And now, for something completely different
Nico on Aug 23 2006 at 7:39 am | Filed under: General Theatre
The highlight of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
It’s good to know what theatre in the world is doing — we sometimes get so completely wrapped up in our own little worlds. And besides, the Fringe isn’t totally strange to Bahamian theatre, considering that You Can Lead A Horse To Water, No Seeds in Babylon, and Music of The Bahamas played there in 1991.
Here’s an excerpt:
The daring theatricality of Iraq War drama ‘Black Watch’ has made it the hit of the festival, but until the first preview its creators were terrified it wouldn’t work.
…
Though it sounds obvious, it’s worth spelling out that the key component of Black Watch’s success is its daring theatricality. The script, based on informal conversations Burke had with half a dozen ex-squaddies earlier this year in Fife, didn’t fall into a clear shape until the material came into contact with the 10-strong company in rehearsal, during which a whole range of other expressive elements – dance, movement, song and video – were also brought into play.
The result has been a rare example of “total theatre”. Every aspect of the show’s presentational style has, like the creative team behind it, pulled together to tell the story. Six weeks’ intensive sweat and toil has produced a visceral evocation of life for members of the Black Watch during and after their disillusioning operations in Iraq in late 2004 when they were deployed within the “Sunni Triangle”, at the cost of five lives.
…
In order to ensure that no visual detail could be faulted, Hoggett and the actors underwent punishing training sessions at the hands of a former regimental sergeant-major. At the same time as toughening up the cast, the challenge was to find a non-naturalistic means to express their subjects’ fears and feelings. Sometimes the process was agonisingly slow. The evocation of a suicide car-bomb attack went through 20 different versions to arrive at a due sense of gravity and gravitas. At other times, as with the poignant “letters from home” section, the men silently performing indecipherable, ritualistic gestures, the end-result was fashioned in a single session.
…”One of the men who’d helped us came up afterwards. It had been hard for him to watch because three of his pals died. He was pretty shaken up. He said, ‘I didn’t think anybody cared about us.’ If nothing else, I think we’ve shown them that people do care. That’s good enough for me.”
–Telegraph.co.uk
Our dream: the time when The Bahamas will have a National Theatre that can go beyond the tried-and-true satirical skit and push the boundaries of theatre too.
