Saturday, 31 January 2009
Sunday, 25 January 2009
Stage, by Meirav Yudilovich, YNET, December 12, 2008
The delightful comedy of the absurd, "Clowns", written by Maor Gillerman and directed by the pantomime and actor Julian Chagrin, concludes the Short Theatre Festival.
The location: back stage. The time: twenty minutes before curtain call.
The characters: the world’s greatest theatre clown, and with him his apprentice/dresser and the supporting actor in the performance. Gil Alon, Liron Gillerman and Gabi Cohen Groendland perform clowning at its best, using every tool available to the clown apart from juggling and stilt walking.
They conduct a dialogue that begins as an interesting one and becomes gripping -- about an incident that occurred to the famous clown during his last series of performances. The play is amusing, it is captivating, it is intelligent, and above all it is beautiful theatre. Here we encounter a wonderfully facetious spirit, entertaining and original, that reinforces the notion that comedy is a very serious business.
"Clowns", by the way, is the play in which the greatest effort was invested in stage decoration and costumes (credit going to Michal Ya’akobi), and in lighting (by Martin Adin), whose presence is felt precisely because it does not draw attention to itself.
Tuesday, 20 January 2009
“Clowns” Demonstrates What Theatre Is, by Esti G Haim, Ma’ariv Newspaper, December 12, 2008
Picture of Gabi Cohen Groendland
The play "Clowns", directed by Julian Chagrin, performed in the Short Theatre Festival, touches delicately but mischievously upon the question: What is theatre? Wonderful acting and exact direction make it a brilliant and precise expression of short theatre.
A visit to the Short Theatre Festival is, in my judgment, an experience. Like a short story, a short play is meant to “contain the maximum in a minimum volume.” The play "Clowns" succeeds in realizing this ambition in an original and thought provoking manner.
"Clowns" is correctly defined by its creator as a comedy of the absurd. Everything here is contradictory. The unexpected is expected, reality is fantasy, the real actors are characters, and the viewing audience in the auditorium is supposedly imaginary.
The play takes place behind the scenes in a theatre, in a dressing room, and it portrays a senior and a supporting actor preparing to go onstage for a performance, and the dresser of the senior actor, who assists him, and him only as he prepares to go onstage.
Virtuosity
The three characters are dressed as clowns, and this, it becomes apparent, is their everyday clothing. During the play they change these clothes to those they will wear in the performance – regular suits, which are the costumes of the characters in the play they are about to perform, before another audience, an imaginary one.
The change of clothes is a feat of virtuosity performed during wonderful acts of clowning executed with great precision and charm by the three actors. This is in fact the real performance that we are viewing. Their real performance, for which they are getting ready, is for us, the audience, imaginary; as that which is taking place for them ‘backstage’ is imaginary for their imaginary audience.
As opposed to the two actors (Gil Alon and by Liron Gillerman) who talk for the length of the play about a specific dramatic event that once occurred to Gil Alon’s character, the character of the dresser (played by Gabi Cohen Groendland) remains mute throughout.
The dresser continually works and labors to remove the clown clothing from the senior actor (Gil Alon) and to dress him in his costume for the performance. He is the only one of the three who actually performs realistic work, but he remains dressed as a clown to the end.
The character of the clown is the reality, while the text, which seemingly tells a real story, is fanciful. On a costume crate the graffiti “Fuck Hamlet” is written, while the dresser holds in his hand a polystyrene wig dummy and mimics the famous “To be or not to be" scene from the classic play.
The polystyrene head is also a parodic metaphor of a real skull: vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Toward the end of the play the senior actor returns backstage from the imaginary stage, and the dresser removes from his mouth a long colored ribbon that symbolizes “the accessory of words” that has been used and no longer has any function,
Talented Directing
In this context I must mention here the play’s director, Julian Chagrin, whose talent has already been proven in England, where he was winner of the Berlin Film Festival “Golden Bear” Award and Nominated for the the Oscar for short films that he directed. He has lived here for many years, for all practical purposes language-less, thus for him a kind of virtual world. His real world is located in a place where he can express himself in his own language. And perhaps precisely because of that the theatrical language of "Clowns" is so rich.
It is rare that a play succeeds in reaching the heart of the theatrical experience and the essence of the question “With what is the art of the theatre really involved?” Most frequently theatre here falls into the trap of dealing with the difficult state of our current affairs -- which is our lot in this country, where the theatre chiefly serves the ‘goal’, whether as social or other criticism.
