What 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 […]
Writings
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 […]
Tanztheater Wuppertal / Pina Bausch: Der Fensterputzer (The Window Washer)
June 19th, 2012 by Terry O'DonovanI don’t remember a time when I smiled more during a theatrical experience than watching Der Fensterputzer. Originally premiered in February 1997, Der Fensterputzer boasts one of Bausch and long-time design collaborator Peter Pabst’s iconic images: a mountain of heaped red flowers piled twenty feet into the air. It provides a wonderfully inventive, funny and moving landscape as […]
Elevator Repair Service: Gatz
June 15th, 2012 by Honour BayesIf I love a book I devour it as quickly as possible. I’ve spent days reading when I should be eating, sleeping or working. I don’t think I’m alone in this; it’s the absolute absorption in such occurrences that appeals to us, to be able to turn our backs on this world and leap into […]
