Philip Sheppard

lighting design by Michael Hulls

sound design by Nicolas Faure

If the Greeks had 14 words to describe different ways of loving, how many dare we experience?
A major new work of dance theatre created by one of the world’s leading dancer/choreographers, Akram Khan, and actress Juliette Binoche.
Throughout their careers, Binoche and Khan have both sought out surprising and daring collaborations. Akram Khan has always taken an inter-disciplinary approach to dance and his collaborators have included Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Antony Gormley and Nitin Sawhney (zero degrees), Sylvie Guillem (Sacred Monsters) and Hanif Kureishi.
Similarly, Juliette Binoche has made artistically challenging choices with directors such as Michael Haneke (Hidden) and Louis Malle (David Hare’s screenplay Damage), and has starred in award-winning films including The English Patient and Chocolat.Creating the environment for the duet is Turner Prize-winning artist Anish Kapoor.
in-i is a unique collaboration between three of today’s most exciting artists.

http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/ini

http://www.akramkhancompany.net/

So seeing this the second time I now completely love it!
This time I am easily and fully immersed and this time what it is all seems so clear and evocative and resonant - like reading a novel except they are providing the sounds and pictures and we are making the story (whereas in a novel we make the sounds & pictures from the story the writer gives us). And watching this time it seems so obvious that they are bringing us a fictional story of the trajectory - the rise and clash and fall and remaking of a relationship that is raw from the scaring of past hurts - his from the Mullah as a boy, hers from (his?) violence and both from each other's fierceness.

So why was this second time such a richer experience for me?
A lot has to do with what I brought I think and at the preview show I limited my experience by expecting way too little perhaps: I forgot what a storyteller Akram's is, how his desire to tell a story is what propels and drives his shows, how much he wants to use sound and movement and rhythm to reach and communicate with us. At the preview I think I just sat and watched it as a display of a series of abstract skilfully made images, not looking for a complete narrative and so not seeing any. Then too I wonder if I let myself become distracted by their celebrity - I looked at this to see versions of Akram's Khan and Juliette Binoche when of course the point was to look past and through these 'names' to the people and their story they are making. (the exact opposite to the problem of trying to get 'visibility inside invisibility' cited today for new black performance of needing to become invisible from heightened visibility)
But I think too this show was more formed and performed: I suspect it needed audience responses to find its cadences and punctuation and energy flows to become a finished work. As well as the time and repetitions to transcend its parts and fly out from the performance space.

So 'in-i' now gives me an achingly recognisable series of moments layered into complex textures of personality clashes, dynamics of competing domination, funny awful mismatches of gender behaviours, soft intimate almost too private moments of connection, fighting currents of inner conflict as head wars with emotions, impulse jars against learned responses, past experience contaminates spontaneity. Moving & funny & personal & vivid & memorable.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/marktrezona/InI#

*** 'helium' (slung low)

'helium'
slung low
at barbican
http://www.barbican.org.uk/theatre/event-detail.asp?id=7613

Bella’s grandfather keeps sending parcels to her. Inside each parcel is a helium balloon… This imaginative installation tells the story of Bella’s quest to discover her grandfather’s hidden past. From the inside of a Lancaster Bomber, to a magic show in 1920s London, we uncover the mysteries concealed by a series of helium balloons.Combining live and digital performance Helium investigates guilt, responsibility and the true meaning of ‘release’. As the performance unfolds in a series of boxes, each audience member has a short adventure of their own.



post script:

the day after seeing this show i open my the box and and take out the helium balloon. and with joy i discover that it is tied with a white ribbon to the storybook of the show. there is a programme inside too. and as i read the story with the remembered images from the show i do have a very special experience. and i am right that there is much density in this story and that i have absorbed only parts of it, and i love this company for anticipating this and giving me the story to find at home and discover fully ...





in the Pit foyer we're greeted by a couple of men in blue overalls from H Removals who check our names, give us a lollipop and a small card inviting us each to a birthday party, and a list of:
Things we'd like you to know;

- close all doors behind you.

- what you save with cheap boxes you'll pay for in breakages.

- that those ignore you aren't being rude it's just that they can't hear you.

- never pack explosives, combustibles, food of any kind, liquids or pets.

