Precisely timed to chime with World Press Photo, La Treva (Time Stands Still) is a Catalan-language version of Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright Donald Margulies‘ stage drama, in which two veteran journalists try to make peace with their homebody selves when trauma forces them to return to Brooklyn from the war in Iraq. Sarah (Clara Segura)… Read more »
Sci-fi thriller The Nether (L’inframón), by American playwright Jennifer Haley, is back at Teatre Lliure in Gràcia this autumn after a spell at the Grec Festival in July. The contemporary play, brought to the Catalan stage under the direction of Juan Carlos Martel Bayod, deals with portentous, worrying themes; questioning the sanctity of the virtual realm as a ‘safe… Read more »
No indignity is spared in this NTGent production of Platonov, directed by the Belgian theatre and film director Luk Perceval. Platonov (its English-given title) is a 105-minute adaptation of an unwieldy early play by Anton Chekhov, written by the Russian between the ages of 18 and 21. Completed in 1878 and with a playtime of around… Read more »
Four women gather in a luxurious residence in an unknown state in civil war. It’s the home of Micheleine and her absent husband, ‘an important man’, whom Katheryn, a foreign photojournalist, has come to shoot. They wait with Katheryn’s young guide and translator Gilma, a hungry woman with greasy fingers, deep pockets and shoes that mud… Read more »
Faithful to the alluring yet foreboding atmosphere of the original novel by Louis Couperus, the Ivo van Hove / Toneelgroep Amsterdam stage production of De stille kracht (The Hidden Force) conjures up the colonial world of the Dutch East Indies as an opulent but decaying paradise, battered by the odd monsoon. The year is 1900, and 100 years… Read more »
The award-winning South African performance artist and choreographer Mamela Nyamza is the solo dancer in Hatched 2015, a three-screen film installation that she co-directs with the video artist and painter Robyn Denny. The piece is on display at Madrid’s SlowTrack Gallery (9th June to 15th July) in an exhibition curated by Beathur Mgoza Baker, that… Read more »
Place yourself in Belfast in 2009. Two middle-aged Nordies meet in a pub in the jittery presence of a Polish barman. Their lives are linked by a bomb that one threw there, in 1974, at the height of The Troubles. It blew 6 men up, some literally to bits – one of them was the… Read more »
Making Africa: A Continent of Contemporary Design, an exhibition currently at Barcelona’s CCCB, is the vibrant, visual manifestation of an extensive, on-going research project that brings together the work of 120 artists and designers from all over the continent. Curated by Amelie Klein of the Vitra Design Museum in Germany, the show was put together under… Read more »
Lali Ayguadé, the acclaimed Barcelona-born dancer-turned-choreographer, brings her first full-length dance production Kokoro to Leicester’s Curve Theatre this Tuesday, January 26th. The piece offers a variation on a theme explored by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui in Fractus: how, in a world divided into societies built for individuals, can we confront the pressing need to adapt, to… Read more »
A middle-aged, peroxide blonde Helen of Troy staggers into a neon-lit bar and pours herself a drink. So begins the Spanish-language play Juicio a una Zorra, a powerful and passionate monologue delivered by acclaimed actress Carmen Machi (Hable con Ella, Abrazos Rotos), on at Teatre Goya (Barcelona) from 19th – 31st January 2016. Director Miguel Del Arco wrote the piece to give… Read more »
