The production updates hamlet for a modern audience focusing on incorporating educational material surrounding the leaving certificate exam questions. This particular interpretation of the text focuses on the portrayals of mental health in the context of both history as of Shakespearean times and in the modern era. Back in Shakespeare’s day, many mental health problems were simply labeled as ‘Madness’, a key theme in Hamlet.
Cascando by Pan Pan Theatre is an outdoor experience, transforming Samuel Beckett's 1963 radio play into a physical journey. Directed by Gavin Quinn, the production leads the audience on a rhythmic ensemble experience, wearing black cloaks and headphones and becoming part of the spectacle.
The play is about a man and his wife who have been invited to a dinner party, but over the course of the dinner and the hours that follow after we see a character finding it difficult to accept his place as an aging man in the modern world. The audience are welcomed as guests by the hosts and are welcome at different points to sit at the dinner table and interact with the characters of the production as it progresses. The audience are brought on an immersive and historical experience.
Is it a performance, a theatrical production or a real truth commission? The terms don't matter. Come and see for yourself.
"Sleep No More tells Shakespeare’s classic tragedy Macbeth through a darkly cinematic lens, offering an audience experience unlike anything else. Audiences move freely through the epic story, creating their own journeys through a film noir world. Taking Punchdrunk’s work to Asia for the very first time, Punchdrunk International and SMG Live have co-produced a re-imagined version of the original production, now set in Shanghai in the 1930s. This production sees new surprises hidden across five storeys of this newly built building in the Jing’An District."
An Oak Tree is a two-hander, with the Hypnotist being played by Tim Crouch. The Father, however, is played by a different guest actor at each performance. They walk on stage having neither seen nor read a word of the play they’re in… until they’re in it. This is a breath-taking projection of a performance, given from one actor to another, from a hypnotist to their subject, from an audience to a person. an oak tree is a bold and absurdly comic new play about loss, suggestion and the power of the mind.
Free UR Head is an accessible dance experience that uses VR to create instant group choreographies through the participation of its audience.
Taiwanese theatre and film director Chou Tung-Yen earned his stripes for his cross-border approach, his inventive use of new media, and the unexpected angles he takes on his subjects. This time he wants to take a step back from what happens inside the VR goggle, and wonders about the real physical repercussions outside of it. The result is Free UR Head, a tool for instant VR-conducted group choreographies.
It is developed from the extension and development of the dance video of the 2013 World Theater Design Award work "Empty Memory". In cooperation with dancer Zhou Shuyi, through the surround view camera, several dance images in an almost surreal space are shot, connecting a journey between sleeping and waking. When the surround view lens no longer has the ability of active capture, but a comprehensive shooting record, the relationship between body and space is instantly magnified. The circular arc and the boundless horizon attemp
Symbiosis is a performative, multiuser, and multisensory VR installation in which the human body will be redesigned. It allows every participant to embody a post-human or even nonhuman reality: a completely symbiotic human-animal or human-technologic relationship. Dutch experience design collective POLYMORF investigates in a speculative way how a more symbiotic exchange of genetic, cultural, and technological traits between people and other present or future living entities can increase or change the agency of all.
Two little sisters prepare for the Day of the Dead in the mystic mountains of Mexico, remembering the stories their shaman granny used to tell. A portal opens as the Mazatec community celebrates and we enter the interactive universe of their ancestors and the spirits of nature, each keeping a secret world to be unveiled.
Written and directed by Juanita Onzaga.
