Category: All the world’s a stage

Augustine’s Dream: a work in development

Augustine’s Dream: a work in development

Augustine’s Dream   Photo:  Kathryn Syssoyevea   

Augustine’s Dream was presented in July 2019 at the Providence Fringe by AnomalousCo, an interdisciplinary theatre collective that develops new productions working with their director. The group focusses on movement which is extended vertically through the use of silks, trapezes, and harnesses. Where many aerial companies work with dancers, this group works with professional actors as well as actors in training, all of whom have an interest in physical theatre.  

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Vienna: Mental Eclipse Theater’s Blasted (Sarah Kane). Separating Admirable Impulse from Mixed Impact

Vienna: Mental Eclipse Theater’s Blasted (Sarah Kane). Separating Admirable Impulse from Mixed Impact

Blasted.  Photo by Ine& Thomas  Photography

Mental Eclipse Theater’s production of Sarah Kane’s Blasted is, admittedly, a mixed experience, but is ultimately a success, offering several clever solutions to a text riddled with difficult dramaturgical challenges. Occasionally, some directorial choices seem under-executed, and some sections of dialogue lack the performative emotional core that is so present within the written script; despite these missed opportunities, though, Blasted is a qualified triumph, with its more powerful moments mostly making up for its timid ones.

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Festival in Iasi, Romania: 153 Seconds, a documentary of contemporary tragedy

Festival in Iasi, Romania: 153 Seconds, a documentary of contemporary tragedy

 

153 Seconds, photo from the Iasi Festival Website, Romania

The exposed nerve of a reignited public tragedy hangs in the ether of Teatrul Luceafărul Iaşi.

We don’t quite know what to do; is it over? How can we applaud that which has just unfolded before us? How do we, the bystanders, simply move past the performance we have just experienced?

Young women and men around the theatre cry – not just those hiding in the safety of the audience, but those courageous young souls onstage, as well. Real, unencumbered sobs wrack their way through the room; together, we bond in the aftereffects of a societal trauma.

We have engaged in the collective act of healing.

****

153 Seconds, directed by Ioana Paun, is nothing short of superb. From the viscerally affecting poetry of its script (written in Romanian by Svetlana Cârstean) to the modular, impactful scenography (executed by Catalin Rulea), 153 Seconds falls somewhere in between powerful memory and vivid nightmare. To those who do not know 153 Seconds’ historical context, they will leave the theatre feeling merely unsettled. To those versed in the reprehensible carelessness that caused the Collectiv Nightclub fire of 2015, they will leave the theatre feeling fundamentally changed in their views on the necessary mediation between political action and creative output.

The Collectiv nightclub fire occurred in Bucharest on 30 October 2015, killing 64 people and injuring 146. Dozens of victims had to be transported to hospitals outside Romania due to overcrowding in both Bucharest and Iaşi.

This fire was preventable on nearly every level:

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Displaced and Discouraged: Bun de Export a Troubling, Beautiful Look at Romanian Diaspora

Displaced and Discouraged: Bun de Export a Troubling, Beautiful Look at Romanian Diaspora


Photo thanks to the International Theatre Festival in Lasi,  Romania

That the hallway beside the theatre is filled to its breaking point is a good sign; artists, critics, adults, and teenagers alike revel in a common ground of theatre-going, of festivity, and of imminent political discourse. We siphon ourselves into the newly-transformed Teatrul Luceafărul; once a large proscenium space, it has been modulated into a smaller, more intimate venue, with barely one hundred seats. Before us, two words are illuminated in a trendy, neon glow: import and export.

Darkness.

Four shadowy figures make their way to pre-set stools across the back of the playing space.

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Passagers: The 7 Fingers Return to Boston

Passagers: The 7 Fingers Return to Boston

 

Passagers Hula Hoop  Photo Cimon Parent

Passengers (also known by its French name Passagers) opened at Emerson’s Cutler Majestic Theatre on September 25 for a nineteen day run. It is the eighth show the 7 Fingers as they call themselves has presented in Boston and judging by the excited audience the night I saw it, it will not be the last. 

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Nixon’s Nixon : A Revival at the New Repertory Theatre

Nixon’s Nixon : A Revival at the New Repertory Theatre

 

Nixon’s Nixon  Photo Andrew Brilliant

Nixon’s Nixon by Russell Lees opened on Broadway in 1996 almost two years to the day of the ex-president’s death. The play, a two hander, takes place in August of 1974 in the chair filled Lincoln sitting room at the White House where Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger drink, reminisce, and discuss the President’s possible options for the future. However, like Nixon, Kissinger is concerned with his own future. He hopes to keep his position if and when Gerald Ford takes the office of president. Each attempts to manipulate the other. Kissinger keeps trying to convince the hysterical Nixon to resign while the president insists he has to remain in office because the American people admire a fighter.

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The Acclaimed Choir Boy comes to Boston

The Acclaimed Choir Boy comes to Boston

 

  

The Choir Boy  Photo: Niles Scott’s Studios

Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Choir Boy, as its title implies is a musical theatre piece. It deals with a boys boarding school, the Charles R. Drew Prep School, whose students are African-Americans, many of whom will be the first in their family to attend college. Life at the school is difficult for some of the boys particularly the talented Pharus Jonathan Young (Isaiah Reynolds) who is often mocked for his effeminacy. Despite the mockery, his classmates voted him the leader of the school choir, a position of honor. The prep school focusses heavily on music, religion, and good behavior. The latter, as noted above, is sometimes missing. 

