DramaFest - weirdness galore
Last night, Mike and I went to one of the DramaFest 2004 sessions at St. James Cavalier. There are 9 plays in all, and you pay Lm2 to watch a session of two or three plays.
We went to the 9:30pm session, a block of three plays, because one of the secretaries at work wrote one of these plays :-)
Anyway, some of it was funny and a lot of it was downright weird, but I guess that's art for you.
The first play, "The Broken Plate" performed by the group "Aleatea", was about a King, his Queen, an Oracle-type character, and their butler. It was about death and dying, and there was a LOT of dust sprinkled and flung around the stage. There was a lot of gymnastics going on (some exceedingly weird positions) and this play included my favourite lines of the evening: the king and queen are in their death throes, and the butler asks the oracle if she would like to live by drinking some water, or die by inhaling more dust.
She responds: Choices? Damn! Well it would be a shame to have so much of this toxic substance and let it go to waste... and since my friends are having such fun dying *looks at king and queen writhing* I think I'll join them. *knocks sunglasses onto face and buries face in dust*
Lol...
The second play, "AnoCato" (means up and down in Greek) and performed by "StageBreeze" was written by my friend. Had some cool dance sequences and, like the other plays, was the kind of thing you only understand (if at all!) at the very end. Basically it was about a female demon/servant of evil, and a male angel/servant of good, and they both go after people to win them over to their side.
This one was the most entertaining, with a brilliant performance by the actress playing the demon :-) and a lot of humour (some of it unfortunately dirty) written in. One of the characters was Maltese-speaking but switched to broken English when he thought that the servant-of-good was an english-language student - it was hilarious! Not as much gymnastics as the first play :-)
Then the third play, "Pollen" performed by "Du'", was probably the weirdest one - it didn't have a plot or storyline as such, but a series of short scenes. It was about two sisters, who are constantly trying to get the upper hand over each other and seem extremely passive-aggressive. Some strange stuff going on too... one thing that stuck out was that one of the scenes was pre-recorded and then projected onto the floor of the stage for us to view. I thought that was really cool. It works really well for that setting - a theatre-in-the-round that was installed inside an old water cistern - because everyone can see the floor. In a normal theatre, they would have had to project onto a vertical screen on the stage and it wouldn't have been so dramatic.
Anyway, Mike and I had plenty to talk about afterwards but we gave up trying to understand it all! It was fun though.
Update: I was informed this morning that the writing of "AnoCato" was in fact a collaboration between two people - the abovementioned secretary and the person who played the part of the demon in the play. I was asked to amend this post accordingly - consider it amended.
25/8/04
We went to the 9:30pm session, a block of three plays, because one of the secretaries at work wrote one of these plays :-)
Anyway, some of it was funny and a lot of it was downright weird, but I guess that's art for you.
The first play, "The Broken Plate" performed by the group "Aleatea", was about a King, his Queen, an Oracle-type character, and their butler. It was about death and dying, and there was a LOT of dust sprinkled and flung around the stage. There was a lot of gymnastics going on (some exceedingly weird positions) and this play included my favourite lines of the evening: the king and queen are in their death throes, and the butler asks the oracle if she would like to live by drinking some water, or die by inhaling more dust.
She responds: Choices? Damn! Well it would be a shame to have so much of this toxic substance and let it go to waste... and since my friends are having such fun dying *looks at king and queen writhing* I think I'll join them. *knocks sunglasses onto face and buries face in dust*
Lol...
The second play, "AnoCato" (means up and down in Greek) and performed by "StageBreeze" was written by my friend. Had some cool dance sequences and, like the other plays, was the kind of thing you only understand (if at all!) at the very end. Basically it was about a female demon/servant of evil, and a male angel/servant of good, and they both go after people to win them over to their side.
This one was the most entertaining, with a brilliant performance by the actress playing the demon :-) and a lot of humour (some of it unfortunately dirty) written in. One of the characters was Maltese-speaking but switched to broken English when he thought that the servant-of-good was an english-language student - it was hilarious! Not as much gymnastics as the first play :-)
Then the third play, "Pollen" performed by "Du'", was probably the weirdest one - it didn't have a plot or storyline as such, but a series of short scenes. It was about two sisters, who are constantly trying to get the upper hand over each other and seem extremely passive-aggressive. Some strange stuff going on too... one thing that stuck out was that one of the scenes was pre-recorded and then projected onto the floor of the stage for us to view. I thought that was really cool. It works really well for that setting - a theatre-in-the-round that was installed inside an old water cistern - because everyone can see the floor. In a normal theatre, they would have had to project onto a vertical screen on the stage and it wouldn't have been so dramatic.
Anyway, Mike and I had plenty to talk about afterwards but we gave up trying to understand it all! It was fun though.
Update: I was informed this morning that the writing of "AnoCato" was in fact a collaboration between two people - the abovementioned secretary and the person who played the part of the demon in the play. I was asked to amend this post accordingly - consider it amended.
25/8/04