you dirty stop-out
Yep, out again. This time with most of the rest of the family to see santiago's sister Hannah performing with the rest of her physical theatre group in Huddersfield.
Hannah's been taking an MA in physical theatre at Huddersfield University this summer. In fact I think the programme only takes around 6 months. The piece the ensemble put together themselves, and in collaboration with Judith Adams was called ...And After, and was in two parts.
The first part, in collaboration with Judith Adams was called Genesis to Nemesis, and was about characters (or entities, or consciousnesses, or who knows what) experiencing existence from creation to destruction over and over again. It also served as a useful primer for those not familiar with physical theatre, featuring words broken up into phonemes and then reassembled, and to a lesser extent movement broken up and reconstructed. I liked that element of the piece, and felt that this half could have stood to be longer, with perhaps more repetition. I also liked the idea that creation, or at least the dawning of consciousness might take place on a beach - though that could easily have been imagined or metaphorical. There was a similar narrative pull albeit quite loose to each half.
For myself, although the rest of the family seemed to prefer the second half, I thought it wasn't so tightly structured. It was called Hell, and dually influenced by stories about people waking up in mortuaries after having been pronounced dead, and by Dante's Inferno. It was good, and had a nice mix of humour and seriousness, as well as integrating aspects of the first half, but I felt it was lacking something. I thought this was the half where they could have really let rip and been very loud, abrasive and confrontational. But then I always think that most art could do with being more loud, abrasive and confrontational.
Whether or not it could have been better structured or more in-your-face it was an excellent performance. I kept thinking that there was a microcosm of 20th century theatre practice in the piece, including those ideas that were once avant garde, that simple everyday movements can be dance, that normal speech can be poetry. And how completely different film and theatre acting are, and probably should be. Film has tended to allow, and to reward greater naturalism, whereas the stage can make much more stylised and artificial modes of performance resonate more deeply. Oh, it was at the Lawrence Batley Theatre, in Huddersfield, obviously.
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Hannah's been taking an MA in physical theatre at Huddersfield University this summer. In fact I think the programme only takes around 6 months. The piece the ensemble put together themselves, and in collaboration with Judith Adams was called ...And After, and was in two parts.
The first part, in collaboration with Judith Adams was called Genesis to Nemesis, and was about characters (or entities, or consciousnesses, or who knows what) experiencing existence from creation to destruction over and over again. It also served as a useful primer for those not familiar with physical theatre, featuring words broken up into phonemes and then reassembled, and to a lesser extent movement broken up and reconstructed. I liked that element of the piece, and felt that this half could have stood to be longer, with perhaps more repetition. I also liked the idea that creation, or at least the dawning of consciousness might take place on a beach - though that could easily have been imagined or metaphorical. There was a similar narrative pull albeit quite loose to each half.
For myself, although the rest of the family seemed to prefer the second half, I thought it wasn't so tightly structured. It was called Hell, and dually influenced by stories about people waking up in mortuaries after having been pronounced dead, and by Dante's Inferno. It was good, and had a nice mix of humour and seriousness, as well as integrating aspects of the first half, but I felt it was lacking something. I thought this was the half where they could have really let rip and been very loud, abrasive and confrontational. But then I always think that most art could do with being more loud, abrasive and confrontational.
Whether or not it could have been better structured or more in-your-face it was an excellent performance. I kept thinking that there was a microcosm of 20th century theatre practice in the piece, including those ideas that were once avant garde, that simple everyday movements can be dance, that normal speech can be poetry. And how completely different film and theatre acting are, and probably should be. Film has tended to allow, and to reward greater naturalism, whereas the stage can make much more stylised and artificial modes of performance resonate more deeply. Oh, it was at the Lawrence Batley Theatre, in Huddersfield, obviously.
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