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Edinburgh Festival Britain Highlight
Mini Theatre of Beijing People＊s Art Theatre November 2008
Hysteria
Presented by: INSPECTOR
SANDS & STAMPING GROUND THEATRE, UK
Time: 7:30pm
November 4(Tue)-9(Sun), 2008
Artistic collaborators: Jonathan Young, Joseph Alford
Set design:
Yukiko Tsukamoto
Lighting design: Katharine Williams
Sound design:
Carolyn Downing and Adrienne Quartley
Costume design: Suncana Dulic
Company Stage Managers: Elena Pena and Sarah Kmack
Publicity
design: Paddy Molloy
Photography by Joseph Alford
Touring
technician: Katharine Rose Williams, Elena
Pena
Lucinka Eisler as Waiter
Ben Lewis as Man
Giulia Innocenti as Woman
About the show:
2006 he world is ending.
And it's happening at table 9＃
Inspired by TS Eliot's poem of the same name, Hysteria makes
us witness to a
painstaking attempt at social interaction: a man and a
woman are on the most
awkward dinner date of their lives. He is an
academic whose research into modern day neuroses is threatening his
sanity. She is an events manager who's terrified of missing the party.
Caught in the middle is their ghost-like waiter, who is fast running out
of places to hide.
The evening soon disintegrates into awkward conversation, unwanted revelations and rising physical panic. As the action progresses, each character finds themselves spiraling towards a personal apocalypse.
With irreverent humor, a visceral soundtrack and a vivid physical style, Hysteria draws the audience into an arresting world where a cocktail party is a fight for survival and a banana can reduce you to tears.
Awardsㄩ
Winner - Argus Angel Award 2007
Winner - Total
Theatre Award 2006
Short-listed for the Carol Tambor
Award
Review:
※Beautifully
observed＃Inspector Sands and Stamping Ground Theatre
throw some light
on the age of anxiety in this wonderfully witty show＃
I laughed until
I cried.§ 每 Lynn Gardner, The Guardian ＆Pick of the Day＊
※this deft three-hander boasts the spot-on verbal and physical wit of a theatrical precision instrument＃Hysteria is a rib and mind-tickling delight§ - The Times
※The wordplay is as nifty as the body language 每 and so well done that, even as you howl with laughter, you can＊t help but feel the edge of genuine anguish that underlies the comedy cantrips.＊§ - The Herald
※Painfully real and very, very slick, the hilarious Hysteria deserves to win Inspector Sands and Stamping Ground a raft of new fans§ - The Metro
※..it is almost impossible to do justice to the fine intricacies of this play. A charming and quite frankly hilarious blend of modern day mania and cringe comedy, ＆Hysteria＊ combines a strong plot with extraordinary and slightly deranged performances from a symbiotic trio. This really is side-splittingly magical and something quite special.§ -Three Weeks
※This is a remarkable show.. the dialogue is witty, intelligent and the comedic timing perfect. The perversity of the situation is perfectly exploited. A superb production, a Fringe must.§ - Edinburgh Guide
※a funny, innovative and at times disturbing exploration of how humans hang on to their sanity.§ -The Financial Times
INSPECTOR SANDS 每
a collective of award-winning UK
artists 每 presents a brand new co-production with Stamping Ground Theatre,
whose A Quiet Afternoon received rave reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe ＊04
and beyond. From this exciting team comes Hysteria - a play about
panic, the apocalypse and table manners.
STAMPING GROUND THEATRE 每
was founded in 2004 by Artistic Director Lucinka Eisler. The company's first production was A Quiet Afternoon , a highly expressive devised piece inspired by the writing of acclaimed Czech author Bohumil Hrabal . The company took part in the Dublin Fringe Festival 2005 and has been invited to festivals in Adelaide, Armenia and Poland.
Low Life
Presented by: BLIND
SUMMIT THEATRE, UK
http://www.blindsummit.com/
Time:
7:30pm November 11(Tue)-16(Sun), 2008
Directed by: Mark Down
Puppets: Nick Barnes
Lighting design:
Fiona Simpson
Technician: Dylan Tate
Costume Advisor: Dulcie
Best
About the show:
A man dances a love＃
For puppets with hang ups and people with hangovers＃ Taking Charles
Bukowski＊s last
novel ※Pulp§ for inspiration, Low Life is an
alcohol fuelled cabaret of desperate puppetry. This is a series of
vignettes about the lives of a group of characters who frequent a seedy
downtown bar. By turns amusing and moving, we see into the lives of
action-hero plumbers, tiny detectives and lost divas, with the puppeteers
providing the narrative thread and exquisitely manipulating their
characters. Beautiful, funny, poetic, moving, gin-loaded, this is a world
where puppetry meets Tom Waits.
Low Life premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe 2005, and sold out for three weeks as part of the London International Mime Festival 2006 at BAC. It was shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award in Edinburgh, and was Time Out Critic＊s Choice weeks running in London.
