Notes for Island @ Theatre with Anatoly

* 2008 -- pomo.vtheatre.net picasa albums R/G are Dead [ Theatre UAF'08 ] -- see t-blog

[ Project Utopia 2009 ] Island *

2007 thoughts : R/G are Dead -- I'm directing one play! intro

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Summary

I made the Island pages, when I wanted to have my online portfolio. It was long ago....

Notes

... Athol Fugard's The Island, set on South Africa's notorius Robben Island prison which held Nelson Mandela for 17 years until 1990, is considered one of the most significant plays of the thwentieth century.
It tells the story of two prisoners labouring in a quarry by day and rehearsing for the prison concert scenes from Sophocles' Antigone in their cells at night.

AC Grayling at the Online Review London reviews the 2002 performance of The Island at the Old Vic.
“Theatre's weapons of wit and poignancy are powerfully deployed here by Kani and Ntshona, whose personalities are now indistinguishable from this play and its outstanding commentary on the sufferings of wronged humanity. When they first performed ‘The Island’ their purpose was to raise the world against apartheid. Now the play is an act of witness, of historical record, of keeping very green the memory of what racism and injustice can do….”

Monologue Study: 1 101 * 2 comedy * 3 drama *

2006 - 2007

Notes

PHOTOS 1996

QUESTIONS: Political theatre? Now when the apartheid is over, what is this play about?
Done: "man is an island" -- today he is an archipelago. Two as One. One as Two, as many.
Grotovsky and Fugard (and Artaud?). Eating, drinking, washing as rituals.
Arena stage. Poor Theatre.
TIME: now? 1973?
Pre-show music -- reggae?
Night sounds: knocks, whispers, cries.
1. VOICES from behind the walls, other prisoners. Screams. Knocking on the floor, walls. Guards = voices, laughter. The shadows.
2. DREAMING: The world outside the prison -- music. Plus, children chorus (live?): Siyahamba. Two sisters, Ismene and Antigony, enter men's dreams. Night, darkness, freedom. Night is tender, the rest from life.
VISIONS (DAYMARES):
Their day sounds. Strong search light, during the day; a siren, dogs, whistles, commands. Prison lights from the watch tower. Handcuffed together.
Images: sand, water and -- women as prayers.
South African language (see "South African Suite"). Drums.
Chalk on black floor -- pictures. Rags.
...
A PLACE WITH THE PIGS
    
     Athol Fugard's 1987 play was based on the true story of a Russian
     army deserter who was discovered in a pig sty in 1985, having holed
     up there for 44 years; in Fugard's hands it became a parable about
     freedom. Pavel, paralysed and imprisoned by rooting in the trough of
     his own guilt and fear, can only reclaim his humanity by letting it,
     and his pigs, go, so ending "decades of mutual filth and abuse".
     
     On a circle of corrugated iron and clapboard, with pigs snuffling at
     close quarters, his journey into madness and torment, where the only
     two certainties are "pigshit and time", is manically charted by
     Gerry Mulgrew, diving into the slime in self loathing and disgust.
     Kenneth Glenaan's production combines menace, a Pythonesque
     violence, and a knockabout jauntiness. With Mulgrew's committed
     performance, and that from Gerda Stevenson as his long suffering
     wife, the play is given a vigorous airing by the Communicado
     company.
     
     Box office: 0131 228 1404
     Traverse
     
     Mark Cook
     
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Fugard pages @ script.vtheatre.net

Photos by Kade and Tara, see Theatre UAF

Summary

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