Category: All the world’s a stage

“quatre heures du matin”: Théâtre martiniquais au Tarmac

“quatre heures du matin”: Théâtre martiniquais au Tarmac

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 Quatre heures du matin », adaptation et mise en scène de Hassane Kassi Kouyaté 

Présenté au Tarmac du 23 au 24 mai, 2017

Cette adaptation par Hassane Kouyaté,  du roman d’Ernest J. Gaines  (nommé aux Prix Pulitzer et Prix Nobel de littérature), est une  production de Tropiques Atrium ( Fort de France) oὺ Kouyaté dirige  la scène nationale. Cette saison, deux créations de l’ Atrium  ont été intégrées à la programmation du Tarmac :  Le But de Roberto Carlos  (mise en scène et scénographie de Kouyaté ), une coproduction du Tarmac et de la Scène nationale de Martinique,  est une réflexion sur la migration recréée par un acteur, un chanteur et un musicien. Ensuite, Paris a reçu  Quatre heures du matin, adapté du roman de l’Américain Ernest Gaines et mis en scène par Kouyate. …

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Piaf & Brel: the Impossible Concert is a delight to the ears.

Piaf & Brel: the Impossible Concert is a delight to the ears.

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Piaf & Brel   with Melanie Gall. Photo from the Ottawa Fringe Festival

French chanteuse Edith Piaf and Belgian singer Jacques Brel, two giants of romantic music in the 20th century, never shared the stage together nor even met in their lifetimes. This simple historical fact does not phase Melanie Gall, an internationally-acclaimed vocalist who brings the most famous songs by these two artists together in a performance titled Piaf and Brel: The Impossible Concert. The result is a thoroughly enjoyable and engaging musical, accompanied by insights into the two singers’ lives and Gall’s own unique (read: humorous) experiences as a performer. …

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Ditch the Netflix stand-up specials and catch Karma Karma Karma Karma Karma Chamedian at Fringe 2018

Ditch the Netflix stand-up specials and catch Karma Karma Karma Karma Karma Chamedian at Fringe 2018

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Photo Ottawa Fringe Festival  Josh Glanc  Melbourne Australia

 

Reviewed by Ryan Pepper

Performing to a packed audience, Melbourne’s Josh Glanc never missed a beat in his hilarious new stand-up/sketch comedy show Karma Karma Karma Karma Chamedian.

Glanc opens the show like all Netflix comedy specials seem to these days, with a big musical number and triumphant entrance to thunderous applause from the audience. He then dives into a rock cover as three audience members mime instruments behind them, air-performing to so much applause that it might as well have been a real rock concert. Or for that matter, a real Netflix special. One gets the impression that Glanc could have thrilled a packed house at Radio City as effortlessly as he did Arts Court Theatre. …

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Josephine Baker: an uplifting, engaging, and inspiring performance.

Josephine Baker: an uplifting, engaging, and inspiring performance.

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Josephine Baker (Tymisha Harris)  Photo thanks to the Ottawa Fringe

 

They bill this as a burlesque cabaret but it goes far beyond that form because it actually tells us of  the entire life of this remarkable Afro-American woman, played by Tymisha Harris.  Harris does not really imitate Josephine but rather captures her multiple styles of dance and singing, various forms of theatricality and  the different  creative moments  in her life as she evolves from the poor areas of  St Louis Missouri  through several  marriages until she  finally accepts an invitation to Paris to perform in the” Revue Nègre”  in 1925.  That move to France will change her life. …

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Le dernier boléro, vu par Ricardo Miranda: du particulier à l’universel

Le dernier boléro, vu par Ricardo Miranda: du particulier à l’universel

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Texte de Iliana Prieto Jimenez & Cristina Rebull Pradas. Photo Paul Chéneau

