Features
Best of This Week’s Theatre Blogs – 19 Mar 2010
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London's West End
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19 March 2010
What should the role of a national theatre be? In the week when the National Theatre of Wales staged their first production, Anne Bonnar considered the challenges which the National Theatre of Scotland is now facing and what might lie in store for its counterpart in Wales.
Meanwhile, Luke JB wondered where theatre audiences might be (and why they might not be coming to your show), and Unleash the Zepplin mulled over what audiences (and critics) make of violence on stage.Finally, there were some special insights on what participating in theatre can do, as Dan Simpson blogged about his experience of being part of a workshop at the National Theatre and Brendan Pickering wrote about his surprise at the fact that the most important class he has taken at university has been a theatre class.
Anne Bonnar – National theatres need to counter the heavy weights of national
“A theatre company’s work should speak for itself but the expectations of a national theatre company weigh much more heavily. How long will it be before the inevitable public debate about its role, its policy and its relationship with the Welsh speaking National Theatre?”
Unleash the Zeppelin
“But it does seems strange that even ten years after the mid Nineties in-yer-face boom in abrasive theatre, critics and audiences still feel that showing violence in theatre is somehow a step too far.”
LukeJB – Why they don’t come back
“In some ways, there is too much theatre out there. Certainly, too much bad theatre. The ratio of bad plays to good plays is depressingly high.”
East Kent Lit Live – And now 14 more at National Theatre
“I was to go first. That’s when the nerves hit me. I stumbled through my first piece, forgetting all the coaching and practice we’d just had. The run-through continued and I pulled myself together a bit for the second piece.”
The Blog of Brendan Pickering – Why theatre was the most important class I ever took
“Every day we spent at least 15 minutes looking into another student’s eyes, no facial expressions or body movements allowed, just feeling the other’s presence and projecting our own. ‘How lame,’ I thought, ‘How artsy.’ Then something strange happened.”
“A theatre company’s work should speak for itself but the expectations of a national theatre company weigh much more heavily. How long will it be before the inevitable public debate about its role, its policy and its relationship with the Welsh speaking National Theatre?”
“But it does seems strange that even ten years after the mid Nineties in-yer-face boom in abrasive theatre, critics and audiences still feel that showing violence in theatre is somehow a step too far.”
“In some ways, there is too much theatre out there. Certainly, too much bad theatre. The ratio of bad plays to good plays is depressingly high.”
“I was to go first. That’s when the nerves hit me. I stumbled through my first piece, forgetting all the coaching and practice we’d just had. The run-through continued and I pulled myself together a bit for the second piece.”
“Every day we spent at least 15 minutes looking into another student’s eyes, no facial expressions or body movements allowed, just feeling the other’s presence and projecting our own. ‘How lame,’ I thought, ‘How artsy.’ Then something strange happened.”
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