This year for the SGCNZ Shakespeare Festival, I directed a sequence from “Titus Andronicus”. This is what I was thinking, and how it went in the long run, with video attached. The thing about Titus is that it is a very, very, very bloody play. It features everything horrid that you can cram into a play – murder, revenge, war, rape, cannibalism…. you know. The … Continue reading Performing Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus
This year we participated in the Write for Rights event from Amnesty International. Our aim was to help highlight the issues surrounding illegal timber poaching in Madagascar and the wrongful imprisonment of Clovis. So we wrote and performed a play, loosely connected to Dr Seuss’s “The Lorax”, using elements of Brecht and Commedia in performance. Here is the play live: Continue reading Amnesty International – Write for Rights – I speak for the trees
When dealing with Epic Theatre and Brecht, Verfremdungseffeckt or the distancing effect becomes an interesting point to make. Basically the whole concept is about connecting to the message rather than connecting to the character. This site here has an awesome description of Verfremdungseffeckt. Here is a video of my students experimenting with “The Visions of Simone Machard” using Verfremdungseffeckt in an Epic style. Continue reading Verfremdungseffeckt in practise
I love Brecht. This year instead of looking at one of his more well known plays, we took a dive into a rarely performed play – “The Visions of Simone Machard”. The basic storyline is of a young girl in France during the Nazi occupation, who has visions of Joan of Arc, and tries to save her brother, and her country. I cannot recommend the … Continue reading The Visions of Simone Machard – Bertolt Brecht
Beyond Theatre 