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Stratford 2019: Nathan the Wise, A Parable of Tolerance.

Stratford 2019: Nathan the Wise, A Parable of Tolerance.

 

Diane Flacks (centre) as Nathan with members of the company in Nathan the Wise. Photography by David Hou.

“ I hear, I hear, come finish with thy tale.  Is it soon ended?”     Nathan the Wise

 There are moments of heightened intensity in the theatre when time seems to stand still, signaling to us that this is the dramatic kernel that distils the central meaning of the play.  

We pay attention to Nora’s frenetic dance of the Tarantella in Ibsen’s A Doll House because we know that her hysterical performance condenses the fullness of her situation.  The Mousetrap play-within-a-play in Hamlet stages in nuce the murderous backstory of the action, but it also supplies the hallucinatory image that the failed revenge hero cannot match to action.  And when Mitch, in A Streetcar Named Desire, tears away the paper lantern that obscures the sordid reality of Blanche’s life, his action is not only an assault on her flight to illusion, but a trenchant commentary on the whole poetic world of Tennessee Williams.  

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À Bussang, la nécessaire transgression de Suzy Storck.

À Bussang, la nécessaire transgression de Suzy Storck.

 

De Magali Mougel : « Suzy Storck » et  «Lichen »

De tous les spectacles vus cet été, il me restera indélébile, comme un souvenir stupéfait, les images, la colère et les mots de « Suzy Storck », une pièce écrite par Magali Mougel, jeune dramaturge rentrée au bercail après diverses pérégrinations. Bien lui en prit puisque Simon Delétang a choisi de la mettre en lumière, aux côtés de Calderón de la Barca, renouant par-delà le temps avec la « tradition Pottecher », qui voulait voir chaque année en ce théâtre une production dramatique du cru. Mais non content d’assumer la mise en scène, le directeur du Théâtre du Peuple a décidé d’être présent sur le plateau, aux côtés de ses trois acteurs incarnant Suzy, sa mère et son mari, pour y tenir à lui seul le rôle du chœur. Grave et noir choryphée de lui-même, et sans émotion apparente mais adoptant le ton, la posture et le costume sombres de la tragédie, il commente les faits, guide notre appréhension et notre compréhension de l’histoire.

Car Suzy Storck, personnage éponyme, est bien l’héroïne d’une tragédie ordinaire, mais qui n’a de banal que l’apparence. Sur la scène une machine à laver, mobile, dont seront extirpés quelques éléments de costume nécessaires à la figuration, et dont la présence se justifiera d’autant mieux que Suzy à un moment déclarera n’être pas cet appareil ménager, symbole du rôle auquel on voudrait la contraindre. Le terril de linges colorés dressé côté cour n’en semble que plus cohérent, qui deviendra aussi la couche où accrocher, se donnant le dos, le couple de Suzy et Hans Vassili Kreuz embourbé dans son incompréhension et son impossibilité nocturne à communiquer.

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Le Théâtre du Peuple, entre obéissance et transgression/ La vie est un rêve , de Calderon de la Barca.

Le Théâtre du Peuple, entre obéissance et transgression/ La vie est un rêve , de Calderon de la Barca.

Au bourg de Bussang, quand je sirote mon café matinal au seul petit bar du coin, qu’à l’heure de l’apéritif je me mêle incognito aux buveurs du soir pour un vin d’Alsace obligé, je m’émerveille d’entendre parler théâtre, de trouver là ornant le mur un portrait au fusain d’Antonin Artaud ; d’apprendre qu’il fut autrefois dessiné par cette jeune femme au comptoir : entre douceur et autorité, elle règne autant sur les « natifs » du lieu que sur les « étrangers », amateurs de théâtre venus de nombreux « ailleurs » rejoindre la population locale dans sa ferveur inchangée pour la scène. Car telle est la magie de Bussang, qui vit naître et croître et perdurer le Théâtre du Peuple, qui sur des gradins de bois assez peu confortables si l’on ne s’est pas muni du traditionnel coussin de l’année, réunit des publics issus d’horizons divers, réalisant cette belle utopie d’un « théâtre pour tous ».

Cette année, Simon Delétang pour sa deuxième saison estivale a choisi de surprendre, en proposant deux pièces très différentes, et pourtant proches en ce sens qu’elles posent l’une et l’autre des questions essentielles. La « grande pièce », celle qui incarne la tradition, se donne en matinée, offre en raison de sa durée la respiration d’un entracte, se doit de rassembler acteurs de profession — au nombre de trois cette année —, comédiens amateurs et figurants choisis dans la population locale. Le metteur en scène est tenu également de faire qu’à un moment de la représentation s’ouvrent les hautes portes de bois qui ferment le fond du plateau, et disons-le, c’est aussi un peu pour cet instant si particulier que l’on se retrouve chaque été fidèle à Bussang.

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