- always press the switch before going in. Once.

- pack all boxes to capacity.

- it's cracking to see you.

with love, H. Removals

and then one by one we are met by our H Removals guide, who sits us down and runs us through a very reassuring briefing about what to do and what to expect. Of course I knew when i booked this that i would quite probably be having to manage my bloody claustrophobia, and so it was as i was led from one small room to the next, and this was a lot easier than it might have been thanks to this expert guiding. At the same time the style and tone of this did make me feel like i was supposed to be 5 years old, which was a little unhelpful to my experience of the show. swings and roundabouts then, tricky to get right, and way better to overdo than underdo guiding as we know to our great cost, but perhaps they could relax a bit of the 'we soooo want you to have a great time' approach. a quibble.

so in the first room i am alone with Bella, who is on the phone to her family, in her recently deceased grandfather Max's room. We then hear through the radio Max in conversation with his gargoyle alter ego? twin? nemesis? satanic master? from them i learn that i am an eavesdropper and necessary to Bella being able to get the story of her grandfather's past. There is a strong sense of clues being laid down and a puzzle that i will have to try and solve. this room is intimate and the experience of being alone with a performer in a small room familiar for me after experiencing 'masque of the red death', but it's interesting to notice just how fast i have learned to become easy in this new audience~performance relationship and wonder how differently it plays with different individual audients.

my guide opens the door and - leaving Bella reading her grandfather's book - leads me out from this first room, hands me a box of popcorn, and steers me into a model movie theatre very reminiscent of the ones janet cardiff & george bure miller have made. A film is playing of 'the great Garibaldi or some such a magician, who appears shoots himself when his card guessing trick goes wrong, altho he reappears later saying something i don't remember (i've since re-seen it on the promo video and been reminded that he's saying "course it's frightening. that's the real trick: making what inside outside". meanwhile max and his gargoyle are back in conversation from the speaker box and talking about me and to me and this dominates my interest. There is a sense of more clues being laid out, and instructed to look up i find a joker playing card attached to the ceiling by a sign to 'take this card'. i do. the experience of this room is mostly confusing - maybe i haven't been concentrating enough or have become too distracted between film watching, conversation listening, popcorn munching and realising i can relax enough to know that my claustrophobia isn't getting the better of me. one of the things i do enjoy in all the rooms is that the time in each of them is long enough to get beyond the immediate novelty and begin to immerse in what is happening: in fact i could have enjoyed much longer (so it must have all been successful to have over-ridden my small space panic!)

so to the third room - the belly of a WWII bomber, with with one of the radio ops. this time i've been instructed to put on the headphones and to 'be brave'. the airman is trying to have a radio conversation with a friend called Duffy (martyn is convinced they used his name from the booking, and change it for each person, but i'm not so sure). the airman makes contact with Duffy, tells him that he's going to be a father, loses contact, and once again this is being over scored by the voices of Max and his gargoyle. then the floor falls open to show me film of a plane eye's view of the bombing of Dresden (martyn told me this - i wasn't clever enough to get this specific fact), and from this bombed and burning cathedral leaps into the foreground the gargoyle speaking directly up into our bomber but i'm so busy noticing effect of the trap door appears to have not worked smoothly and wondering if this is all i'm supposed to be being brave about and wishing it was just that bit more convincing that i don't remember what he says (but again from the promo video i've picked up the message "don't leave me behind"). i'm also still feeling under some pressure to solve a puzzle, pass a test, and perhaps this interferes with my focus, but again i think that given more time to become immersed and/or maybe less apparent density of information to be processed from Max and the gargoyle i could have quite fully entered into a belief of this world: there was so nearly the possibility of feeling i am in this bomber in radio silence with this airman whose friend has probably just been shot down.

