Autumn

Zelda 

by Louisa Harding in Luzia

.... went through a massive Luzia phase a while ago which is a knitting special effect that also happens to be of high quality - you don't often find that.   I've been using up scraps because  we've suddenly been pitched into scarf weather here - seems fitting though, because I've always viewed the Dublin Theatre Festival (still a full week to go) as one of the many fruits of Autumn.

Some performances are living on with me in a good way - and I know they'll stay with me in a good way  (this, by the way, is my definition of best).   One was What Happens To The Hope At The End Of The Evening, in which Andy Smith describes his home place in a deceptively simple story telling manner. Tim Crouch is the friend from youth come on a visit and what evolves is, amongst other things, a treatise on the attitudinal perils of aging...funny, cleverly understated - especially visually - and periodically menacing too.

I also liked  Perhaps All the Dragons very much - the set is beautiful - very spectacular, and all the more so when in the equally lovely Smock Alley banqueting hall.  Audiences physically enter an oval wooden skeletal structure in which are mounted thirty video screens with a numbered wooden chair in front of each.  The audience takes seats randomly, the person on screen begins to speak about his or her life and, when finished, invites you to take a card with directions to four further numbered appointments - meaning you will have had a total of five and one short of six by the end (which becomes significant!).  Everyone switches station simultaneously and in any one show nobody seems to get precisely the same experience.  All videoed encounters seem entirely natural and personal, although they're prerecorded and not interactive.

 My first "meeting" was with a Japanese bonsai cultivator who explained the principles of his art. My next was a meteorologist from Moscow who manipulates clouds to fend off rain for major political events.  Then I got a low caste Indian who acts as a god in annual religious ceremonies.. I got a Brazilian sociologist who explained that, no matter how unlikely or far flung the connection, on average anyone can reach anyone else in the world via a series of six contacts. My final visit was with an Israeli surgeon who by day performed life saving operations on patients including a Palestinian child from Gaza, and by night worked as a fighter pilot who had bombed targets in Gaza.  

Occasionally throughout the performance communal disruption occurred - a lady with a refreshment trolley seemingly moved her wares from screen to screen; sometimes a person on one screen seemed to chat with the occupant of the next. A fully costumed opera singer broke into a few bars from Bizet's Carmen, and a boy with a baseball cap kept calling out loudly - interrupting all other "conversations".  These distractions briefly united the full complement of audience and players.

This was a really interesting, innovative and entertaining production - if you want to see all stories for yourself, you can, here - the code for that part of the site is bravery.