Wednesday, 24 October 2012
FACE: White Rabbit, Red Rabbit in Edinburgh
Actor Alexander Kelly performs White Rabbit, Red Rabbit at the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe:
FACES: White Rabbit, Red Rabbit in Italy
Actor Marina Confalone performs White Rabbit, Red Rabbit in Viterno, Italy as part of Festival Quartieri dell'Arte:
VOICES: New Haven Review (New Haven, CT)
White Rabbit, Red Rabbit was at Yale Cabaret this month. The New Haven Review has a great post online about the performances:
"Soleimanpour, as the absent presence in his play, needles us and nudges us and banters with us, all the while insisting that he can only have any affect upon us via theatre - he lives in Iran and can't leave his homeland, so theatre becomes his vicarious form of travel. And where does he travel to? Why, to our free society, of course, only to impose upon his audience and his volunteers as much as his autocratic imagination can devise, while undermining that relation as much as possible. We, the audience, have to decide how much we'll go along with. We're free to leave or intervene, or to refuse his commands.
...
"The best thing the play has going for it is that Soleimanpour has found a neat staging of his situation: in writing the play and putting his name to it, he doesn't know what will happen to him. In volunteering to be in the play, The Actor doesn't know what will happen either. Because of polite conventions in the "free world," probably nothing bad (the clean glass). But there are exceptions - ask Salman Rushdie, as the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three of his staff members who had nothing to do with a crappy film defaming Mohammad that happened to surface on their watch. Soleimanpour makes theatre. It might prove fatal (the poisoned glass)."
Read their full report on the performances here.
"Soleimanpour, as the absent presence in his play, needles us and nudges us and banters with us, all the while insisting that he can only have any affect upon us via theatre - he lives in Iran and can't leave his homeland, so theatre becomes his vicarious form of travel. And where does he travel to? Why, to our free society, of course, only to impose upon his audience and his volunteers as much as his autocratic imagination can devise, while undermining that relation as much as possible. We, the audience, have to decide how much we'll go along with. We're free to leave or intervene, or to refuse his commands.
...
"The best thing the play has going for it is that Soleimanpour has found a neat staging of his situation: in writing the play and putting his name to it, he doesn't know what will happen to him. In volunteering to be in the play, The Actor doesn't know what will happen either. Because of polite conventions in the "free world," probably nothing bad (the clean glass). But there are exceptions - ask Salman Rushdie, as the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three of his staff members who had nothing to do with a crappy film defaming Mohammad that happened to surface on their watch. Soleimanpour makes theatre. It might prove fatal (the poisoned glass)."
Read their full report on the performances here.
VIDEO: At Festival Quartieri dell'Arte (Viterbo, Italy)
The good people at Festival Quartieri dell'Arte in Viterbo, Italy have uploaded some great videos of their presentation of White Rabbit, Red Rabbit. We've posted the first here:
Head over to YouTube for the full set!
Head over to YouTube for the full set!
VOICES: Jenn Stephenson (Kingston, ON)
Jenn Stephen, Associate Professor at Queen's University, unpacks White Rabbit, Red Rabbit on her performance research blog following its presentation at the school in September. Some questions she's still mulling over:
"Is it even possible to have theatrical performance by a non-actor? Can an 'unfictionalized' actor successfully subvert the fictionalizing power of the theatrical frame? And if, the frame is subverted in this way, is it still theatre? Or has the whole event evaporated back into life?"
Her full analysis can be read here.
"Is it even possible to have theatrical performance by a non-actor? Can an 'unfictionalized' actor successfully subvert the fictionalizing power of the theatrical frame? And if, the frame is subverted in this way, is it still theatre? Or has the whole event evaporated back into life?"
Her full analysis can be read here.
VOICES: Nicola Harwood (Vancouver)
In a blog post earlier this month, Nicola Harwood relates her feelings after seeing White Rabbit, Red Rabbit at the Cultch in Vancouver. The full impact of the show only hit her once she was back in the real world:
"I hit the street and burst into tears. Completely unexpected. The show had not seemed sad or angry while I watched it - it was wry, funny, a little dark and a little demanding. But I did not feel it manipulate me emotionally to feel angry or sad. I felt these emotions in my body, as my body moved through space away from the man lying on the floor. I was culpable, I was free and he was not, and he was angry and very sad, alone and in danger."
Read the full post on her blog. We're glad you had such a meaningful experience with the show!
"I hit the street and burst into tears. Completely unexpected. The show had not seemed sad or angry while I watched it - it was wry, funny, a little dark and a little demanding. But I did not feel it manipulate me emotionally to feel angry or sad. I felt these emotions in my body, as my body moved through space away from the man lying on the floor. I was culpable, I was free and he was not, and he was angry and very sad, alone and in danger."
Read the full post on her blog. We're glad you had such a meaningful experience with the show!
VOICES: White Rabbit, Red Rabbit in the Queen's Journal (Kingston, ON)
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| Professor Kim Wenders receiving the script. Photo by Tiffany Lam. |
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