At other times the theatre flees toward escapist plays. "Clowns" is a short, brilliant and precise theatrical expression, with superbly talented direction by Julian Chagrin and virtuoso performances by the actors. Set against the wholly suitable background of the colorful stage design and costumes of Michal Ya’akobi, the play addresses the question “What is Theatre?”, with charm and silliness, in which is reflected, of course the question, “What is life?”
"Clowns" demonstrates that indeed “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Imagination is more authentic than reality, and words are more than “words, words, words.”
"Clowns", by Maor Gillerman, directed by Julian Chagrin, was performed at Miktzaron 2, Short Theatre Festival, at Tzavta, Tel Aviv, December18, 2008. Actors: Gil Alon, Liron Gillerman, Gabi Cohen Groenland.
A visit to the Short Theatre Festival is, in my judgment, an experience. Like a short story, a short play is meant to “contain the maximum in a minimum volume.” The play "Clowns" succeeds in realizing this ambition in an original and thought provoking manner.
"Clowns" is correctly defined by its creator as a comedy of the absurd. Everything here is contradictory. The unexpected is expected, reality is fantasy, the real actors are characters, and the viewing audience in the auditorium is supposedly imaginary.
The play takes place behind the scenes in a theatre, in a dressing room, and it portrays a senior and a supporting actor preparing to go onstage for a performance, and the dresser of the senior actor, who assists him, and him only as he prepares to go onstage.
Virtuosity
The three characters are dressed as clowns, and this, it becomes apparent, is their everyday clothing. During the play they change these clothes to those they will wear in the performance – regular suits, which are the costumes of the characters in the play they are about to perform, before another audience, an imaginary one.
The change of clothes is a feat of virtuosity performed during wonderful acts of clowning executed with great precision and charm by the three actors. This is in fact the real performance that we are viewing. Their real performance, for which they are getting ready, is for us, the audience, imaginary; as that which is taking place for them ‘backstage’ is imaginary for their imaginary audience.
As opposed to the two actors (Gil Alon and by Liron Gillerman) who talk for the length of the play about a specific dramatic event that once occurred to Gil Alon’s character, the character of the dresser (played by Gabi Cohen Groendland) remains mute throughout.
The dresser continually works and labors to remove the clown clothing from the senior actor (Gil Alon) and to dress him in his costume for the performance. He is the only one of the three who actually performs realistic work, but he remains dressed as a clown to the end.
The character of the clown is the reality, while the text, which seemingly tells a real story, is fanciful. On a costume crate the graffiti “Fuck Hamlet” is written, while the dresser holds in his hand a polystyrene wig dummy and mimics the famous “To be or not to be" scene from the classic play.
The polystyrene head is also a parodic metaphor of a real skull: vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Toward the end of the play the senior actor returns backstage from the imaginary stage, and the dresser removes from his mouth a long colored ribbon that symbolizes “the accessory of words” that has been used and no longer has any function,
Talented Directing
In this context I must mention here the play’s director, Julian Chagrin, whose talent has already been proven in England, where he was winner of the Berlin Film Festival “Golden Bear” Award and Nominated for the the Oscar for short films that he directed. He has lived here for many years, for all practical purposes language-less, thus for him a kind of virtual world. His real world is located in a place where he can express himself in his own language. And perhaps precisely because of that the theatrical language of "Clowns" is so rich.
It is rare that a play succeeds in reaching the heart of the theatrical experience and the essence of the question “With what is the art of the theatre really involved?” Most frequently theatre here falls into the trap of dealing with the difficult state of our current affairs -- which is our lot in this country, where the theatre chiefly serves the ‘goal’, whether as social or other criticism.
At other times the theatre flees toward escapist plays. "Clowns" is a short, brilliant and precise theatrical expression, with superbly talented direction by Julian Chagrin and virtuoso performances by the actors. Set against the wholly suitable background of the colorful stage design and costumes of Michal Ya’akobi, the play addresses the question “What is Theatre?”, with charm and silliness, in which is reflected, of course the question, “What is life?”
"Clowns" demonstrates that indeed “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Imagination is more authentic than reality, and words are more than “words, words, words.”
"Clowns", by Maor Gillerman, directed by Julian Chagrin, was performed at Miktzaron 2, Short Theatre Festival, at Tzavta, Tel Aviv, December18, 2008. Actors: Gil Alon, Liron Gillerman, Gabi Cohen Groenland.
