The New Old Curiosity Show
I'm doing some theatre again. You know, in the middle of a pandemic. The actual best time to start doing theatre. My old "The Old Curiosity Show" is rearing its severed head again under the baton of Amadan Ensemble, for the Eastside Arts Festival in East Belfast.
We've done this show before and people very kindly showed up and laughed at the appropriate times. Amadan are a riot, of course, grease-painted clowns investigating every bit of business, wringing laughs out of each piece of material: they are comedy mangles and they mangle comedy. This time things are rather different. Amadan are physical comedians, bespoke tailoring the comic cloth to fit each audience. They thrive in the live arena, in getting out there to mingle with the crowds, to sit on their laps and tell them they're ugly, and in the time of Covid they can't do that. Audiences are, by their very nature, swirling cauldrons of fetid disease. Or at least the ones that we get are.
So we've had to have a re-think. And its going to be a brand new, exciting, multi-disciplinary show. The show will be live-streamed but with pre-recorded segments vision-mixed live on a multi-camera set-up and that means there is a whole new dimension to play with. Rehearsals have started, re-writing has been done and then been re-re-written. The space is being played with in a whole new way and with cameras sitting where the audience normally would, it's going to bring a different style of playing the play. So its the same play but its a totally different play. I am genuinely excited for the possibilities, the ideas that Amadan have come up with and the elasticity and strength of the writing. Like a tardigrade it seems to be able to take anything you throw at it. Like the theatre itself - which would probably have been a better comparison.
No one knows what a tardigrade is, John. They're also known as "water bears" - does that help? There's one in Antman and the Wasp.
It tries to eat Antman.
Or The Wasp.
I can see I've lost you...
We've done this show before and people very kindly showed up and laughed at the appropriate times. Amadan are a riot, of course, grease-painted clowns investigating every bit of business, wringing laughs out of each piece of material: they are comedy mangles and they mangle comedy. This time things are rather different. Amadan are physical comedians, bespoke tailoring the comic cloth to fit each audience. They thrive in the live arena, in getting out there to mingle with the crowds, to sit on their laps and tell them they're ugly, and in the time of Covid they can't do that. Audiences are, by their very nature, swirling cauldrons of fetid disease. Or at least the ones that we get are.
So we've had to have a re-think. And its going to be a brand new, exciting, multi-disciplinary show. The show will be live-streamed but with pre-recorded segments vision-mixed live on a multi-camera set-up and that means there is a whole new dimension to play with. Rehearsals have started, re-writing has been done and then been re-re-written. The space is being played with in a whole new way and with cameras sitting where the audience normally would, it's going to bring a different style of playing the play. So its the same play but its a totally different play. I am genuinely excited for the possibilities, the ideas that Amadan have come up with and the elasticity and strength of the writing. Like a tardigrade it seems to be able to take anything you throw at it. Like the theatre itself - which would probably have been a better comparison.
No one knows what a tardigrade is, John. They're also known as "water bears" - does that help? There's one in Antman and the Wasp.
It tries to eat Antman.
Or The Wasp.
I can see I've lost you...
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