Lyn's Picks: March 8

Hello
Lockdown has seen us all apart from those we love, often bereft of connection, and for many artists it has meant that they can’t be in the rehearsal room with their collaborators. For many, theatre is another kind of family, but what happens when the connection is broken, and you can no longer make and stage together. Lots of you will be familiar with the work of Bert and Nasi, who over recent years have produced some of my favourite shows including Eurohouse, Palmyra and The End. During lockdown one of them has been in France and the other in Greece, and they have been trying to come up with ways to make a show while apart. Sign up via the CPT website for seven days’ worth of digital soundbites and postcards that will be sent to you daily before they melt away at the end of the week. Just like theatre itself. It’s quiet, inconsequential, surreal and at times both sad and defeated and if at first it seems like almost nothing, it gradually takes on a strange cumulative power as it confronts the act of creation itself, why people make shows together and asks whether time spent wasting time is ever wasted.

White Rabbit, Red Rabbit
On March the 13th theatres all across the world will be broadcasting a one off live performance of Nassim Soleimanpour’s remarkable play, originally written when he was in his own personal lockdown and unable to travel outside of Iran, to mark the day when theatres around the globe starting shutting down because of the pandemic. Hull’s Freedom Festival and The Everyman in Cheltenham are just two of the UK theatres and arts organisations that are involved in a play that has been licensed free of charge for one day to draw attention to the plight of theatre, still in shutdown across the world, and to all those who for whatever reason find their ability to travel and move around curtailed.

Dream
From the RSC www.rsc.org.uk comes a live, online experience which invites audiences to enter a forest and interact with a cast of seven actors playing Puck and the forest sprites, Cobweb, Peaseblossom, Moth and Mustardseed. Musician Nick Cave plays the Voice of the Forest in an experiment that employs gaming technology and an interactive symphonic score which responds to the actors’ movement during the show to create a remote 50 minute event that plunges you into the heart of the forest that is under a spell until the moment dawn breaks. It sounds like a very different offering from the RSC.

You can find lots of streaming theatre shows - many of them available for free - in our Streamdoor guide

Cover photo from Dream by the RSC.