À la onzième Rencontre de théâtre amateur à Fort-de-France, les jours se suivent et ne se ressemblent pas. Après les vingt-quatre de L’Autre Bord Compagnie, les douze de la troupe Les Comédiens, les six du Théâtre du Bon Bout, voici les deux de l’association À tire d’elles, deux jeunes femmes seules en scène, mais deux qui occupent intensément l’espace du plateau, deux qui font résonner cet espace de leurs voix, dissemblables et pourtant accordées, dans un duel de mots et d’attitudes particulièrement convaincant, et dont le cadre spatio-temporel serait l’île de Cuba à la charnière du vingt-et-unième siècle. …

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Jagged Little Pill Finds a New Life

Jagged Little Pill Finds a New Life

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Jagged Little Pill    Photo: Evgenia Eliseeva

“Jagged Little Pill,” Alanis Morissette’s internationally famous alt-rock album released in 1995 has been turned into exciting musical theatre with two new songs composed for it. Imaginatively directed by the American Repertory Theatre’s Diane Paulus and stunningly choreographed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, the performers sing, dance, and act with skill. At the opening, two bands roll on stage. A thirteen person chorus sings and dances to the music before pulling a screen open exposing the Healy living room. This chorus functions much like its ancient Greek predecessor.

The book written by Diablo Cody revolves around the Healys, an affluent family living in a wealthy suburb in Connecticut. Each family member has a secret. Mary Jane (Elizabeth Stanley), a stay at home mother, is writing a Christmas letter in which she explains that she had a bad automobile accident followed by two operations, but is now fully recovered – a lie. Her husband Steve (Sean Allan Krill), involved with his work life, is seldom at home. …

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On the Block & Glammuh: one play and one visual artist’s impressions on the life of black youth in contemporary Barbados-Part I

On the Block & Glammuh: one play and one visual artist’s impressions on the life of black youth in contemporary Barbados-Part I

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Icil Philippe
Private archives

Guest reviewer: Icil Philippe

“Don’t afraid to be different. Conformity is practically a death sentence to an artist. In other words: if you’re doing what everyone else has done, you don’t give yourself the chance to do what nobody but you can do.” [Z.Z. Packer-African-American author, 2003.]
By a series of coincidences several of the young artists in both the theatre and the visual art arena are investigating the life of black youth caught in the culture of the block. Like their subjects they have defied the restrictions that conformity imposes and have struck out to explore what it feels to be the marginalized, and the misunderstood. Both end products present a curious tale, bitter in parts, sad in others but to a large degree true to the vision that they have of the block as a social space created by and for black males existing on the margins of Barbadian society.

…

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The Women Who Mapped the Stars: The Struggle to be Acknowledged

The Women Who Mapped the Stars: The Struggle to be Acknowledged

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Sarah Oakes Muirhead
Photo: A.R. Sinclair

The Women Who Mapped the Stars is a new work by Joyce Van Dyke, a rising dramatist with several awards to her credit. Her three previously produced plays also focus on women’s lives. When The Woman Who Mapped the Stars opened at the Central Square Theatre in Cambridge, her fifth piece premiered in New York.

The play tells the story of five of the women “computers” who worked at the Harvard Observatory beginning in the late nineteenth century. This was a period in which great strides were being made in astronomy with the aid of better telescopes and the invention of the camera. Professor Edward Charles Pickering who headed the observatory without sufficient funding decided he needed more help in collecting data, i.e. to study the photographic plates and compute the properties of the stars. In order to save money, he hired his maid, Williamina Fleming (Becca A. Lewis), a hard-working Scottish woman. Since she proved herself capable of dealing with the “boring” side of the work, he decided to employ more women, paying them half the salary a man would earn for the same task. …

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Jaz de Koffi Kwahulé: CDR de l’Océan Indien, Théâtre du grand Marché

Jaz de Koffi Kwahulé: CDR de l’Océan Indien, Théâtre du grand Marché

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JAZ

Les 26 et 27 avril JAZ de Koffi Kwahulé.  Mise en scène Alexandre Zeff, Cie La Camara Oscura

JAZ. Avec un seul Z. C’est ainsi qu’on l’appelle. Avec un seul Z puisque l’autre lui a été profondément et durablement amputé. Jaz a été victime d’un viol. D’une amputation, donc. Texte puissant, mise en scène et interprétation au diapason : attention, événement. …

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