'harrowing isn't it' says my guide as he takes me to the next room and i feel guilty because no it hadn't been really, although i think perhaps this comment was the key to release me from trying to solve the puzzle and licence me instead to simply bear witness, and this made the last two rooms easier to just be in. The penultimate 'box' is a hospital room, where i come face2face with the gargoyle, dressed as an orderly cleaning up the room, Max's voice as an image across the heart monitor screen. i think i missed important parts of the story in this room, except to pick up that because i - as the eavesdropper - was there still there listening then Bella was still turning the pages of the book in which she was learning this her grandfather's story, and that somehow during the bombing i'd just seen, Max and the gargoyle had become inextricably linked together, and that now that Max was dying the gargoyle was turning back into stone and suffering visibly as this happened. i don't know why Max laughs so maliciously while this happens, and somewhere too i am still bothering away trying to identify whose famous voice Max has (patrick stewart in fact - and a less famous voice would have saved me this distraction).

then the last room is a white space with a moving projection of cathedral arches and stained glass windows. this is the easiest room to just absorb the last of the story - a memory of Max's - that the gargoyle doesn't have because it was the one and only time time Max forgot him - of Bella letting go her helium balloon and it floating free. there is some association being made between the pages of the book of this story now heard and the helium balloons being set free and at last as Max fades away so too can the gargoyle and they can still together float free. and we watch a projection of Bella collecting her grandfather's snowscene and leaving his now packed away room for the last time, Max is finally released from his wartime guilt.

i am led out from the removal box rooms and on the way back to the foyer my guide gives me my own box with my name and inside my own white helium balloon, to go with my lollipop and my joker playing card. so it does nearly all fit: the birthday party was Bella's where she released her helium balloon, the lollipop i decide is simply a toy to help keep me and other anxious eavesdroppers calmed (and actually it works for this - the thought that i could suck it soothes despite the fact that i hate the things). the joker playing card and the suicidal magician remain an enigma for me i'm afraid.

this is a good-hearted and genuine show, warmed hugely by the care and thought that has obviously gone in to making it safe and accessible for us as individual audients travelling through new performance territories. and i love that this company is a diverse group of deliberately mixed artists and this fusion has gone into its devising and performance (just as we aspire so hopefully to do one day). it must be expensive to run because of its low audience numbers and high guiding team. it is limited by the low level of technology - the projections are not as good as we now see them in theatres and galleries, and the sound suffered for me because of the high high precision in janet cardiff & george bures miller's work.


and so from reading later i learn all the details that the above narrative of my experience has troubled over, missed or muddled:

~ the gargoyle is more precisely a grotesque - "a gargoyle spouts water".

~ 'the Great Capaldini''s show is a birthday treat for the eight year old Max, and he is the boy at the centre of the botched card trick. which in fact isn't botched at all but introduces us to Max's propensity to feel intense guilt: it is his fault the card trick has gone wrong. and the magician is not suicidal - this is simply part of the drama of the act.

~ the young airman is Max himself of course and the gargoyle chooses him to leap into from his burning cathedral in his burning city. and his friend Duffy is Duffy and not just Duffy for m duffy and me.

~ the restoration of the dresden cathedral brought no redemption for Max, it did not re-make the gargoyle's home nor offer any passing on for either of them.

~ we are invited to share this story. this is no longer just Max's story for Bella, but for us all to put our faces and names and memories and imaginings to: "just as Bella has my diary, you have what you have just experienced..."



"thank you for coming" the company write on the last page.
thank them for making such a special, wonderful and memorable experience.


but i look forward to what they make next ....
http://web.mac.com/slung.low/Slung_Low/slung_low_home.html


see also composer/sound artist Heather Fenoughty's blog about her making for this show:

www.heather-fenoughty.com/blog/2008/09/21/helium.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/marktrezona/Helium#

'Crossings' by julie mcnamara

'Crossings'
Work in progress
by julie mcnamara

Directed by Karena Johnson,

With Margo Virginia Cargill, Nadine Wild Palmer and Julie McNamara

BSL Interpreter: Hetty May Bailey

Set & Costume Design: Chris de Wilde

Visuals & Edit: Caglar Kimyoncu

Lighting: Gursen Houssein

Stage Assistants: Alan Clifton & Rory Campbell

http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=29120330831&refurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.new.facebook.com%2Fs.php%3Fq%3Dnadine%2Bwild%2Bpalmer%26n%3D-1%26k%3D200000010%26sf%3Dr%26init%3Dq

It's high storm at Canning Dock. Shelley's on the run again. Baby Mother of a local gang, she's too long in the tooth for sound advice. Shelley finds shelter on an old ship and is transported by two powerful voices from the past calling her to a whole new set of possibilities. One is an escaped African woman from the notorious slave ship, The Zong, the other a man who isn’t all he appears to be.

