Impact l Collision
A British Corporate, Brecht and Buddha.
It sounds like a savvy alliterative joke that should have a racist or religiously offensive punch line. Instead these three things are all sources for theatrical entertainment in Impact | Collision, the first season of plays emerging from the theatre department’s directing course this year. Three men have been toiling away in the theatre of 77 Fairlie Terrace for the past month learning and exploring the philosophical and practical aspects of being a director. The result?
Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat is a punchy two-hander between a soldier and a woman, written by Mark Ravenhill, a British playwright straight out of the ‘in-yer-face’ school that also birthed Sarah Kane and Patrick Marber’s Closer. In Shoot, Ravenhill has created a series of sixteen short texts that premiered in various locations around London. Mitch Tawhi Thomas, the director, has chosen one of them, titled Love (But I won’t do that). Mitch sets it in Iraq, 2004, and is exploring potency of the way we read the iconic figure of the soldier by purposefully casting a Maori (Rob Lloyd) as the character. Lloyd is working alongside Carol Smith, also an experienced actor.
Ben Albert is also exploring contradiction in This is a Chair by Caryl Churchill. Churchill is influenced by the creations of Bertolt Brecht and his Epic Theatre movement. It is a play of eight short scenes, each with contradicting or seemingly disconnected titles interspersed. Politically themed placards juxtapose each scene subsequent. It experiments with how we read images in conjunction with what we read first. Collaborating with six performers, “It really is living and breathing, the way theatre should.” That is to say “It really communicates to the audience.” Please take your seats…
Passion by Edward Bond tracks an old woman who journeys to visit the Queen after her son is killed in the war (She leaves her cat with the neighbour). Harry Meech, the passionate visionary responsible for this piece presses that it deals with the subject in both insensitive and sensitive ways. “Nothing’s more funny than when it is framed by two things that are really sad.” Passion has an ambitiously large cast of eight, playing roles such as Jesus, the Queen and Buddha. “Buddha’s been a problem role…how do you convey Buddha when it’s a white girl with blonde hair?”
With limited seating and a strictly limited run, Impact | Collison is sure to sell out so book to avoid distress.
Impact l Collision
Three Short Plays
7pm, 19–22 August 2009
Studio 77, 77 Fairlie Tce
Gate 10, Victoria University
$8/$15
Bookings: theatre@vuw.ac.nz—4635359
