Africa Trilogy: A provocative new trio out of Africa
Place: Toronto
Event: The Goethe-Institut is present at the Luminato Festival 2010 with two big partner programs: “The Africa Trilogy” with Berlin dramatist Roland Schimmelpfennig and the video artists Fettfilm, as well as Rimini Protokoll’s Canadian-German commission “Best Before”, which had its premiere at the Cultural Olympiad in Vancouver in January 2010.
Luminato commissioned three one-act plays by Kenyan, German and American playwrights on Africa. It’s the German one that’s the highlight.
The first significant theatrical commission by Luminato, Volcano Theatre's Africa Trilogy strings together three new one-act plays by Kenyan, German and American playwrights that examine the relationship between Africa and the West. The back of the program neatly summarizes this international collaboration's concerns: “Just who do they think they are? Just who do they think we are? Just who do we think we are?”
First on the bill is Shine Your Eye by Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina. It's a curious techno-parable that gleefully breaks all the rules he set out in his essay “How to Write About Africa.” (Penned for Granta, the essay's satirical prescriptions included: “Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat,” and “Blame the West for Africa's situation. But do not be too specific.”) […]
Next up, Peggy Pickit Sees the Face of God is the highlight of the evening – this exciting new play will have a future life both within and without the rest of the trilogy. While Shine Your Eye is the product of completely outside-the-box thinking, German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig's comedy fits neatly in a theatrical tradition of scabrous middle-class satire that runs from Edward Albee to Yasmina Reza, and sits somewhere between those two playwrights stylistically. Carol (Maev Beaty) and Martin (Trey Lyford) return from six years abroad working in a clinic in some unspecified African country. At a liquor-lubricated reunion celebration with their friends Frank (Tony Nappo) and Liz (Jane Spidell), the truth about their “wonderful and horrific” experience comes out glass of wine by glass of wine.
South African director Liesl Tommy gets incredible performances out of her cast, as her production masterfully lurches back and forth between hilarity and dread. The staging is full of brilliant touches. Carol and Martin have brought back a little African doll as a gift for Frank and Liz's daughter. There is a video camera hidden in it, projecting images onto a picture frame hanging in the living room, allowing the audience to zoom in on parts of the action through the doll's eyes. Life is tragedy seen in close-up, comedy in the long shot, Charlie Chaplin said; Peggy Pickit allows us to see both at once.
Bringing the evening to a close, American playwright Christina Anderson's Glo tries to bridge the worlds of the first and second plays. […]
Event: The Goethe-Institut is present at the Luminato Festival 2010 with two big partner programs: “The Africa Trilogy” with Berlin dramatist Roland Schimmelpfennig and the video artists Fettfilm, as well as Rimini Protokoll’s Canadian-German commission “Best Before”, which had its premiere at the Cultural Olympiad in Vancouver in January 2010.
Luminato commissioned three one-act plays by Kenyan, German and American playwrights on Africa. It’s the German one that’s the highlight.
The first significant theatrical commission by Luminato, Volcano Theatre's Africa Trilogy strings together three new one-act plays by Kenyan, German and American playwrights that examine the relationship between Africa and the West. The back of the program neatly summarizes this international collaboration's concerns: “Just who do they think they are? Just who do they think we are? Just who do we think we are?”
First on the bill is Shine Your Eye by Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina. It's a curious techno-parable that gleefully breaks all the rules he set out in his essay “How to Write About Africa.” (Penned for Granta, the essay's satirical prescriptions included: “Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat,” and “Blame the West for Africa's situation. But do not be too specific.”) […]
Next up, Peggy Pickit Sees the Face of God is the highlight of the evening – this exciting new play will have a future life both within and without the rest of the trilogy. While Shine Your Eye is the product of completely outside-the-box thinking, German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig's comedy fits neatly in a theatrical tradition of scabrous middle-class satire that runs from Edward Albee to Yasmina Reza, and sits somewhere between those two playwrights stylistically. Carol (Maev Beaty) and Martin (Trey Lyford) return from six years abroad working in a clinic in some unspecified African country. At a liquor-lubricated reunion celebration with their friends Frank (Tony Nappo) and Liz (Jane Spidell), the truth about their “wonderful and horrific” experience comes out glass of wine by glass of wine.
South African director Liesl Tommy gets incredible performances out of her cast, as her production masterfully lurches back and forth between hilarity and dread. The staging is full of brilliant touches. Carol and Martin have brought back a little African doll as a gift for Frank and Liz's daughter. There is a video camera hidden in it, projecting images onto a picture frame hanging in the living room, allowing the audience to zoom in on parts of the action through the doll's eyes. Life is tragedy seen in close-up, comedy in the long shot, Charlie Chaplin said; Peggy Pickit allows us to see both at once.
Bringing the evening to a close, American playwright Christina Anderson's Glo tries to bridge the worlds of the first and second plays. […]
by J. Kelly Nestruck, The Globe and Mail, 16 June 2010
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