White Rabbit, March Hare, Cheshire Cat

Usually at the beginning of the month we say WHITE RABBIT, WHITE RABBIT, WHITE RABBIT. But this month it’s WHITE .RABBIT, MARCH HARE, CHESHIRE CAT, because a production of Alice in Wonderland will be staged. Actors are assigned roles according to their personalities. So far we have White Rabbit as himself, a famous cricketer as March Hare (a teatime companion) and “the English” as Cheshire Cat (who is given to vanishing and suddenly reappearing). Auditions for other roles are continuing. Rehearsals will be held through the summer, production opening in the autumn.

Faust Revisited

From 1971

Sebastian: When we were students, twelve of us, living in an old rambling house. There was a large room which served well for parties. And one of the residents rewrote a play, Faust. Based on his last hour before the devil came to take him. I just found the script..

Vivienne: Dramatic.

Give me more time!

Sebastian: It was. Declamatory, as befits a conversation between a man who has an hour to live and the devil. “I need more time. I pray you, beseech you, plead with you, grant Faustus more time.” That was fifty years ago. 

Vivienne: I wonder where he is now.

Sebastian: I did meet him a few times over the years. But the drama he was writing about invaded his personality. His mellow nature became unpredictable, angry and his humor turned even darker. It’s as if he knew the devil was shadowing him and time was running out..

Vivienne: Dramatists beware. 

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Voice-over

It was a brave declamatory script. Elizabethan in voice. The performance featured guttering candles and dry ice smoking on the floor. The writer-director was gifted but he walked away from literature by moving to Australia to dig for opals in the outback. He found some and followed a path challenging all as he stamped his way through a brave and somewhat uncompromising life.

A TED-type talk: a performed presentation

After the plenary…

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Anika: Marvellous. He didn’t read a single word. Just talked.

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Markus: And the PPT slides. What images. Dozens of them.

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Anika: So there you have it. He’d memorized his talk. A performance against the backdrop of a cascade of brilliant visuals.

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Markus: Like theater. Or a movie.

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Anika: Why can’t academics all present like that.

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Source: The Best Schools

Markus: It’s called “reading a paper”. Seems they don’t know how to talk, or even read.

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Anika: I wonder how much coaching presenters receive before doing a TED talk?

__________

Voice-over

Academic conference presentations. Head down over a script, gabbling or mumbling. A very few can passably read as if they were a radio broadcaster. Even fewer can actually perform their script. Tribute to the Henry Jenkins plenary at NECS on 180627.

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British film: National Theatre: Hedda Gabler

Gender issues or psychological profile?

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Francesca: An amazing, wrenching performance by Ruth Wilson in Hedda Gabler, left you wondering if she was she highlighting gender discrimination, or slipping in and out of madness?

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Henri: Many of us enter the shadows of insanity now and then. Some stay there longer than others. Ibsen knew that about himself.

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Photo: Jan Versweyveld

Francesca: She was trapped.

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Henri: So she said. But in a modern context, and Ivo had made it a modern treatment, there are alternatives to being trapped.

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Francesca: So you’re saying it was more of a story of mental illness?

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Henri: To a lesser extent we all think about and even sometimes do the things that Hedda did. She felt trapped, she felt powerless, she was jealous. It was the extremes she went to that made us think she was overreaching and overreacting. Taunting Thea. Sabotaging Eilert’s recovery from alcoholism. Suggesting he commit suicide by giving him a gun. Burning his manuscript.

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Francesca: Was she rational in these acts? Did she see it as important to her own survival?

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Henri: Possibly. But she was also unpredictably irrational. Smashing and strewing the flowers. Stapling them to the walls. No one saw her end coming. I see it as more about self-destruction and mental instability than just gender.

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Francesca: Chicken or the egg?

___________

Voice-over

This was no film of a theatrical performance shot by a videocam stuck in a corner of the theatre. The towercam swoops, the zoom focuses in on close-ups, the voices of the audience come from all around, an interview with director and cast is cleverly placed in the interval break film. In some ways, better than being in a cheap seat at the theatre. What a way to see a play. A must-see.

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