Headlining the Festival’s international theatre programme is Bolivian company, Teatro de Los Andes. Internationally noted for work which has included adaptations of The Iliad and the work of Gabriel García Márquez, the company brings their recent reworking of The Odyssey – La Odisea – to Auckland. Company member Alice Guimarães explains their inspiration: “We were interested in talking about the issue of migration, specifically in Bolivia where a third of the population lives outside the country. Homer’s Odyssey gave us the opportunity to talk about migration, to consider contemporary parallels, as well thinking about our own personal odysseys.”
The play faithfully follows Homer’s story while replacing the characters with contemporary equivalents. Most notably, Odysseus is transformed into a Bolivian migrant worker trying to find his way home. The company’s modern take on the story is complemented with a theatrical freshness in the telling, bringing the tale powerfully to life for the audience. “La Odisea asks questions about contemporary human problems, using alternating drama and humour, infused with Bolivian music, dance and customs, to reach the heart of the viewer” says Guimarães.
Gare St Lazare Players’ actor, Conor Lovett, and director, Judy Hegarty, – a husband and wife duo – have been staging Samuel Beckett around the world for the last fourteen years. What makes Lovett and Hegarty’s work so unique is their use of Beckett’s prose text. Of Auckland Arts Festival performances, First Love and The End, Lovett comments, “These are both short stories and as they are written in the first person they lend themselves immediately to being spoken aloud to an audience.” Their vivid, funny and energetic adaptations have been greeted with critical acclaim – First Love, was described by the New York Times as “a triumph.” Lovett explains, “The format is relatively simple and we find that Beckett does the work in maintaining a distinct identity for each piece. They are all entirely different but they share Beckett's love of language and his combination of tragedy and comedy in equal measure.”
For those wanting to get an insight into both Beckett and Gare St Lazare’s work, Lovett and Hegarty will be joined by Professor Chris Ackerley from the University of Otago to discuss the shift from page to the stage as part of the Festival’s lunchtime In Conversation series. Additionally, Lovett will give a master class in solo-performance and interpretations of prose, leading actors with theatrical training in an intensive, hands-on acting session.
Beckett also features as a theme in two other Festival works, Maguy Marin’s May B, and the NZSO’s performance of Berio’s Sinfonia as part of A Symphonic Odyssey, a tribute to Samuel Beckett and other great literary masters. May B takes Beckett’s characters and gives them a purely physical language. “In this essentially theatrical work, the point, for us, was less to develop words and speech than a blown-up form of movement,” Marin comments, “we sought the meeting point between movement applied to theatre on the one hand, and dance and choreographic language on the other.” In finding such a meeting point, Marin constructed a resonant contemporary work which powerfully captures the despair, wit and determination of Beckett’s characters.
Following from the success of earlier projects, Baxter and Tuwhare, Charlotte Yates continues her series of extremely successful fusions of New Zealand poetry and music with Ihimaera, featuring the compositions of some of New Zealand’s most accomplished contemporary musicians including Teremoana Rapley, Warren Maxwell and King Kapisi. For this project, Witi Ihimaera embarked upon a process of crafting text especially for each of the 12 musicians involved. Through collaboration, the material was shaped into lyrics. The resulting songs will be performed over three nights, offering audiences the opportunity to soak up the writing of one of New Zealand’s leading literary figures as well as the rare chance to attend a concert with such a stunning mixed bill. The CD recording of the Ihimaera concert will be released by Universal Music, February 14.
Taking to the stage himself as part of lunchtime In Conversation series,Ihimaera will read from the lyrics for Ihimaera, and give his thoughts on the project’s unique song writing process. Also adding their fresh new voices to the In Conversation mix will be performance poets Tarah Rudolph Ahikau and Troy and Luther Hunt from Toi Māori project Words in Motion, also part of the Auckland Arts Festival.
