Titus Andronicus - The Complete Works Tabletop Shakespeare at Home - Forced Entertainment

I watched this via Forced Entertainment’s Youtube channel - the Complete Works Tabletop Edition is available through November 30th.

I’ll admit it: i love the ridiculousness of Jacobean drama. I find it so much more fun and silly than the more serious and self important poetry of the Elizabethan period. I love to think about ways to stage these ridiculous scenes, the gory fights and tricks on one’s enemy.

What was best about the Forced Entertainment Tabletop version is that really, we just got those best bits - the crappy way these humans behave to one another, the silliness of revenge. Despite the serious subject matter I found myself laughing out loud at the absurdity of several moments — moments that would be performed with pathos by a human, but when represented by a goblet or a beer bottle, are revealed for their triviality. Perhaps even the triviality of the supposed “big” moments in theatre as a whole, and even more so, of humans in general, in this year when really no one is thriving, but we are all just working to stay alive.

I was on a panel earlier this year, where I was probably in the minority as someone who think that the stories are what are exciting in Shakespeare. I mean yeah, the language is beautiful but sometimes it is just a lot. In that discussion, I tried to raise this series as an example of reasons people shouldn’t be intimidated by Shakespeare, but rather embrace the possibilities of the text, the spaces in between what is written down and what we see.

Anyway, if you love stories and objects and people talking, I strongly recommend checking out at least one of the Tabletop Complete works. They are available through November 30th and might just help you divorce yourself from all those feelings of inferiority to the language or story or magnitude of Shakespeare, and remind you that he was just a dude, re-telling some stories.

review. My Arm by Tim Crouch @ Harbourfront Centre World Stage Redux

"No one ever asked me to take my arm down."

My Arm is the first play Crouch wrote, and it is filled with a sense of playfulness that is difficult to articulate. Told by one performer (Crouch) with the aid of every day objects collected from the audience, and the use of a doll, and a video camera, My Arm follows the story of a young boy whose determination sets the course of his life. Always speaking in the first person, it is the source of some enjoyable humour when the character's described actions or appearance are so clearly at odds with the performer we see in front of us. 

Crouch's choice to not "act" but rather "tell" the story renders the piece far more theatrical than it would be were the same story realized through traditional theatrical "embodiment". Yet Crouch tells the story with more intense focus and "liveness" (that much debated concept in Toronto theatres these days) than most other actors I can think of in recent memory. 

The play itself raises a multitude of questions about ethics in art. Of course, demanding we ask ourselves what is art versus artifice (or scam?), but also when the characters in the story begin marking art, it demands questions of responsibility and ethics in relationship to a subject. When representing someone in your work without their knowledge, when drawing them or representing their "story" in your work, when offering the subject funds for their representation when it is clear no other choice is feasible, and even further, the ethics of responsibility to a child or loved one. This is all juxtaposed with the careful and specific manner in which Crouch requests objects from the audience to use in the performance, both in his spoken text, and in the program note. 

Crouch is a masterful storyteller, managing immense pauses, improvised object theatre, all while keeping the audience utterly captivated while he plays with these ideas and our imaginations. 

I have many more thoughts on this piece, and will soon share them.  

review. Complete Works -- Richard II @ TheaterFestival Basel, Forced Entertainment (live stream)

UK company Forced Entertainment have, in recent years, leveraged technology far more creatively than many companies, and with a populist twist. Rather than the flashy (and pricey!) live stream performances to Cineplexes around the world a la West End and NT Productions, Forced have been providing their performances via free of charge live stream. This, of course, works fittingly with the durational nature of their work -- I can't imagine a Cineplex giving up 24 hours in one of their cinemas. But the result is that this highly unique work can make its way to North American audiences. The feed of their Complete Works -- a Table Top storytelling performance of the Complete Works of Shakespeare -- is available until September 9th streaming from TheaterFestival Basel in Switzerland at this link. 

So...what is it? Well, lets delve in to their Richard II for a sampling. Told with a single performer in a storytelling format, Richard II employs the use of every day objects one might find at a bar to create the characters of the story of the ineffective English King who gave up his throne to Henry Bollingbroke. It sounds, in premise, silly -- how can a bottle of Ballantyne's represent an English King? How can tiny salt shakers represent his ill advised friends, Bushy, Baggot, and Greene? Well in the hands of a truly captivating storyteller, able to whittle down the story to the key plot points and perspectives while imbuing these seemingly arbitrary objects with the emotions of the story, it is truly successful. 

The objects begin feeling ordinary, but quickly enjoy significance. It is a demonstration of the power of semiotics in storytelling -- that objects  we present on stage are steeped with meaning because we GIVE them meaning simply by touching them in this lit space. And the objects take on the power of the story so beautifully that by time the play ends, and Bollingbroke stands over Richard's body -- one alcohol bottle standing up, the other tipped over -- we feel the tragedy of this fallen King with such force, almost more so than we would seeing actors on a stage. 

I STRONGLY recommend trying one out over the next few days.