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Playground is Downstage Left’s latest venture: the beginning of a series of experimental performances, based on topics we all can recognise. We started with perhaps the most universal theme of them all: love, or the lack thereof, and the age old question: How can you make love stay?
Downstage Left welcomes you to an evening of entertainment, laughter and possibly a few (happy) tears. We present a hand-picked selection of one-acts, sourced from five inspiring playwrights, from the well-versed Christopher Durang and the versatile Michael Frayn, to a troop of lesser-known, aspiring young writers from the New York based CRY HAVOC collective: Kitt Lavoie, Sharon E. Cooper and Jerzy Gwiazdowski.
[pwnd] (K. Lavoie):
With João Calado, Brian Ligthart & Katharina Olsen.
Directed by Ben Evans
Pig in the Middle (M. Frayn):
With Silvia Pietrosanti & Ben Evans
Directed by Andy Cowie
In the Meantime (S. E. Cooper):
With Borislava Todorova & Andy Cowie
Directed by Ben Evans
All Over Me (J. Gwiazdowski):
With Silvia Pietrosanti & Denis Burke
Directed by Andy Cowie
Wanda’s Visit (C. Durang):
With Borislava Todorova, Denis Burke, Katharina Olsen, Brian Ligthart, Ben Evans & Andy Cowie
Directed by João Calado
[Stage and backstage: Yulia Prokhorova and Annika Van Der Vegt]
The plays All over Me, [pwnd] & In the Meantime were developed with The CRY HAVOC Company (www.cryhavoccompany.org).
Wanda’s Visit is a short play by Christopher Durang (1986). This amateur production is presented by arrangement with Josef Weinberger Limited
Praise:
“Love in Pieces” was a feast of entertainment. Five one-act plays about the struggles and absurdities of love. All the acting and directing was marvelous! The second play “Pig in the Middle” was language-wise the most eloquent. Ben Evans and Silvia Pietrosanti found exactly the right tone to communicate their miscommunication. The last play “Wanda’s Visit” took the house down with a stunningly funny bubbling and surprising Borislava Todorova who stole the show. Playing a self-invited failed sex bomb invading the house of her former high-school boyfriend, played very subtly and cooly by Denis Burke, locked in a boring middle class marriage, we watch a storm of feminine manipulation, as the folder says, “rock like a hurricane”.
– Michael
Thought I was just going to see my study mate on stage and didn’t have any expectations but the play turned out amazing! So if you’re in Amsterdam and you like theater (and even if you do not yet), I really recommend seeing it. Touching, funny, well played and well written! Not to mention the amazing location
– Marina
Funny, witty, original and talented bunch of people.
– Dimitar
TAMARA, a timely new play by Irish playwright Denis Burke, explores the arrival of robots into our everyday lives and the unexpected challenges that brings. But this is not a story about the technology itself, which, like the all too humanlike robots, simply blends into the background. At its heart, the play is an examination of relationships and ethics.
Set in a contemporary student flat in London, newly arrived Naomi is forced by illness to spend time with the robot of flatmate Leonard. She is faced with the dilemma of how to treat something she knows is not human but that looks and behaves like a human.
As their relationship grows and student life goes on around them, difficult questions arise about whether robots have feelings or agency and thus the morality of forcing them to do our bidding.
If how we treat robots is a reflection of how we treat each other, then the answers are not always comfortable.
TAMARA previewed at
De Nieuwe Anita
Frederik Hendrikstraat 111,
1052 HN Amsterdam
in April, 2018
Images courtesy of Daniel Fornies Photography
Graphic design & retouching: Julian Deleij – De Beeldmaecker
Downstage Left 