Whirlwind Cultural Expedition

For the last few days I have been travelling round the country .... well round the South of England, trying to make the most of some of the theatre etc. going on.
On Wednesday night I made a trip up to London to go and see the Arts Ed production of Mike Bartlett's '13', primarily with a view to take photos of the set for my portfolio. It was a bit of a nightmare getting there in the extreme heat and traffic, and I was deeply dismayed when I was forbidden from taking photos apart from in the interval and at the end (when the lights were down anyway- boo!), but luckily it was a good production and therefore meant that it wasn't a wasted trip. It was good to see the play again and I got a couple of blurry photos of my painting in situ.. still not happy with it. It was interesting to see the set tackled in a much more naturalistic way compared to the version at the National... which is odd because when I was building the set, it felt anything but naturalistic. It was well directed and I think the casting and acting were superb- very high standard, I hope Much Ado can achieve the same.
 One positive thing that I did get, was the name of the person to contact at Arts Ed about the possibility of getting my hands on the photos taken by the professional photographer during the dress rehearsals. So I will follow that-up shortly.

I then travelled from London to Brighton  in order to catch some of the Brighton Festival which ALAS, always falls on either exams or deadlines.
A few years ago I saw the most amazing piece of theatre I think I have ever seen. It was by a company called 'Dreamthinkspeak' who took over an old Co-op building as part of the festival, and turned it into the most amazing site-specific performance- based on Chekov's The Cherry Orchard- called 'Before I Sleep'. It was a promenade piece and took us a good 3 hours to explore it all, it was very reminiscent of 'Punch Drunk' and the use of such a huge space was exemplary.

The same company were back again this year with an adaptation of Hamlet in a large warehouse in Shoreham, and so I immediately booked tickets when the came on sale- yet remained concerned as it clashed with my deadline.
The new production 'The Rest Is Silence' was interesting, and definitely worth seeing, but was certainly not in the same league as their previous show. I'm very glad to have seen it- such an interesting interpretation of Hamlet, but the site-responsive element was lost, as was the interaction with the audience. It was a stark contrast to 'Beffore I Sleep' where you were promenading round a huge space for hours, interacting with the performers, because this time all the audience were walking round a comparatively small room with screens separating the actors from the audience. It's a shame that I didn't see it in time to write about it in my POP essay because the whole show was very reliant on technology: the walls were lined with mirrored screens each with 3 functions: 1.a mirror, 2. a transparent screen behind which the scene would take place, 3. an opaque screen for video projections. At first I decided I didn't really like the screens, it upset my a bit that I was seeing live performance but it felt almost as if I was watching tv, because there were these screens as barriers. But it was only shortly into the ice that I discovered their merit and completely changed my view on them. The screens enable you to get closer than ever before to the actors. For example, it was incredible, when Hamlet goes on an insane solitary rampage in his room, that instead of having this distance between the actor and the audience- as in conventional theatre- my face was literally all of about 7cm from his- separated by this screen- incredible! There were so many other interesting features, but given its slight irrelevance to Much Ado, I will skip over my 'full review' haha.

Then to top-off my cultural excursion, I went to the U.K's oldest cinema (and incidentally my favourite) The Duke of Yorks in Brighton, and watched the new Wes Anderson film 'Moonrise Kingdom' which was so beautiful it hurt. There were a few costume continuity errors, but I can let that slide because the attention to detail in all the set and costume and props was so mind-blowingly aesthetic and glorious. Quintessentially Wes Anderson, but one of his best so far.

A thoroughly productive few days in terms of cultural-enrichment, but a thoroughly unproductive few days in terms of getting back on track with 'Much Ado'.... oh well, I guess it's just as important to inform my work with contextual research as it is to do the work itself... I hope....