Questions on reality
DIRECTOR Andrew Foster has taken on a project unlike any he’s ever worked on. An Oak Tree is a play for two actors, one of whom changes every night. The new actor takes to the stage having never seen or heard a word of the play they’re to perfom in.
Foster knows it sounds gimmicky, but assures us it’s not.
“It’s very author-ly, very writer-ly. The experimentations are used because they suit the theme of the play.”
The themes are of memory loss, and how we deal with grief. The unrehearsed actor plays a man who’s lost his daughter to a car crash, but the lines between what is real and what is subjective colouring are blurred.
“Watching the tension and the honesty of such a performance is an essential part of what [writer] Tim Crouch is trying to give the audience,” says Foster.
“There’s a documentary that Terry Gilliam made about the first and last great inventions of the Victorian age; the steam train and cinema. They both started off as gimmicks and have become essential… [Tim Crouch] has taken something that is on the surface a gimmick, and made it … so that the play relies on it.”
An Oak Tree is based on Michael Craig-Martin’s iconic 1973 conceptual work of the same name, in which a glass of water is accompanied by text that explains how it is actually a full-grown oak tree, in the form of a glass of water. The text has been translated into 20 languages, shown all over the world, and has been described as questioning the nature of reality.
An Oak Tree, the play, incorporates these themes; but Foster says the juggling act between the actor’s struggle onstage, in a play they don’t know, and the characters struggle in the story – makes for some humorous moments too. Guest actors include Michele Amas, Jason Whyte, Jane Waddell, Gavin Rutherford, Darlene Moheke, Heather O’Carroll, Phil Grieve, Jessica Robinson, Simon Vincent, Geraldine Brophy, Martyn Wood, Emma Kinane, Kip Chapman, Adam Gardiner, Miranda Harcourt, Paul McLaughlin, Chris Brougham and Anya Tate-Manning, and as the character is a man in his mid to late 40s – watching women and young men in the role, should make for particularly interesting theatre.
An Oak Tree, Circa 2, July 2-30.
Foster knows it sounds gimmicky, but assures us it’s not.
“It’s very author-ly, very writer-ly. The experimentations are used because they suit the theme of the play.”
The themes are of memory loss, and how we deal with grief. The unrehearsed actor plays a man who’s lost his daughter to a car crash, but the lines between what is real and what is subjective colouring are blurred.
“Watching the tension and the honesty of such a performance is an essential part of what [writer] Tim Crouch is trying to give the audience,” says Foster.
“There’s a documentary that Terry Gilliam made about the first and last great inventions of the Victorian age; the steam train and cinema. They both started off as gimmicks and have become essential… [Tim Crouch] has taken something that is on the surface a gimmick, and made it … so that the play relies on it.”
An Oak Tree is based on Michael Craig-Martin’s iconic 1973 conceptual work of the same name, in which a glass of water is accompanied by text that explains how it is actually a full-grown oak tree, in the form of a glass of water. The text has been translated into 20 languages, shown all over the world, and has been described as questioning the nature of reality.
An Oak Tree, the play, incorporates these themes; but Foster says the juggling act between the actor’s struggle onstage, in a play they don’t know, and the characters struggle in the story – makes for some humorous moments too. Guest actors include Michele Amas, Jason Whyte, Jane Waddell, Gavin Rutherford, Darlene Moheke, Heather O’Carroll, Phil Grieve, Jessica Robinson, Simon Vincent, Geraldine Brophy, Martyn Wood, Emma Kinane, Kip Chapman, Adam Gardiner, Miranda Harcourt, Paul McLaughlin, Chris Brougham and Anya Tate-Manning, and as the character is a man in his mid to late 40s – watching women and young men in the role, should make for particularly interesting theatre.
An Oak Tree, Circa 2, July 2-30.
Have Your Say
0 Comments
No comments.