Some props haul their own metaphors on stage with them. When King (Aaron Pierre), recently released from prison, sprinkles flower seeds over an unpromising scrub of soil outside his Pittsburgh home – well, you don’t need dramaturgical skills to wonder if the severely challenged little seeds will mirror King’s own struggle to nurture a new, post-prison life. King Hedley II, August Wilson’s 2001 … [Read more...]
Propwatch – all the stuff in Hir
‘No good ever came from things.’ This line from Hir by Taylor Mac is guaranteed to strike fear into propwatchers. For what is this series but an act of devotion to the innate goodness of things, to the conviction that you can crack open a production via the portable stuff on stage? A prop is where stage illusion meets the material world. However fantastical the production, a prop – a real … [Read more...]
Get real
From your mouth to the director’s ear – that has been one idea of verbatim theatre. Using the words, experiences and sometimes the very inflections of interviewees as the basis for a production, verbatim has often seem to offer theatre a bracing hit of ‘pure’ reality, a window into authentic documentary material. But like all theatrical forms, verbatim is a shape-shifting beast. Last … [Read more...]