Cochrane Theatre

The name says a great about this show:
Ships and people crossing the seas to and from Liverpool;
The stories of three women crossing -Shelley the young pregnant girl in contemporary Liverpool sheltering from the storm and hiding from her boyfriend pimp and his posse' in an old ship; Nzingah the woman who was pushed off the slave ship and left to drown who is full and warm with old wisdom and african pride; and Hegarty the Irish woman still trying to give her drowned brother a proper funeral after surviving the crossing to nz by dressing as a man after being raped and to avoid being thrown overboard with all the other women over 40.

The set is simple and very effective - the bow of a ship surrounded by beams suggesting both a skeleton and great strength. Plain canvas sails surround the prow and its slanted wooden deck, providing also a screen for projected images from Nzingah's & Hegarty's stories.

The first woman we meet emerges through the ship and out through images on the canvas back sail. She remains throughout signing and occasionally interacting with the players and there is potential for her to be an even stronger presence possibly visible only to Nzingah, who we don't have to know is blind.

This is the first time in front an audience for this show in development and it already feels very developed. It needs polishing and the technical side needs time to find its precision but its already compelling storytelling and rich with ideas. I'd love to hear what might come from more choral interweaving of the three distinctive accents: liverpool, african & irish. And it would be great if Shelley could also have a song - maybe a rap as she finds her strength to journey forward alone. And Cynthia suggested we see Nzingah come from an image on the back canvas. And Gareth suggested a constant underscore of water sounds [and apparently there is a composer who wants to write a score]. And I think there are some wonderful moments that would easily hold longer: the melodic drumming Nzingah makes with the beams - perhaps even getting a three [or even four] part version later with all the women; and Nzingah's tribal call.

All the women are strong and completely convincing in their characters: Nadine is wonderfully feisty and vulnerable and restless and uncomfortable; Margot is powerful and still and warm; and Julie is dynamic and fluid mercurial. I wonder how it would play if Nzingah & Hegarty used their storytelling more to empower and enliven Shelley rather than reliving again for themselves.
This is a great show that i'd love to see again after it's had more time to grow.

*** 66a Church Road - Daniel Kitson @ traverse

*** exceptional experience
66a Church Road - Daniel Kitson
@ traverse

66a Church Road - a Lament Made of memories and kept in suitcases

Superlative wonderful Show fluent and funny and evocative warm and human -storytelling doesn't get any finer than this

We arrive down the treacherously Steeped Stairs of traverse one and get front row seats The Stage is set with an array of old fashioned Suitcases that immediately trigger us into stories of other times and people from our lives - even before the show begins we get to enjoy sweet forgotten memories

Daniel comes on in a brown Suit, takes off his jacket and rolls up his Shirt Sleeves He sits on a chair Surrounded by Suitcases and starts to tell us the story of his six year relationship with his flat in crystal palace Each chapter is punctuated with an audio playback of another related memory usually involving him in a relationship with his father trying to Sit with dignity on the blow- up chair, with one or several girls he is involved with, with himself. With his home And these moments are magically illustrated with a variety of models and projections Into and within the Suitcases _ a projection of a room The light Shining through the slatted blinds film of his Street, looking Out through his front door to new fallen Snow and a model of his entire 3 story flat Not all of these are fully visible even from the Front and after his curtain call he completely wins my heart by coming back to explain the idea for these models only came a month ago and long after this space was arranged - the traverse needing to be more organised than i am and they have tried unsuccessfully to make them visible in Such a large space. So they are all re-lit and people are invited to file past the Stage to see them on their way out and _ holy wow! - people are welcome to take photos. This man lives my manifesto.
And this is how he Starts his story - conjuring around the emotional resonances of 'home' _ a place we go hope to find but can never really seriously go looking for 'What are you looking for in a home?' Might be the question the estate agents ask but the answer is always '' it depends...'
We hear about john his long-suffering friend Who houses him while he looks for his home And we hear alot about his landlord who is very much the Villain of this story and the cause of Daniel's eventual break-up with and leaving of 66A Church Road
This performance is packed and textured with language and observations and humanity and Spirit and love and music - literally as well as in the sounds of the spoken written speech The breaks between chapters also allow a bit of Space for Some of our own memories and associations to puff and swirl and breathe the air a little.

