We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Tom Stoppard
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Author Archives: Theatre Room Asia
Some excellent advice and buckets of inspiration
I was chatting with my first year IB theatre students, Jeff, Tim and Clarissa, this week. I wanted to know what their university plans were. Not one of them knew – fair enough – but made me smile with the comment that ‘well we know it won’t be medicine because we are here talking to you’. So when my colleague John (thanks mate) posted this it struck me as being very prescient. It is 20 minutes long, but worth every minute and should inspire any student of the arts to take a leap of faith
Drama what urgy?
Still not sure…..? You need to be!
A link to the dramaturg’s UK network
Amazing Masks
I was in Nanjing recently and was astonished by Bian lian 变脸. The face changing, or “bian lian” in Chinese, is an important aspect of Chinese Sichuan opera. Performers wave their arms and twist their heads, and their painted masks change repeatedly.
I am a great fan of masks in performance, and this is a wonderful clip (courtesy of my colleague John) of some exquisite masks made by Wladysław Teodor Benda who was a Polish-American painter, illustrator, and designer. He was an accomplished mask maker and costume designer. His sculpted, papier-mache face masks were used in plays and dances and often in his own paintings and illustrations. In this film from 1932, he is demonstrating some of his creation
Vaclav Havel
I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.
Havel was one of the world statesmen of 20th Century theatre. If you don’t know who he is, what he did or what he wrote, you should!
Vietnamese Water Puppets – Nhà hát Múa rối
If you ever find yourself in Hanoi, go see Nhà hát Múa rối Thăng Long. Really interesting, with so much history and a real taste of the performance culture of an incredible people.
There are 3 links below, all useful, but the blog Vietnam, Water and Puppets is an excellent source of information.
http://www.thanglongwaterpuppet.org/?/en/Home/
http://vietnamwaterpuppet.wordpress.com/
http://www.thingsasian.com/stories-photos/1239
And a few videos to put you in the picture
Peter Brook, the acid test
I know of one acid test in the theatre. It is literally an acid test. When a performance is over, what remains? Fun can be forgotten, but powerful emotion also disappears and good arguments lose their thread. When emotion and argument are harnessed to a wish from the audience to see more clearly into itself – then something in the mind burns. The event scorches on to the memory an outline, a taste, a trace, a smell – a picture. It is the play’s central image that remains, its silhouette, and if the elements are highly blended this silhouette will be its meaning, this shape will be the essence of what it has to say. When years later I think of a striking theatrical experience I find a kernel engraved on my memory: two tramps under a tree, an old woman dragging a cart, a sergeant dancing, three people on a sofa in hell – or occasionally a trace deeper than any imagery.
The Prince of Peking Opera – Ghaffar Pourazar
I meet this amazing artist, Ghaffar Pourazar, last year. He is an Iranian born, British raised former computer animator turned master of Beijing Opera. He is the first and only ‘Westerner’ to train in the art and has subsequently created the first bilingual version of the opera, Monkey King, as well as adapting Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Beijing opera stage. The links are various, but the first is to the International Centre for Beijing Opera which Ghaffar founded.
http://www.globaltimes.cn/NEWS/tabid/99/ID/687555/Prince-of-Peking-Opera.aspx
Miwa Matreyek’s Glorious Visions
And another tech meets performance…..
Using animation, projections and her own moving shadow, Miwa Matreyek performs a gorgeous, meditative piece about inner and outer discovery. Take a quiet 10 minutes and dive in. With music from Anna Oxygen, Mirah, Caroline Lufkin and Mileece.
Miwa Matreyek creates performances where real shapes and virtual images trade places, amid layers of animation, video and live bodies
Sword Dance and Shadowgraph – Taichi Saotome TEAMLAB
Another great example of technology meets live theatre, this time from Japan. Quite extraordinary.
Theatre Room Asia 