Live arts correspondent Bella Todd on the hottest happenings in the global cultural calendar this week, including the theatre of sport and ‘the Tarantino of opera’ in Venice...
The Main Event: Venice International Theatre Festival
Theatre ‘should spark the same passion as a football game’. That’s one of the maxims of Argentinean director Ricardo Bartís, whose company Sportivo Teatral (you probably won’t need the Google Translate on that one) has literally made a name for itself out of making plays set in the world of sport.
The latest is El Box, which uses boxing as the metaphor for a society in which ‘a good punch in the mouth is the only passport to awareness’. And it’s one of the highlights of the 41st International Theatre Festival, which runs from October 10 and includes a show from ‘the Tarantino of opera’ and another for which audience members will require the use of an iPod Touch.
Not content with being the home of Vivaldi, a cornerstone of the Renaissance and the site of more artistic masterpieces per square kilometre than anywhere else in the world, Venice seems determined to stake its claim in the future of the creative arts too. Every couple of summers the Biennale di Venezia turns the city into an international laboratory for much that’s new and cutting edge in the arts. And in October it’s the turn of contemporary theatre.
At the heart of this year’s Venice International Theatre Festival (fronted up by new Catalan director Àlex Rigola) is a project to produce a contemporary version of the seven deadly sins: seven short performances taking place in seven locations throughout the city and created by seven guest international directors. But while said directors are in town, they might as well turn in a few of their signature performances.
So Germany’s Thomas Ostermeier is bringing his acclaimed, action-packed Hamlet (watch a clip here), in which the set is a pit of graveyard dirt, the ‘To be or not to be’ monologue is treated as a piece of music played on drums, violin and electric guitar, and the Dane has Tourettes and a video cam. Meanwhile Flemish director-cum-sculptor Jan Fabre will be presenting Prometheus Landscape II (watch a clip here), an intense, sex-and-death-y sort of take on that most visceral of Greek myths.
Elsewhere Spanish-Argentine director Rodrigo Garcia does brutal things with two cowboys and a mechanical bull. And radical Spanish opera director Calixto Bieito, whose ‘scandalous’ takes on Verdi and Mozart (we’re talking urination, nudity and, er, nipple slicing) haven’t stopped him being a regular at the Edinburgh Festival, will present the Edgar Allan Poe-inspired Desaparecer, a ‘poem-concert for two voices adrift in the fog’.
But some of the most exciting work is likely to come out of the workshop programme, which includes Video Walking Venice. An urban project from Germany company and ‘reality trend’ innovators Rimini Protokoll, this will see each participant unleashed across the streets and squares of Venice armed with their iPod touch. All the city’s a stage (…just one with a finite battery life).
Arno Declair
Best Of The Rest
- He was dancing to Andy Warhol-designed, helium-filled pillows in the ‘60s, creating computer-generated choreography back in the ‘80s, working with master of musical modernism John Cage right into the ‘90s and still performing himself at the age of 70. The late Merce Cunningham was the uncontested godfather of contemporary dance, and this week a selection of his most iconic works and cutting-edgiest collaborations are getting their last ever UK performance. The Legacy Tour is at London’s Barbican Centre on October 5 and 6.
- These days anyone with an expensive phone and access to YouTube or Vimeo is a potential filmmaker, and the short film is booming in popularity (two-and-three-quarter-hour James Cameron Sci-fi nonsense marathons being the exception that proves the rule). Kicking off this week in Bern Switzerland, Cologne Germany and Cape Town South Africa, the annual International Short Film Festival celebrates the art form with snappy celluloid takes on every genre from comedy animation to drama, and a ‘Real time Movie’ context in which young directors have to film, cut and present a short movie in a suitably succinct slab of time.
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