"precious things" (stella duffy, shaky isles theatre)

wednesday 23 July 2008

Precious Things (we used to go on pilgrimages)
a play in progress
Directed and Devised by Stella Duffy
with Performers Emma Deakin, Kane Bixley, Kirsty Hamilton, Aaron Hapuku, Erica Lowe, Sam Webster, Jess Wood and (in spirit) Miriama McDowell
Lighting Design by Scott Stewart
Technical Operator: Salvador Brown

part of Shaky Isles Festival of Aotearoa: a feast of New Zealand and Pacific Art & Culture
at Pacific Playhouse
http://www.shakyislestheatre.com/main.php?inc=current

Good evening and welcome to Precious Things, a new work in progress from Shaky Isles Theatre – We love the planet, we love cheap flights.
We love the planet, we love good steak. We love the planet, we like our i-pods, computers, cars, trains, buses, privacy, garden hoses, TVs, movies, music, clothes, shoes, avocados. We want to eat mussels off the rock, and sit under our very own pohutakawa. We don’t know what we’re prepared to give up, and we do know we’re distracted from the Very Good Causes by nice boys or pretty girls. We want to be good, we want to play – we wonder if the two things can go together.

It starts with the sound of the sea.
The company of 7 actors hold hands and breathe the waves in – and - out - and - in - and - out.
Except actually it doesn't necessarily start with the sea at all as i discover when I see the show a second time. It starts with a game where the company pick up and follow each other’s sounds and movements - working together to make themselves one unified moment that subtly shifts and morphs into something else without sense of who – ideally not really anyone - is leading.
And if I think they are making the sea this is as much what they make happen in my head as it is what they have chanced into on the stage. In the second show I saw, the movements tended to wards pendulum patterns – which they / I / we make into clocks ticking, and surges of heaving movement from one side to the other, at one moment I even made the sea again. But the show is and is made from what actually happens at and from each moment and what these become through the organic moulding by the group.
And this is the power and joy of this show – you feel it being made fresh in front of you and from what is being made you make your own memories and rediscoveries and wonderings.
At every moment it is unfalteringly performed with an absolute commitment and presence and alertness and imaginative spontaneity and great gleeful grins so that through much of it we are grinning in irresistible kinaesthetic recognition.
This game acts throughout the show as a transition into and out of the dialogue sequences.
It also provides time for us in the audience to follow a little way the explosion of memories and imaginings their stories set off for us …
“I've know that place…”
“I remember that smell…”
“What stories will my children tell when they've grown?” (not mine that one. obviously.)
“What do i want to remember about my own dad?” (not that one either.)

In the first show I remember the Sea featuring in the memories of precious moments in NZ and the River featuring in their London stories. In the second show this is less apparent and the personal stories are deeper, richer given bigger moments by questions – asked sometimes by fellow performers and sometimes silently by the protagonists themselves so their remembering of their precious moments uncurl with a fullness and quite extraordinarily fluency.

The show works through a series of sequences that Stella has storyboarded pictorially in a set of clear guide images down one wall
“I remember...”
“I know I'm a kiwi because…” (there's a geordie too)
“I know I’m a kiwi in London because...”
“I know I’ve been in London too long because…”
“The thing I care about is…”

A couple of sequences challenge us out of these gentle meanderings:
One is a game that seems to be called “you spoiled it!” At the first show this was teasing and fun; at the second show it started to build towards something that smelt more dangerous and I wonder if this could be taken without sacrificing authenticity?
The second is when the performers face us directly and tell us the things they don't care about - challenging us to dare to agree with them. These are mostly personal wants and lifestyle indulgences overtaking social and global concerns, but they also these also reveal a glimpse of some of the real values of these young people. The audience seem to receive this with a mixture of enjoyment, approval and uneasiness.

