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Corpses Cut Up And Rearranged
May. 21st, 2009 09:59 pmThis evening I went to see The Exquisite Corpse at the Southwark Playhouse.
A play based on the same idea as consequences was clearly going to be excellent.
Rather than getting the authors to write a line each and fold over the paper and pass it on, 5 writers wrote sixteen scenes in isolation from each other, each one based on a painting. The order the scenes were played on the evening was then governed by the audience, the cast had no idea what scene came next until the number was projected onto the screen at the rear of the stage.
In the bar before the performance there were 16 fairly random items representing the different themes (everything from a banana to an alarm clock. a bowler hat, a book and a plant). Just before the performance someone came and checked what order they were in and that was the order of the play.
Obviously, there was no clear plot running through the scenes, but because the same writers had written multiple scenes, there were characters and themes that kept reappearing. It was like looking through little windows into another world, and what a surreal world it was..
It had ( cut for spoilers )
One of the things that really impressed me, was that rather than just run the scenes back to back, they had little chaotic transitions where they were still acting out parts of the play whilst moving bits of the set around and changing costumes. It was amazing the way it seemed to make all these disjoint scenes seemlessly flow together.
All in all, it's an absolute must see and it's on at the Southwark Playhouse until 30 May.
A play based on the same idea as consequences was clearly going to be excellent.
Rather than getting the authors to write a line each and fold over the paper and pass it on, 5 writers wrote sixteen scenes in isolation from each other, each one based on a painting. The order the scenes were played on the evening was then governed by the audience, the cast had no idea what scene came next until the number was projected onto the screen at the rear of the stage.
In the bar before the performance there were 16 fairly random items representing the different themes (everything from a banana to an alarm clock. a bowler hat, a book and a plant). Just before the performance someone came and checked what order they were in and that was the order of the play.
Obviously, there was no clear plot running through the scenes, but because the same writers had written multiple scenes, there were characters and themes that kept reappearing. It was like looking through little windows into another world, and what a surreal world it was..
It had ( cut for spoilers )
One of the things that really impressed me, was that rather than just run the scenes back to back, they had little chaotic transitions where they were still acting out parts of the play whilst moving bits of the set around and changing costumes. It was amazing the way it seemed to make all these disjoint scenes seemlessly flow together.
All in all, it's an absolute must see and it's on at the Southwark Playhouse until 30 May.
