Theatre
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Edinburgh Playhouse, Tue 15-Sat 26 Feb; Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow. Mon 28 Feb-Sat 5 Mar
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But ten ,iaré. after the shov.’ opened at but tin}. l’mnt lheatre tl‘e hrodtirers tire decided it"; MN: for a change. The 1't‘«t):’> tour he'aitls the end of the
stadlun f‘J‘UHF; and a l"t)‘.(: to a more
intimate. theatre hased production. So if the hit}. hrash i?rt»'r>id{i/t(:t) know and loye. catch it \"rillii? you can. tKelly Apter.
you want one last ‘Ix of
at VlVAl, PASSING PLACES
Touring
The number of truly great contemporary Scottish plays may he on the rise. but I'd say we still haye some catching up to do after a period in the last quarter of the 20th century that saw siah hoys and hard men and not much else. Of course nowadays we are concerned With a whole different set of values. identity issues and social dilemmas. so what should he the locus of new Scottish theatre? It you think a story of two guys from a housing scheme getting chased up to Thurso by a drug dealer sounds an unlikely inclusion in the contemporany canon. the director ot Borderline's current production would wholeheartedly disagree.
‘I really think it's a modern Scottish classic.' says Anna Newell about Stephen Greenhorn's WOT Fringe hit. here reyiyed tor a tour of the country. 'It has heautiful comedy In it and heautitul hathos.’ The plotline of this “road move for the stage' has a distinctly Scottish flavour. extending beyond the recognisable place names to what Newell feels is an Important subtext of the piece. ‘I think it's a really attectmnate. gently playtul and ironic look at the Scottish psyche and the contradictions Within that.‘ says Newell. ‘So the main characters are Just two hlokes from Mothenyell who steal a surfboard and some things happen to them. I think you can become really fond of them. and empathtse with them too."
Steering clear of simply recreating the Original staging of the play rsne admits even :t she had wanted to. 'it was a while ago and my memory is really ru )bish‘l. Newell assures us that Borderline's production includes multimedia images and SOUle to capture the cinematic quality ot the piece. while still being starkly theatrical. Going to yanous places across Scotland. this run COLlld confirm the play as a modern Scottish classic. No pressure. thoogt“
guys. (Meg Watsonl
92 THE LIST Ant 7 Feb 230::
CON TEMPORARY [)ANCF
SHOBANA JEYASINGH DANCE CO Macrobert, Stirling, Thu 10 Feb; Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Sat 12 Feb
Serendipity can happen in the strangest of places - like outside a north London hairdressers. Stepping out post-haircut, choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh bumped into an old friend, with whom she had worked on her debut show in 1988 — composer Michael Nyman. Informal chat let to artistic endeavours, and 17 years after their first collaboration, Jeyasingh and
Nyman have joined forces once again to create Flicker.
Jeyasingh’s use of Indian dance form Bharata Natyam and British contemporary movement has won her copious awards and admiration south of the border. But she’s quick to point out that it’s not a ‘fusion’ of the two dance styles. ‘I don’t like the word fuse, it’s really a hybrid of both forms,’ explains Jeyasingh. ‘I see Bharata Natyam as the foundation
for my work and, just like a building, those foundations are invisible but influence everything that lies above.’
Along with Nyman’s specially commissioned score, Jeyasingh has also enlisted the services of multimedia artists Digit to create Flicker. Through a live process of ‘motion capture’, they project the dancers onto a screen, first as a series of lines, gradually turning them into recognisable shapes. It was a website studying the behaviour of honey bees that first awakened Jeyasingh‘s interest in perception. Showing the world from a bee's perspective, the site encouraged her to explore how we see things — including the ‘flickering‘ of a computer monitor.
‘We take for granted that the way we see things is the way the world is,‘ she says. ‘We don‘t think that actually, to another being in this world with different visual machinery, everything could look completely different.’ (Kelly Apter)
The Traverse producion of Passing Places, 1997
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