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A Real Absurd Epic
Our inaugural production A Real Absurd Epic had its opening night at Brown’s Mart in February 2007. The major season is scheduled at Brown's Mart from Tuesday 17 to Friday 20 April. Wednesday performance sold out although a few seats may be available at the door.
Tickets $15 adults, $12 children/students, $10 Tuesday preview show)
A Real Absurd Epic takes the audience on a comic theatrical journey via short episodes from six plays belonging to some of the major traditions of 20th century Modernist theatre: Realism, Epic Theatre and Absurd Theatre.
The plays are linked together when an Elizabethan actor finds himself convicted for Gross Improvisation and sentenced by the Thespian Tribunal to wander across time and space charged with the task of finding and playing the quintessential truth of a character as written.
Performances are at Brown’s Mart cnr Smith Street and Harry Chan Avenue (opposite the bus terminus).
A Real Absurd Epic includes short episodes from scenes in the following plays.
A Doll’s House - Henrik Ibsen
Arguably the first Realist playwright, here Ibsen makes public the intimate details of an ostensibly respectable marriage and addresses head on the social inequalities that provoked the first wave of feminism.
Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw
Shaw, a Fabian socialist and an incorrigible show-off, also addresses social status and to a lesser extent the status of women in Pygmalion. However, the play is a sophisticated combination of romantic comedy and realism in 1916.
The Threepenny Opera – Bertold Brecht
Based on Gay’s The Beggars Opera, Brecht collaborates with composer Kurt Weill and actor Elizabeth Hauptmann to create a fearless investigation of institutionalised hypocrisy and a new Epic style in a cabaret-hungry Berlin in 1928.
The Maids – Jean Genet
Championed by Sartre, Genet finds himself at the centre of the existentialist movement in France during the 1940’s. The Maids expresses the frustration and the absurdity to be found when society’s restrictions drive individuals to fantastic solutions.
Waiting For Godot – Samuel Beckett
Possibly the quintessential Absurdist play, Beckett’s clowns beguile us with whimsy and simultaneously drill us with a black humour that conveys existential angst and the utter self-consciousness and questioning that leads to absurdity.
Look Back in Anger – John Osborne
While James Dean led the rebellion against middle class values in Rebel Without a Cause, across the Atlantic John Osborne corners the market in resentment as Jimmy Porter rages at his kitchen sink against society in a futile bid for the freedom to exercise “a great relaxation of spirit”.
