Amateur theatre, unbound by commercial constraints, breaks new ground. It takes you to the high country of imagination and innovation. It happened in Monaco when 24 amateur troupes from five continents gathered in the Principality, at the end of August, for the quadriennial Mondial du Théâtre.
The iconic, Hungarian-born director, Alexander Korda, once observed that it isn’t enough to be Hungarian, ‘you have to have talent’. The Kompania Theatre Studio of Budapest had both, in spades. The young troupe’s dramatisation of the Shakespearean classic, Romeo and Juliet, was in the daringly-original language of music and modern dance in which traditional male and female gestures were interchanged. Proving dance doesn’t have to be abstract and decentralised to be modern. It is at its most exciting when it blends both contemporary and narrative.
Berlin’s Dokumentartheatre was in a class of its own: the theatre was born to research and produce life stories. Before the curtain went up on Dancer Behind Barbed Wire, the true story of Ukrainian ballerina Alla Rakitjanskaia, the director wished the Mondial audience an ‘intense evening’ and ‘deep reflection’. It was one of several performances that brought audiences to their feet in a thunder of applause.
The Wisconsin Heider Center for the Arts, which brought Cotton Patch Gospel to Monaco, dared to set the Gospels of Matthew and John in modern, rural Georgia and perform it to a background of country music. Jesus was born behind a motel, received a magi gift of a gold credit card and was lynched by the Klu Klux Klan.
Nobody missed the brilliantly-conveyed message of the Maguey players from Peru who drew audiences into the rain forest with haunting music played on a series of wind, string and percussion instruments, with dazzling flora, ingeniously-created fauna and the stunning performance of a principal actress who, for an entire hour, held spectators in thrall to the forest’s beauty and the threats to its existence. Spain’s La Galerna troupe tackled the grimly, all-grey, The Maids, written by the French playwright Jean Genet, and turned it into a black and red drama that might have been written in the Spanish Basque country.
French actor/ director Jacques Weber, who visited the Mondial, declared that “without amateur theatre there would be no innovation.” The pertinent word is amateur, in its original sense: one who cultivates an art for the love of it.
The iconic, Hungarian-born director, Alexander Korda, once observed that it isn’t enough to be Hungarian, ‘you have to have talent’. The Kompania Theatre Studio of Budapest had both, in spades. The young troupe’s dramatisation of the Shakespearean classic, Romeo and Juliet, was in the daringly-original language of music and modern dance in which traditional male and female gestures were interchanged. Proving dance doesn’t have to be abstract and decentralised to be modern. It is at its most exciting when it blends both contemporary and narrative.
Berlin’s Dokumentartheatre was in a class of its own: the theatre was born to research and produce life stories. Before the curtain went up on Dancer Behind Barbed Wire, the true story of Ukrainian ballerina Alla Rakitjanskaia, the director wished the Mondial audience an ‘intense evening’ and ‘deep reflection’. It was one of several performances that brought audiences to their feet in a thunder of applause.
The Wisconsin Heider Center for the Arts, which brought Cotton Patch Gospel to Monaco, dared to set the Gospels of Matthew and John in modern, rural Georgia and perform it to a background of country music. Jesus was born behind a motel, received a magi gift of a gold credit card and was lynched by the Klu Klux Klan.
Nobody missed the brilliantly-conveyed message of the Maguey players from Peru who drew audiences into the rain forest with haunting music played on a series of wind, string and percussion instruments, with dazzling flora, ingeniously-created fauna and the stunning performance of a principal actress who, for an entire hour, held spectators in thrall to the forest’s beauty and the threats to its existence. Spain’s La Galerna troupe tackled the grimly, all-grey, The Maids, written by the French playwright Jean Genet, and turned it into a black and red drama that might have been written in the Spanish Basque country.
French actor/ director Jacques Weber, who visited the Mondial, declared that “without amateur theatre there would be no innovation.” The pertinent word is amateur, in its original sense: one who cultivates an art for the love of it.
Posted by Lois Bolton, on Wednesday September 2, 2009 at 16:31
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