“A man appears in a pool of light in front of a room of suddenly silent strangers”
The engrossing text of THE EVENT by John Clancy is pure theatre on a new level. The playwright uses theatre as a metaphor for life and wittily deconstructs the theatrical experience, providing both hilarious and intellectually stimulating insights into what theatre is all about, from the perspective of the audience, performers and technical crew.
“A man appears in a pool of light” – It is “The Actor” and he proceeds to break down the invisible fourth wall which separates the stage from the spectator; describing his relationship to the audience, his relationship to the unseen man in the control booth and the relationship between himself as an individual and the character he embodies.
Photo by Uka Meissner deRuiz
THE EVENT depicts the isolation of the actor, his vulnerability as mouthpiece for the words of playwrights and his predicament at the mercy of costume-designers and directors. It looks at the composition of the audience, referred to as “strangers” and the question of whether or not a real relationship can evolve between stage and audience. It plays upon the devices of the theatre, snipes at the undercurrents of backstage politics and uses all the arts of the stage to present a wry abstract on how peculiar a beast is the theatre.
THE EVENT may seem to be about the act of creating theater but ultimately it’s about much more. It’s about something fundamental in human chemistry that makes us want to communicate, to perform, to tell stories — all in the hope of making sense of the universe and discovering what our purpose here may actually be. At every turn the lines stimulate our imaginations. Every moment gives us something to think about. Nothing gets lost in the haze. Every word counts. Every choice is precise. Every line affects the viewer.
What if everything we believe and experience is an illusion-a fantasy designed to make us forget all that’s important and create a kind of collective amnesia? Are we all alone on our own private stages? Is there anything out there in the darkness? Are we who we say we are, or are we just pretending?
“I wrote THE EVENT with destruction and ill will in mind. It’s a strange play and I’m still not exactly sure how or why it works, but after countless productions all over the world I’m convinced that it has something to say to most of us, even if it is just a One Man Show.” – John Clancy
PERFORMANCE –
September 11 at 20:00 hrs in MERLIN – Augustenstrasse 72, 70178 Stuttgart
TICKETS: https://loveyourartist.com/de/events/dark-monday-event-by-stuttgart-TEFP3B…
In cooperation with: New English American Theatre, DAZ – Deutsch-Amerikanisches Zentrum, Staatministerin für Kultur und Medien, Kulturverein Merlin e.V.
New English American Theater Stuttgart 