We really don't care about theatre do we?

Trying to figure if I want to gamble on Nathan Lane & Bill Irwin in Godot -- I have a $20 tix email.

i'm currently deciding whether or not to spend 3 hours of my life at The Cherry Orchard

― Surmounter, Monday, January 26, 2009 12:38 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

can you do so for free? i'd say give it a shot if so.

― tehresa, Monday, January 26, 2009 12:41 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i didn't end up doing this. but i have no shame. just not my cup o tea

Morbius just GODOIT

The only WfG prod i've seen was Mike Nichols' 20 years ago w/ Steve Martin & Robin Williams (and Bill Irwin as Lucky)...

this thread is quite frustrating because we all seem to be talking about wildly different things but i'm glad it's here nonetheless.

the next two months in glasgow have some great things upcoming:

anne liv young is bringing her newest thing "the bagwell in me" to the arches theatre festival which is also putting on Belgian troup Ontroerend Goed company's "Once and for All We're Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and Listen". excited for that.

talking of the Belgians, who are undoubtedly creating the best theatre in the world, the Tramway are mounting an international series (4 Belgian companies and none from anywhere else lol) comprising Jan Fabre's "Orgy of Tolerance", Victoria's "Venizke", C de la B's newest large scale work, "Ashes" and Wayne Traub's "Maria-Magdalena" (although i'm pretty meh about Traub).

i'm so psyched.

i was supposed to be heading to Antwerp to see the latest Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui piece but it seems that has been nixed for financial reasons.

my bf has been asked to direct quite a major thing based (loosly) on the early life of Louise Bourgeouis and i'm going to be designing it too. thriled.

still haven't seen anything by anne liv young. keep hearing things about her -- a couple of my friends know her/have worked with her

sur, you just missed "sherry's march madness" which was a performance in the shape of a fucked up cocktail party (or something) in her own apartment in NYC. sonds pretty lol.

if you are interested you should add her company as a friend on facebook. she does lots of small scale things like that and posts invites to them to "fans" through fb.

yeah, i guess she does that fairly often? one of my friends was in one of her apt pieces a little while ago. SHIRTLESS no less :)

haha, her "snow white" ended with her getting two men in the audience to strip off and close-dance with her on stage (she was naked) while she told the rest of the audience to get out of the auditorium (which we duly did, she's not the sort of person you would defy). she was trying to get them naked too but they only went as far as SHIRTLESS.

i've just skimmed some stuff about her shows, and man, they would annoy me

but you are easily annoyed.

well, ive had 25 years to get annoyed by stuff like that.

the line between annoying and innovative is an important one, nonetheless

and long may it continue.

"stuff like that" doesn't really cover it. i've seen a lot of performance, most of it bad, and her work is pretty unique.

xpost

some of my coworkers saw that one where she plays George and Martha Washington. on-stage cunnilingus etc... i was kind of annoyed i missed it

obv I dunno, I'd have to see it. I'm a lot more wary of "innovative" tags than I was 20 years ago.

I'm interested in how performance art isn't called performance art anymore, so folks don't go into it with the same preconceptions.

lol at dance turning into "movement"

i'm wary of "innovative" too, but i still embrace it. we would be at a disadvantage if we didn't have these sorts of extremeties on the spectrum.

dance vs. choreography is an important, tho basic, distinction tho, imo

There's also a lot of literary performance going on now that blurs the line between a reading and theater, but has nothing to do with "spoken word" or "poetry slams" -- much closer to what David Sedaris does. Another case where it's kind of exciting that there isn't terminology for it, just that there's an audience who is drawn to it ("Hey, it's like David Sedaris, but it's free and in the back of a bar"). Groups like this one and this one.

Any Londoners gonna see (or have seen) Mishima's Madame De Sade.

saw two nights of stunning quebecois dance from Sylvain Émard Danse

http://www.ladansesurlesroutes.com/res/photo/Wave_2436.jpg

amd Cas Public

http://www.ubishops.ca/centennial/pictures/program/cas-public-1.jpg
http://www.ubishops.ca/centennial/pictures/program/cas-public-2.jpg

both mindlblowing! i LOVE this stuff.

amd, and, whatever!

hey! update my dance performance thread!!

and i can tell you there how jealous i am of you cuz that looks awesome

Dance performance C/D S/D

such a treat. genuinely thought provoking and life affirming!

xpost was that the dildos, snow white etc thread?

sur, it was gorgeous and (the second one) sexy!!! all of the dancers either on point (the women) or in high hells (the men).and the men were like o_O look at that body.

agree on awesome...

meanwhile Madame de Sade is getting bad reviews, however some of the reasons (that it isn't dramatic and the like) still make me want to see it. xp

julio, sorry about not responding to your email of a month+ ago. i couldn't afford the trip in the end.

