Aberystwyth University Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies are grateful to Howard Barker, our Honorary Professor, for permission to present the first performances of The Forty, continuing a proud and fruitful association between Barker, Lurking Truth/Gwir sy’n Llechu theatre company and the Department which has previously seen Barker plays such as A Wounded Knife, The Europeans, The Early Hours of a Reviled Man and (Uncle) Vanya staged here for the first time, as well as productions of plays such as Gertrude – The Cry, Ursula and The Castle (all in Theatr y Castell), following shortly after their professional premieres. Barker’s explorations of both the singular moment and the limits of language achieve a new formal concentration and beauty in The Forty, a compendium which stretches beyond even the ambition of collections such as The Possibilities and 13 Objects to present forty short plays, each concentrating on a moment of extreme emotional tension, and foregrounding the ways in which words and gestures provide currency for negotiation. Many of the characters in The Forty are glimpsed at crisis points, as in that resonant phrase ‘at the end of their tethers’. These are elliptical narratives, in the sense of being so condensed as to be ambiguous: do they present a prelude, or an aftermath (or both)? The audience is invited to imagine further beyond, on the basis of an active, tensile incompletion in word and deed: a fateful hinge moment, and the surrounding tensile readiness, forceful disengagement, despairing submission, or shocking nonchalance. you can order tickets at http://www.aberystwythartscentre.co.uk/whatson/2011/12/ Howard Barker is attending the Thursday performance, and he and David Ian Rabey will engage in a brief public dialogue in the theatre directly afterwards (no additional charge). Running time for the show is approx. 2hrs 25 mins, incl. one 15 min. interval, and please note start times of 7pm and 1:30 downtown at the Castle Theatre (and NOT any of the Arts Centre performance spaces). |
| web site: www.aberystwythartscentre.co.uk/whatson/2011/12/ |
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Monday, December 5, 2011 |
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