There is sequence headlined ''what I do care about is...” that cuts away the ensemble dynamic into a set of more disconnected voices - isolated for once in the telling and remembering of their own memories and using each other's feeds to re-activate their own stories. I wonder if this effect could be heightened by the performers disengaging completely from each other and disappearing visibly into their own treasures rather than continuing to the maintain their concentrated focus with and for each other?

I would also love to see a longer show that springboarded off into stories of some of the people we hear about but don t yet get to really meet- the dads, the mothers, the grandmother, the siblings and friends -the people who are part of the precious moments each player conjures up and in so doing hints at other's stories tucked inside. Is there a ‘russian doll game’ that could be played to find the Story inside the Story inside the Story inside the Story...?

And with more time I wonder what this company would make if they could take the LifeGame strategy longer and play out in reimaginings from the stories that are suggested and – at the moment only momentarily – visualised by the players: the dodgem car races; the first bottle of Tui beer on the porch with dad; the first meeting with your birth mother; the first boyfriend…

The great and exciting triumph of this show is the range and vitality of experience the form and the storytelling and the playing trigger in us - they give us a myriad of moments to recognise and weave into our own stories and a little time along the way to disappear into them
And it is wonderful to see the LifeGame form given this level of focus and development
This company look and sound onstage like an already mature and very strong ensemble with an abundance of energy immediacy and ensemble rapport and i am curious to know what magic formular made this possible in so little time? Stella? Emma? this particular group? kiwi-ism? the alchemy of impro?

Stella's next idea is to continue to work regularly with this company to discover what it might become and make next, and I wonder what would happen if they experimented at uncovering the stories about the people who have touched them from the parts of these they hold already

At the moment we are getting fragments that mostly tend to echo ourselves back to us - what more could be done with this?

And how could the brilliance of the ensemble togetherness now be played around with to allow for a variety of different moods and dynamics without risking the apparently ego-free collaboration in the joyful playful impro they are already making?

And yes yes Stella - what could you do with music?

What I hope this show / company will keep is its fresh and new response to my questions around how you make an exceptional experience for the audience that happens as much in our hearts and heads as it does on the stage?
Their answer seems to be: Make it authentic. Trust the moment. Trust the stories you have already. And trust the audience to bring themselves into the mix.

As a postscript it was great reminding Emma that barely a year ago she was producing her first ticketed play readings and now she has produced and sold this festival of mixed New Zealand arts - a huge achievement. The tough bit now is how to take the company to the next level and get the money for people to be paid and thus be able to make something that doesn't have to depend on people's donated time
A timely reminder of the tough uncaring world out there as I begin my return back into the performance arena …

"the lavender library" w stella duffy

Tuesday 15 July:

THE LAVENDER LIBRARY
Queen Elizabeth Hall
A panel of writers and performers celebrate the legacy of lesbian and gay literature by championing their favourite books and authors. Featuring
http://www.paulburston.com.html/

Rupert Smith on John Rechy,
Diana Souhami on Gertrude Stein.
David McAlmont on James Baldwin,
Stella Duffy on Patricia Highsmith,
Paul Burston on Pickles,
Andy Bell on Joe Orton,
Karen McLeod on Julia Darling, and
Julian Clary on EF Benson.
Presented by Suzi Feay, books editor of the Independent on Sunday.

The Lavender Library

Grown-up and intimate
Rich insight into the complex mixes of how we make our queer identities and how queer artists find their voices and confidence and inspiration
An easiness in this space and time that we are reminded we cannot take for granted

We forgave performance shortcomings because we trusted that we were being given authentic presentations - we believed all the presenters were bringing us what was true for them rather than something that was more about slick presentation - also that every presenter had chosen to bring something they genuinely cared about

And it felt friendly - i wanted to belong to/ in this group

Impressed at how comfortable each person seemed even when there were signs too of their nervousness

Amazed for the umpteenth time at where the hell Stella Duffy gets her fabulous chutzpah from.

