The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic

Synopsis

The show features scenes from Abramovic’s life and career, from her Serbian childhood to her work as a performance artist. Featuring original and traditional music, including songs written and performed by the incomparable Antony (Antony & The Johnsons), this ground-breaking show brings together the worlds of theatre, art and music to thrilling effect. The Life and Death of Marina Abramovi is a once in a generation cultural event, starring Marina Abramovic, Willem Dafoe and an international cast of actors and performance artists."

Our Review:

16 July 2011

Marina Abramovic is alive and well but she still fakes her own death. The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic is an ‘operatic’ biography created by Robert Wilson for Manchester’s International Festival.

The woman on whom it is centred, had always longed to see her own funeral so, in the opening scene, we see three Marinas in coffins surrounded by Doberman dogs accompanied by the dirge of a Serbian singer. The fact that she is still breathing and still performing is owed to fate.  For her object has always been to test the resilience of body and mind to the limit in public.

The nearest she came to death was in 1974 when she threw herself into the centre of a large, burning star and lost consciousness.   

Life and Death isn’t a one woman show by the “Grandmother of Performance Art”.  She plays her mad mother along the...

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Latest User Review

A Stanbridge - 17 July 2011:

Superb, mesmerising, just had to go back for a second time. On both nights the standing ovation included virtually everyone in the theatre, no doubt hundreds of "plebs", like us, among them....

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