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Post by londonpostie on Dec 9, 2022 20:29:28 GMT
A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction - main stage of the Barbican.
Wed 26—Sat 29 April
Thought I'd offer a heads up given the first three names on the team sheet each have a following, and it only runs for 5 shifts. It is a one woman show.
Tickets are reasonably priced, though many are tagged as 'partially restricted view of the stage'
US writer hasn't done a huge amount to date so obv. a big investment in her.
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Post by theoracle on Apr 28, 2023 22:15:22 GMT
I really enjoyed this tonight - Lydia West's stage debut was worth the wait and she was as brilliant as ever. When she comes on as Naomi, I needed to check in with myself if it was her or "Naomi", she's that convincing. I'd be intrigued to see how this show works on tour with another performer, set etc. For some, this show I guess might come across a bit preachy but I think this stuff needs to be preached. Katie Mitchell did a Q&A afterwards and there was a cliamte sceptic on the front row who attacked her for not pointing towards solutions in the play but she smartly defended herself by saying she didn't write it but recognised that lots of young people felt the way Miranda does in her writing. Very glad I went to this - only an hour or so and left feeling very powerfully moved.
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Post by cavocado on Apr 29, 2023 10:48:25 GMT
I was there last night and really wanted to enjoy this, but I had the opposite reaction to theoracle and just found it very dull. It was basically an hour-long talk about climate change by a thinly-developed character who mentions a few of her friends and relatives to add a little bit of human narrative (as opposed to the drama that is mass extinction). Otherwise it was like watching a student reading out an essay with some clumsy audience participation (we all had to wave our arms around like early living forms and put up our hands if we'd had a good day, then some people went on stage and pretended to be a forest). In the Q&A afterwards Katie Mitchell said that it aimed to make the data more accessible, but it didn't achieve that for me. I imagine most people motivated enough to go to a play about climate change have read/watched plenty of actual scientists talking about the data, and are already invested. It's preaching to the converted, so what is the point of giving us something we'll already have heard in various forms many times already? It might be different if there were climate sceptics in the audience, or even people who are just apathetic or not aware that it will affect them, but why would they buy tickets? And even then, it wasn't an interesting or engaging way to present the info. The guy who asked a question wasn't a climate sceptic, he just asked why the piece offered no solutions. Fair enough, it's not a paticularly good question (why does theatre needs to offer solutions? They ARE offering solutions to the practical problem of how to make touring theatre more sustainable, and that was interesting), but I didn't hear anything that suggested he was querying the data. I don't think this piece of writing was a play. There was no real dramatisation or development of character and narrative, and the creativity was mostly technical - having cyclists on stage generating the lighting, etc. In the Q&A Katie Mitchell mentioned a few times that her work on sustainability is 'untheatrical'. To me that's a bad thing. I wondered if there was a bigger point being made about destroying life on earth also meaning the destruction of creativity, art and culture, but I think that's a stretch. Most of the people around me gave half-hearted applause at the end, so I don't think I was alone in finding it dull. But I do applaud Katie Mitchell for trying to find practical solutions to the technical challenges of making touring theatre sustainable (and for giving up flying). |
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