"hadley's experiment" (chris johnston, livestock)

wednesday 7th may 2008


"hadley's experiment"

by chris johnston

presented by livestock

CAST

anton maiof ~ sound artist

chris johnston

harry thompson

nicola dane

directed by dale heinen

at the tudor room, old ship hotel

brighton fringe festival

livestock is a theatre and arts organisation exploring themes of mental health and related issues. its next project concerns motherhood.

http://www.livestock.org.uk

based on a true account, this is the story of warren who wakes up one morning to find his life directed by imaginary gangsters that he can see and hear. these 'operators' lead him into a journey across country and into a different kind of life.

using sound and video, the company presents an almost unbelievable story of 'hearing voices' experience.

programme notes

the play is an original piece, however it is inspired by and very loosely based on a book by barbara o'brien entitled "operators and things". this book was published in the u.s. some time ago and recounts an extraordinary 'hearing voices' experience. we have tried to draw the essential discoveries from the book and re-present them in "hadley's experiment".

in our story, the central character, warren, discovers the existence of a previously hidden layer to human existence in which figures called 'operators' are active. 'operators' control human beings.

in the world of 'operators', certain terms are used to describe features of human life:

'stoning' ~ an action performed by one 'operator' on another to disable it

'latticework' ~ the part of the human brain used to record and memorise experience

'cowboys' ~ operators who go about trying to obtain contracts of 'things' illegally

'things' ~ human beings

'operators' ~ invisible agents who control human beings

'flies' ~ 'operators' in pursuit of causing stress to human beings

'operator council' ~ the governing body of operators

'open head' ~ a head opened by trauma or distress therefore visible to passing 'operators'

action cutting from back & forth from t.v. (video footage) and live as warren comes and goes from the car

also used for flashback story telling and to introduce other characters - wife, daughter, angry man and then the run to hide the sugar jar with the burned notebook leading to conway's attempt to get warren to throw himself under a train

suitcase full of things in plastic bags. and sand. and a sealed jar of sugar. and a dress for gwendolyn (blow up doll) and a jar of peanut butter. and a radio.

strong storytelling. reminiscent of matrix movies w'out the hi tech obviously)

great to see chris in action

unfortunately a tiny audience - must have been very hard to perform to.

problem with this for me was inconsistent focus - sometimes directly addressing us in audience sometimes played inside the 4th wall.

the best of it was the story. the less strong was becoming involved anyhow in warren's story or plight.

memories, bodies & landscapes: “the gathering”

monday 10th march 2008

“the gathering”
discussion forum:
memories, bodies & internal landscapes
bernie grant arts centre,
3.30pm sunday 9th march 2008
How do female artists connect with and draw on their own memories in their work?
Featuring Peggy Shaw, Anna Furse, Akosua Bambara, Cassie Waller, Shirley Williams, Rosanna Raymond and Campbell.

http://www.berniegrantcentre.co.uk/pl78.html

Autobiography and personal memory runs through women’s storytelling.
“The Gathering” festival harbours weekend of strange revelations, physical protestations, secrets revealed and declarations bellowed, brings together an unprecedented line-up of distinctive voices in female music, live art, visual art, spoken word, film, fashion and literature for cross cultural exploration and mind body expansions.

Some of the world’s leading female artists come together to discuss and examine aspects of memory and the creative process of their work, from cutting edge film to physical performance.

Join in the discussion and consider “how female artists connect with and draw on their own memories in their work?” …

Peggy Shaw
independent New York performance artist, painter and poet
http://www.splitbritches.com/pages/peggy.html
my notes/quotes:

“I work from impulse…”
“I have lumps in my body … if I squeeze them really hard maybe I’ll get a monologue…”
“I write for 10minutes without taking the pen off the paper … a technique for automatic writing: if stuck write ‘what I mean to say is …’ … keeps you honest …”
“after every show I try to have talkback – everyone can share the personal memories…”
“I work a lot with lies: try to lie and interesting truths come out…”

Anna Furse
award winning director and writer of over 50 text driven and devised works
classically trained dancer influenced by study with Peter Brook, Grotowski and in new dance forms has developed her own training methodology that creates theatre from the body outwards “Glass Body”(2005) – innovative infertility installation from a performance devised from her experience making her daughter through IVF developed with Imaging Dept, Assisted Contraception Unit and Hospital Arts at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital and with scientific mentoring of Prof. Stuart Campbell at Create Health
http://www.athletesoftheheart.org/
my notes/quotes:

