| World Theatre Comes to Cardiff |
Public Event |
| WSD World Stage Design , Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama , September 9, 2013 |
The World Design Festival arrives in Wales after Canada and Korea. With a hundred plus designers in exhibition and two hundred plus live events, embracing the span of masterclass, workshop, lecture and performance, it is, and feels, an occasion of significance. Cardiff’s bid to host the Festival was in competition with Beijing; its significance is indicated by the presence of Edwina Hart at the opening ceremony. The foyer of the Royal College on the third day of the two-week Festival is awash with people, visitors from across the globe, snippets of surreal performance, an ad hoc bookshop courtesy of Aberystwyth’s Centre for Performance Research, all set in the drama of the venue itself. On a bright late summer’s day the whites and blacks of the soaring foyer dazzle in the sunlight and contrast with the blue and green of the parkland view. Two years on from its opening the exhibition space with its contrasts of height and light still impresses. The exhibition, comprising sets, costumes, photography, audio and visual displays, runs through the Linbury Gallery and into two levels of the Bute Theatre. The collection in its entirety takes hours to absorb fully. For the non-professional visitor it leaves four prime impressions. The first is insight into theatre of the world. The exhibitors come from Japan, South Africa, Brazil, Bulgaria. London’s 2012 Olympics are on display. A Gogol production from Ireland, in which provincial Russia is chillingly represented as a lattice-work cage, features among the displays from Conor Murphy. Shakespeare in Guildford runs alongside a starkly striking American “Woyzeck” from Kenton Yeager. Wales is present in the form of Simon Banham and his work last year for “Coriolan/Us.” The second impression is the sensuousness of attraction that is part of performance’s allure. The viewer stands feet, or even inches, away in an unmediated relationship from a dress of feathers from Eloise Kazan for “A Soldier in Every Son.” It has a physical gorgeousness that says that theatre is at one level a brighter, lighter distillation over quotidian life. The exhibition covers the spread of large and small, seriousness and light-heartedness, that all come under performance’s banner. The great structures that characteristically adorn the stage-on-a-lake at Bregenz are not here. But opera’s visual grandeur and scale are represented by Leslie Travers’ design of a shattered, tilting version of a beach hut for “Jenufa” at Malmŏ. An invigorating sample of European theatre came to Wales last autumn in a trilogy from the BE Festival. A similar selection of prize-winners comes again next month. The flavour of last year’s performances is close to the work of Inės de Carvalho. Her “Monstros de Vida” has a wit and a surrealism to it that connects with the strong lineage in Southern Europe. Lastly, there are the designs of pure exuberance. Luo Ting has a trio of miniature figures for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. From Finland Marja Uusitalo is creator of a dance piece “Pyőrteitä.” The display mixes pictures of a multi-coloured carnivalesque performance with bizarre real items from the production. Theatre may sometimes be the most serious thing in the world but, just as importantly, it can be the greatest of fun as well. |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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