"Clowns" Short Takes -Review by Kobi Niv, Globus Newspaper, 28.12.2008
Photo of Gil Alon
"Clowns, by Maor Gillerman, directed by Julian Chagrin, is a wonderful performance, funny, mischievous, uplifting. It takes place behind the scenes of a theatre performance, during the twenty minutes prior to curtain call.
It has three heroes – the principle actor, Gil Alon, a full-of-himself prattler, who is taken up in a complicated, meandering story about an incident that happened to him during his travels overseas; the supporting actor, Liron Gillerman, who is obliged to listen to his master’s tale, without taking any interest in or understanding anything about the story; and the dresser of the two, Gabi Cohen Groenland, a clown pantomime who does not utter a word throughout the play. .
The combination of an excellent text for the two actors, which reminds us of Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, or Vladimir and Estragon in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot , together with the theatrical slapstick concocted by director Julian Chagrin, is intelligent and impressive, full of joy, love and theatrical fun. Bravo*!
It has three heroes – the principle actor, Gil Alon, a full-of-himself prattler, who is taken up in a complicated, meandering story about an incident that happened to him during his travels overseas; the supporting actor, Liron Gillerman, who is obliged to listen to his master’s tale, without taking any interest in or understanding anything about the story; and the dresser of the two, Gabi Cohen Groenland, a clown pantomime who does not utter a word throughout the play. .
The combination of an excellent text for the two actors, which reminds us of Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, or Vladimir and Estragon in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot , together with the theatrical slapstick concocted by director Julian Chagrin, is intelligent and impressive, full of joy, love and theatrical fun. Bravo*!
Friday, 7 March 2008
The theft of Soame's voice.
The Author, in a fringe, being groped by his grandmother while his brother Nic pees on him. Ah Halcyon days!
Soames sat up with a start, his throat felt gravelly, as though gnomes had been clog dancing on his larynx.
"Oh my God I bet I've been talking in my sleep, again." He said hoarsely. "I wonder if I ever say anything interesting. I think I will go out to my local electronic shop and purchase a voice activated recording device. Then I will find out what I say. I know I must be talking in my sleep, even sometimes an inordinate amount, because every morning my throat is sore."
Soames went downstairs and duly purchased same. He rushed back upstairs like an excited kid on his birthday, opened the package and set the apparatus up.
That night as he got into bed he turned the button to auto and went to sleep. Next morning he looked at the recorder. The red light was blinking which meant that it had recorded .
He turned it on. First there was about two hours of snoring and muttering which he ran through and then:
"Hello Soames."
He gave a start. That wasn't his voice.
"So you've found me out. I wondered when you'd cotton on."
The voice was strangely familiar! His blood went cold and hairs started up on the back of his neck.
It was Hartman! His next door neighbour!
What was happening here?
The voice continued.
"Yes I've been coming here for months while you slept and using you to talk in my ---our sleep. I didn't want to use up my voice."
Hartman is an actor. Soames could see his point.
He went on.
"Well I suppose I should go, now that my cover is blown. Blast! And tomorrow I was going to try walking in our sleep. Oh well. I'll use up the rest of our last night with the soliloquy from Hamlet, then I'll leave."
Soames turned off the machine while he made himself a cup of coffee and then turned it back on and listened to Hartman's Hamlet in his voice as he sipped.
Soames felt strangely proud, he was rather good.
After the Hamlet came some poems by WB Yates and the ode to a Grecian Urn. About dawn, he knew it was dawn because he could hear the dawn chorus on the tape, Hartman began telling jokes. He ended the whole performance with a rather risque' musical hall song.
"Well, good night Soames or rather good morning. Thanx for the use of your throat it's been real. See you around. And don't bother to sue. There's nothing about it in the law books. I checked."
Soames went next door and knocked, then saw the "To Let" sign on Hartman's door.
He felt oddly betrayed that his new partner had skipped town. Because let's face it they had been partners of a sort, though, to be more accurate, Soames was just the sleeping partner.
Three years later I was still living in the same apartment and was by this time married to Jenna, an artist cum cook.
One morning she said:
"Soamesy you are a dark horse. I didn't know you liked Shakespeare."
I felt a twinge of uneasiness, the mind is very fast.
"Er why do you say that?" I asked, though I knew what was coming.
"Last night you were talking in your sleep and you quoted the ghost from Hamlet. Word perfect."
I love Jenna, I trust her implicitly, we've been through a lot. I told her the Hartman story, fearing ridicule but braving it out nonetheless.