“our memories are in our bodies – that’s all we have…”

my notes about “Glass Body”:

... in the centre of the space a stainless steel hospital trolley, an open drawer showing a pair of child’s red shoes, a child’s red jacket, a string of pearls (all of which appear in the show), its surface covered in sculptured salt providing the ‘screen’ for the video of the performance: a performer (woman) and a voice Anna) – it's about seeing the you inside your body, about the birth of ‘our kid’ Nina – (universal name for girl apparently), about eggs, cells, x-rays, sonic sounds, whale sounds, submarine sounds. stacked on the bottom shelf of the trolley are petri dishes that audiences are invited to write messages onto – one reads “to all my lost babies”. a bank of computers showing a moving exhibit of these petri dishes and one with an ‘interactive toy’ that invites you to piece together a woman’s reproductive system by dragging and placing – i was completely hopeless. reminiscent of those cut-out dress-up dolls with the different clothes and accessories - i was better with these once. at each end a projection of a painting of an early medical examination ...

Akousa Bambara
visual orator©, designer, jeweller, enameller and ceramic artist
Akousa has developed and produced Dialogue Panels© also known as Wall Jewellery© and Dialogue Tags©
http://www.ligali.org/article.php?id=1760
my notes/quotes:

“my work is about reclaiming – it’s about owning our [Afro-Caribbean] stories …”
“our story is constantly being interrupted by others’ assumptions …”
“I make in metal because I want the work to last … I want it to be dug up in 1,000 years and interpreted as an important part of the record …”
“I call myself a direct descendent of the kidnapped people of Africa – I call myself a dark power …”

Cassie Waller
video artist and photographer currently studying Interactive Media at Bernie Grant Arts Centre
“Found At Sea” uses archive media of her parents from 1976 to 1985: 16mm fottage of her father building a boat is integrated with taped conversation between her mother and father, the video reconstructs his obsessive journey to escape his life. Dedicated to and about my parents.
my notes/quotes:

“in the end it was exorcising … I’m not angry any more …”

Shirley Williams
influenced by textures
Shirley already possessed dressmaking skills from watching her seamstress grandma cut and make clothes without need of a pattern. Collage introduced her to the fundamentals and her garments now sell to celebs from her stall at Spitalfields market her exhibition is a series of recreated collaged books made from and out the memories the original books contain, including her own memories

my notes/quotes:

“the way I put things together is instinctive but the elements have been gathered over a long period of time … I collect things sporadically …”
“I like fragments … layers upon layers upon layers …”
“I try to recreate texture … manmade things that collide with nature …”
“I make scrapbooks and notebooks that hold a lot of my memories …"
“my work is reactionary … I like to work with something that already exists … like a collection of garments that I’ve got from charity shops that I’ve deconstructed and put together as a collage into a new garment …”

Rosanna Raymond
New Zealand born performance / installation / body adornment artist and writer currently living and working in London.
A ‘Tusitala’ (storyteller) at heart
http://www.londonfale.org.uk/spotlight-rosanna01.html
my notes/quotes:

“I am a ‘afulcasi’ – a half-caste … part Maori and part Samoan…”
“I was brought up and influenced by my Samoan grandmother in oral histories and crafts..."

Barby Asante
London based multimedia producer and artist
whose work focuses on concepts such as identity and self-expression: how much do we define personal identity through comparison, competition and aspiration?
Much of her performance installations place the viewer at the centre of the artistic process through physical interactive experiences: in her show “wig therapy” she has an assistant book people in for an hour’s session trying out wigs and talking
http://www.artsadmin.co.uk/events/event.php?id=341
my notes/quotes:

“I want to leave the audience feeling empowered not manipulated …”
“in Slovenia I felt belittled by their reactions and one inner voice said ‘you don’t have to take this shit’ and another inner voice said ‘you started this dialogue now you have to follow it through’ … I learned so much about how to work with what actually happens to make the conversation … what can I use now to make this conversation happen? …”

Campbell
queer filmmaker (no biog provided)
my notes/quotes:

“my film is about how my mother parented me and what was taken and rejected from how her mother brought her up …”
“some things are so ingrained you can’t let go of them …”
“how we move is African – they couldn’t beat that out of us …”