International

Often a simple review does not quite mirror the actual theatrical situation in a foreign country. A reportage is what we might really need. With this monthly series, we are going to re-publish the reports from Rome written for printed British magazine Plays International, in order to give our non-Italian readership an overview of what's on in Rome...

Thanks to Antonio Latella and to his wonderful company, for once the Teatro Argentina in Rome turns into a proper European theatre, a brave stage able to squeeze a great evergreen play and spill that fundamental juice to refresh the audience. Working hard between Italy and Germany, Latella chooses Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire...

In questi mesi in Francia possiamo assistere a uno spettacolo singolare: un intelligente collage di estratti di testi di Valère Novarina (Lettre aux acteurs, Pour Louis de Funès, L’Opérette imaginaire) messi in scena da Cédric Orain e dalla compagnia Oiseau-Mouche, nata nel 1978 a Roubaix, costituita da ventitré attori affetti da handicap mentali diversi.

Francesco Saponaro, regista tra i più interessanti dell'ultima generazione, ha da poco portato in scena la sua ultima regia: Yo, el heredero, versione in castigliano della commedia Io, l’erede di Eduardo De Filippo. Questa conversazione nasce dal desiderio di raccontarne la genesi e con essa le ragioni di un'emblematica “migrazione” artistica e culturale...

Il teatro a Londra è un fenomeno di massa: biglietti acquistati in anticipo altrimenti non si trova posto, non solo per lo spettacolo più o meno commerciale, ma anche per quello che vorrebbe definirsi di ricerca, per festival e rassegne nazionali e internazionali; pubblico numeroso che affolla le sale, composto soprattutto di gente ordinaria...

“Insomma, si riconosceva in quella donna la fanciulla che un niente aveva trasformato in cortigiana, e la cortigiana che un niente avrebbe trasformato nella fanciulla più innamorata e più pura”. Al Teatro dell’Odeon in queste settimane e fino al 4 febbraio 2012 è programmato uno spettacolo che fa scalpore tra il pubblico parigino: La dame aux camelias.

Despite the clarifications brought up by Teatro Franco Parenti in Milan and many high-brows and religious people's statements, the dispute is still alive around the Web. Romeo Castellucci replies with an open letter sent to the medias in which he explains his thoughts about the boycotted performance. We invite the readers to express their solidarity leaving a comment in the space below, outlining an informal petition. The fellow magazines and web publications are invited to spread the letter, hoping the information media to be a vehicle for freedom of speech and for a free artistic creativity...

After various vaudeville collaborations, the first full-length play by Václav Havel was The Garden Party (1963), a sort of half-serious odyssey set in the jungle of bureaucracy. The leading character, Hugo Pludek, is a young Czechoslovakian “average man”, whose anxious parents send to a meeting with the influential Mr. Kalabis at the garden of the Liquidation Office...

«Then he suddenly heard that voice, just like in the old times; but the memories were resurfacing little by little: he felt like he was carrying them inside, like stones of a crumbled wall.» These words, found in a brilliant book by Ghassan Kanafani, Returning to Haifa, slam from the dark rent by small lights in which Muta Imago are presenting their Displace.

The idea of assigning to the critic the supplementary function as witness arises from the fact that critics in Italy have almost completely lost their role in the appraisal of theatrical system products. Italy's contemporary system is a highly bulimic production and distribution scheme whereby the only way to hold the interest of the public and institutions is to continually offer new material.

Part of Trashing Performance, which pays attention to forms of performance and popular culture, Performance Matters is a proposition for a different approach to performance research, one that capitalizes on the potential of public discourse and collaboration. It sets out to challenge how we approach value in performance, and the inherent social and political baggage.

«[…] good Mr. Hooper's face is dust; but awful is still the thought that it mouldered beneath the Black Veil!» In this unutterableness revives the new Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio's creation, Romeo Castellucci's “The Minister's Black Veil”, premiered at Teatro Vascello in Rome. To find a descriptive relationship with Hawthorne's story is here completely vain...

Hermanis writes on stage a long and agile team-work starting form Ziedonis poems, from the book to him dedicated by Nora Ikstena and from the interviews collected by Māra Zālīte. Using a total and yet discrete direction, the partition in short chapters reshapes the conventional narrative scheme, into a conversation between the main character and his own subconscious.

Prospettiva Festival in Turin hosted one of the most unique artistic realities nowadays, real “strangers in their own country” (which was the theme of the Festival 2011 edition). Formed in 2005, Belarus Free Theatre is a Belarusian group committed in a strenuous intellectual fight against the regime of cultural repression...