One of the most exciting local contributions to the Festival’s programme is Massive Company’s work, Havoc in the Garden, a new collaboration with acclaimed British writer and actor, Lennie James. The previous project between the two, The Sons of Charlie Paora, was a hit in New Zealand and the UK including a successful season at London’s Royal Court Theatre. For Havoc, James takes experiences of family and home, both his own and those of the company members, as the play’s starting point. James explains: “I grew up in a children’s home from 9 years old. I became a foster child when I was 15. The woman my children call ‘Nana Pam’ is no blood relation of theirs. Indeed most of the people in my life that I count as family share no blood tie with me. I wanted to explore with Massive notions of family and where they call home and why.” Havoc in the Garden will be performed in the Central City, in South Auckland and on the North Shore as part of the Festival’s Auckland Wide programme.
Paul Kelly’s A-Z concert series, 100 of his greatest songs performed over four nights in alphabetical order, is a blend of the literary and the musical. Not only are the Australian music icon’s lyrics worthy of literary note, anecdotes from his recently published memoir, How to Make Gravy (Penguin Books), are interspersed with his songs. The book itself emerged from the process of putting together the A-Z concerts. “Right from the start I realized the shows needed theatricalising, something to spruce up the doggedness of one man singing a list. So I decided to add some storytelling around the songs for variety, and being a natural raconteur, wrote and memorized a script…. Before too long a mongrel beast emerged.” The result, which Auckland audiences will have the rare opportunity to see in the intimate Auckland Town Hall Concert Chamber, is a series of performances that are incredibly playful, honest and insightful.
Also with story-telling at its heart is Irish company Broken Talkers’ Silver Stars. Poignant and heartwarming documentary musical theatre performed by a community chorus of gay men, Silver Stars tells the stories of ordinary blokes looking for happiness and fulfillment in a country that was challenged by their very existence. The songs are based on singer/songwriter Seán Millar’s interviews with gay men from Dublin to New York and are accompanied by live music and archival video images. A recent article in the Irish Times described Millar as a lyricist first and foremost, “his stripped-down tunes just a handy hook on which to hang those well-woven words.” Spanning decades of Irish history, these eloquent songs capture the sometimes melancholic, sometimes celebratory moments of love, loss and the everyday.
As part of the Family Day, March 13, at the Pacific Crystal Palace Spiegeltent will host a memorable day of delightful stories and storytelling. Children and adults alike will be entertained and excited by well known New Zealanders bringing their favourite children's storybooks to life. And finally in visual arts, drawing on the phrase “written in stone” Auckland artist Finn Ferrier, using image and text, offers Festival goers a way of strolling through Auckland city and discovering it anew. Look out for his work in the Festival’s visual arts guide, published February 28th.
Performance Details:
La Odisea is performed 8-12 March, 7pm, at the Maidment Theatre. Tickets range from $42.50-$72.50
First Love is performed 15 & 17 March at 7pm, 16 & 19 March at 2pm, at the Herald Theatre, tickets from $42.50-$57.50
The End is performed 16, 18 and 19 March at 7pm, 17 March 2pm, at the Herald Theatre, tickets from $42.50-$57.50
May B is performed 9, 11 & 12 March, 7.30pm, ASB Theatre, THE EDGE, tickets from $37.50-$82.50
A Symphonic Odyssey is performed 12 March, 8pm at the Auckland Town Hall, tickets from $29-$115
Ihimaera is performed 3 March, 8pm, at the Auckland Town Hall and 4 & 5 March, 8pm, at the Genesis Energy Theatre, Manakau, tickets from $27.50-$67.50
Havoc in the Garden is performed 2-5 March, 7pm, 6 March, 5pm, Herald Theatre, 9-12 March, 7pm, Mangere Arts Centre, 16-19 March 7pm, 20 March 5pm, 22-26 March 7pm, Pumphouse Theatre, tickets from $25-$39.50
Paul Kelly’s A-Z is performed 16-19 March, 9.15pm, Auckland Town Hall Concert Chamber, tickets from $65-$72.50 (concert packages available)
Silver Stars is performed 2-5 March, 7.30pm, Auckland Town Hall Concert Chamber, tickets from $47.50-$67.50
For further details about the Festival Arts and Minds programme, please visit http://www.aucklandfestival.co.nz/arts-and-minds.aspx
For further information and booking details, please visit http://www.aucklandfestival.co.nz/
No comments:
Post a Comment