Review:
"Mad, bad and
beautiful in equal measure＃A smart, lively young company bringing real
verve to the art form" -The Guardian
"Stories...brought to quite stunning animated life by the gorgeous puppets of Blind Summit Theatre" -Time Out Critic's Choice
?※If puppetry is ever to be the new rock＊n＊roll, these animators may well be its front men.§ - Time Out
※Welcome to the Low Life cabaret, down here where puppets live
alongside people＃§
- SAMPLE COPY
BLIND SUMMIT THEATRE -
Blind
Summit was founded in 1997 by Nick Barnes and Mark Down to make new plays
with puppets for adult audiences. Blind Summit aims to challenge people's
attitudes to puppetry, seeing puppetry as radical part of the reinvention
of theatre in our time. Their puppets are modern and their shows tackle
contemporary issues that concern us.
Blind Summit use a unique style of Bunraku inspired puppetry, where the puppets interact with the performers, exposing the complexities of the relationship between puppeteer and puppet.
Blind Summit has toured nationally and internationally, including collaboration with Anthony Minghella to make the puppetry for his Olivier Award winning production of Madam Butterfly for the English National Opera, The Lithuanian National Opera and The Metropolitan Opera, House in New York.
It Is Like It Ought To Be: A
Pastoral
Presented by UNIVITED GUESTS THEATRE,
UK
http://www.uninvited-guests.net/
http://www.fueltheatre.com/
Time:
7:30pm November 18(Tue)-23(Sun), 2008
Devised and performed by
Neil Callaghan,
Richard Dufty, Catherine Dyson,Lewis Gibson, and Simone
Kenyon.
Directed by Paul Clarke
Music/Sound design by Lewis
Gibson
Produced by Fuel
Photography by: Hannah Chiswell and Ben
Pacey
About the show:
In It
Is like It Ought to Be: a Pastoral, Uninvited Guests seek to found
Arcadia in the theatre, a rural idyll amongst the city＊s hubbub. They
invent fake songs and fake dances for our green and plastic land. In the
guise of some ragtag band, they declaim hip Romantic poetry, conjure epic
landscapes and attempt a return to some simpler life, a golden age. They
give thanks for what we＊ve got, in a world in moral freefall, and offer up
prayers to make better please, make better.
On a stage littered with rustic paraphernalia, fake flora and fauna and assorted bits of technical equipment, pictures and atmospheres of pre-industrial rural bliss are studiously built up and celebrated, then beautifully subverted and undermined as the theatre temporarily becomes a clearing in the urban forest.
Press
Review:
※Voyeuristic, intrusive and illicit, the group
claim to be suffering from a kind of amnesia which forces them to live
their lives through others§ i-D Magazine
?※An abundance of intellect and a sharp performance style§ - The Guardian
※A thrilling and disconcerting performance: Visceral and cerebral, allowing the audience to experience the fault lines between experienced and performed violence§ - Total Theatre
Audience
Quote:
※Really has inspired me. I loved it.§
※Excellent. Shocking. Thought provoking. Wonderful use of physicality. Quality.§
※The original sound effects were very well executed and I found the whole piece unique and thought provoking.§
※I felt physically sick, but that is a compliment. Witty, moving, shocking and great use of sound.§
UNIVITED GUESTS THEATRE -
Bristol-based Uninvited Guests formed in 1998 and have toured work
widely. The company makes entertaining and provocative performance that
tries to make sense of our media-saturated culture, combining high tech
with low tech, the visceral with the virtual. Their work attempts to
represent contemporary reality, in which virtual interactions and memories
of TV or movies are as much part of our experience as intimate dialogues
with lovers. Uninvited Guests work in various contexts and constellations,
focusing mainly on performance, but also making installation and digital
media. Previous projects include Guest House, Film, Offline, Live Chat,
Schlock, and Aftermath.
Here＊s what the press have said about previous Uninvited Guests work:
※An abundance of intellect and a sharp performance style.§ - The Guardian
※Thrilling and disconcerting＃ both visceral and cerebral＃§ - Total Theatre
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The End of Everything Ever
Presented by NEW INTERNATIONAL ENCOUNTER, UK
http://www.nie.cz/
Supported by Arts Council England and Norsk Kulturrad'
Time: 7:30pm November 25(Tue)-30(Sun),
2008
Director: Alex Byrne
About the show:
Telling
the story of the kinder transport 每 the mass evacuation to Britain of
approximately 10,000 German Jewish children in the early years of World
Warｊ- the show follows the journey of six-year-old Agata who, tired and
hungry on the train from Germany ,chews on the paper name tag tied around
her neck and erases any chance of getting back home again. Featuring a
five-piece band, multiple languages, and an array of theatrical styles,
NIE shines a light onto one of the survival, love and hope. Vibrantly
staged and emotionally engaging, The end of Everything Ever is an
accessible and poignant retelling of one of the saddest stories in recent
European history 每 the children caught up in the Nazi holocaust.
Review:
※Can leave you
in that wonderful, poignant no-man＊s land between laughter and outrage.§ -
Time Out
※It begins with music that makes you want to dance and ends in a silence so loud you wish you could turn it down.§ 每 The Guardian
NEW INTERNATIONAL ENCOUNTER 每
New International Encounter (NIE) brings together theatre makers from different European countries and traditions to tell stories that focus on episodes that have shaped recent European history. Weaving together live music, physical action, and a multitude of languages, the company won awards at last year＊s Edinburgh Fringe for Past Half Remembered, the second in a trilogy of shows of which The end of Everything Ever is the last.