In Before Your Very Eyes, for the first time in their seventeen year history, Gob Squad do not themselves appear onstage, but instead direct a group of 8-14 year-olds who they first met more than three years ago, using texts developed during improvisation and in collaboration with the performers. Before Your Very Eyes is the final part of […]
Writings
Lucien Bourjeily: 66 Minutes in Damascus
June 24th, 2012 by Rebecca Nesvet‘One of you is a coward,’ declares a deskbound functionary of the Assad regime in a dingy basement office in Damascus. Over his shoulder stares President Assad himself, from a paper poster. Assad is not the coward, at least, not according to his advocate. Someone in the audience is; one of the eight London theatregoers […]
Forced Entertainment: The Coming Storm
June 23rd, 2012 by Beccy SmithWhat is it that makes a good story? This is the deceptively simple question Forced Entertainment coyly pose in the opening moments of new productionThe Coming Storm. And it’s a big one! Their responses are multiple, thoughtful and partisan, as you might expect from a company whose body of work has steadily dismantled many of […]
Generik Vapeur: Waterlitz
June 23rd, 2012 by Edward TaylorGenerik Vapeur are one of France’s largest street theatre companies. Their show Bivouac (the one with oil drums being pushed down the streets by a tribe of people in heavy blue make-up and grey suits) is a masterclass in how to whip up an audience and create a powerful, if temporary, experience. The set-piece ending is a […]
Stan’s Cafe: The Just Price of Flowers
June 21st, 2012 by Fred DalmassoStan’s Cafe’s work subtly renews theatre’s didactic power. In the lineage of the clever but also visceral montage of cinema-like sequences in The Cleansing of Constance Brown, The Just Price of Flowers presents another meaningful juxtaposition of lives and historical sequences inviting the spectator to join ineluctable dots. The play is set in the seventeenth century in the […]