That's ok jed, not to worry - do let me know if you come round again.

And if I go to Glasgow/Edinburgh to see a dance company/or a play that you've designed I will let you know :-)

:D

julio, ann liv young at the batterea arts centre from the 15th to the 19th of may.

http://www.annlivyoung.com/performancepage.html

its on

"More recently Young has loosened the reins. "Snow White," in particular, has become indelibly deconstructed. "It got to the point where we didn't even do the show," she recalled. "I would say: 'You know, I really don't feel like doing this. How about let's do a question-and-answer session?' And people would get really angry. They felt cheated.""

this is exactly what happened when i saw it. 2/3rds of the way through she goes "ok, this is shit, this isn't working and i can tell you [the audience] are bored. let's do the radio show" cut to all the perfomers clearing the stage to mount the sub-show followed by getting the audience up on stage and trying to get them to strip off. j, i recommend you sink as far down in your seat as you can so she can't pick you out!

i rly don't know what i would do

one guy i see out at these events has become, in my head, 'that guy "peter" that stripped off and danced with ann liv young while she told the sudience to leave the auditorium'.

audience! i'm slightly tipsy.

orgy of tolerance

orgy of tolerance

orgy of lolerance?

i like it!

saw godot with lane/goodman/irwin. irwin was awesome. i hate lane. if i closed my eyes it could have been pumba saying the lines. i hated how they sentimentalized the end. ugh.

another thing: extra general admission ticket available for the philanthropist on saturday (new christopher hampton play starring matthew broderick). anyone want it? the only weird part is i'll be there w/ mom/dadrza lol.

Saw Orgy of Tolerance on Wednesday night. I saw it as a bunch of 'tableaux': really well put together, the final dance off was brilliant -- and one of two LOL moments for me; the other was the 'Come Together' bit.

Wasn't so hot on any underlying ideas, and maybe that's why I wasn't laughing as much and finding it as funny as I thought I could. This constant evasion and pre-emption; the need to not be pegged down...ultimately this got pretty tiresome. I liked the title of this A LOT but the promise, ultimately, was not to be fulfilled.

Glad I went.

i'm glad you went and your thoughts echo mine to some extent but, even though some of the ideas are pretty adolescent and some of the scenes didn't work (specifically the stylist making over J C which was a major misfire) i was carried away by the enthusuasm of the whole thing and it is extremely well crafted in spite of seeming random.

i mean, the shopping trolley waltz and the rifle-up-the-arse were worth the price of admission alone and there were many many more great scenes than that.

having said that it was probably only the 3rd or 4th best thing i have seen this year so far.

on monday i saw one of my (two) favourites things of this year, Ontroerend Goed's "Once And For All We're Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up And Listen". The show is preformed by teenagers and intended for teenagers and adults. i thought it was completely thrilling. a example of just how great devised theatre can be. if you get a chance to see this run, don't walk. i took my 14 year olf neice to see it and she left like this *_*

"i mean, the shopping trolley waltz and the rifle-up-the-arse were worth the price of admission alone and there were many many more great scenes than that."

I can definitely agree that you can't fault it if you go on a pure scene by scene basis, the hit rate is high, and the very first 10 mins did the whole take no prisoners thing well.

I didn't find it all that random because I could see the underlying idea that connected the scenes.

I went to see the newish Enda Walsh play The New Electric Ballroom (guy who wrote dialogue for Hunger, Disco Pigs) incredibly ornate Midlands-Gothic-High-Camp melodrama. It drew on equal parts Pinter, Waters and McCabe, which was a pretty awesome combo imo. Mikel Murfi pretty much redeemed himself for a decades worth of trading in on Galway Arts Festival goodwill. Great playful subversion of William Trevor Ballroom of romance RTE orthodoxy, genuinely unsettling revision of 1960's Ireland, even now more than fifteen years after the Butcher Boy. Obscenely brilliant stage design, A+ would be freaked out again.

ann liv young's "The Bagwell In Me" is truly incredible. i'm kind of speechless. it's hard to describe or explain just why it is so good. it's a huge leap forward from Snow white. quite possibly a work of genius.

going to see 'angela's mixtape' tonight. friend has offered me 'pay what you can' tix - anyone interested in joining?