"So he's back?" She said, gorgeous lass, skipping all the doubts and questions one would have expected, and going straight to the nitty gritty, whatever that means.
"Yes so it seems," I said "I certainly never learnt Hamlet's Ghost speech, I wouldn't recognize it if it bit me on the fetlock."
Jenna set her jaw determinedly
"What a cheek. We're going to find this parasite and put a stop to his machinations." She was getting angry , "He has absolutely no right to enter your head without permission. He's trespassing you know."
"He's an actor," I said "he should be easy to find."
I rang Spotlight, the actor's magazine.
Jenna says that when I put down the phone I had lost all my color.
"Hartman died yesterday." I was trembling.
"You poor darling!" Jenna thought for a moment, "Oh my God! He's haunting you."
"Yes that's why he's doing the ghost bit. Poor sod. Still it's not very nice to have to share one's brain with a spectre, wraith or phantom."
"There's nothing for it, we must have you exorcised."
That's how it all started. So far I've seen five catholic priests, several bhuddist monks, a voodoo practitioner and three Christian scientists.
I am still nightly haunted by Hartman's ghost who uses me for rehearsal.
From what I glean from my trusty tape recorder he’s currently doing Ibsen’s “Ghosts.”
"Oh my God I bet I've been talking in my sleep, again." He said hoarsely. "I wonder if I ever say anything interesting. I think I will go out to my local electronic shop and purchase a voice activated recording device. Then I will find out what I say. I know I must be talking in my sleep, even sometimes an inordinate amount, because every morning my throat is sore."
Soames went downstairs and duly purchased same. He rushed back upstairs like an excited kid on his birthday, opened the package and set the apparatus up.
That night as he got into bed he turned the button to auto and went to sleep. Next morning he looked at the recorder. The red light was blinking which meant that it had recorded .
He turned it on. First there was about two hours of snoring and muttering which he ran through and then:
"Hello Soames."
He gave a start. That wasn't his voice.
"So you've found me out. I wondered when you'd cotton on."
The voice was strangely familiar! His blood went cold and hairs started up on the back of his neck.
It was Hartman! His next door neighbour!
What was happening here?
The voice continued.
"Yes I've been coming here for months while you slept and using you to talk in my ---our sleep. I didn't want to use up my voice."
Hartman is an actor. Soames could see his point.
He went on.
"Well I suppose I should go, now that my cover is blown. Blast! And tomorrow I was going to try walking in our sleep. Oh well. I'll use up the rest of our last night with the soliloquy from Hamlet, then I'll leave."
Soames turned off the machine while he made himself a cup of coffee and then turned it back on and listened to Hartman's Hamlet in his voice as he sipped.
Soames felt strangely proud, he was rather good.
After the Hamlet came some poems by WB Yates and the ode to a Grecian Urn. About dawn, he knew it was dawn because he could hear the dawn chorus on the tape, Hartman began telling jokes. He ended the whole performance with a rather risque' musical hall song.
"Well, good night Soames or rather good morning. Thanx for the use of your throat it's been real. See you around. And don't bother to sue. There's nothing about it in the law books. I checked."
Soames went next door and knocked, then saw the "To Let" sign on Hartman's door.
He felt oddly betrayed that his new partner had skipped town. Because let's face it they had been partners of a sort, though, to be more accurate, Soames was just the sleeping partner.
Three years later I was still living in the same apartment and was by this time married to Jenna, an artist cum cook.
One morning she said:
"Soamesy you are a dark horse. I didn't know you liked Shakespeare."
I felt a twinge of uneasiness, the mind is very fast.
"Er why do you say that?" I asked, though I knew what was coming.
"Last night you were talking in your sleep and you quoted the ghost from Hamlet. Word perfect."
I love Jenna, I trust her implicitly, we've been through a lot. I told her the Hartman story, fearing ridicule but braving it out nonetheless.
"So he's back?" She said, gorgeous lass, skipping all the doubts and questions one would have expected, and going straight to the nitty gritty, whatever that means.
"Yes so it seems," I said "I certainly never learnt Hamlet's Ghost speech, I wouldn't recognize it if it bit me on the fetlock."
Jenna set her jaw determinedly
"What a cheek. We're going to find this parasite and put a stop to his machinations." She was getting angry , "He has absolutely no right to enter your head without permission. He's trespassing you know."
"He's an actor," I said "he should be easy to find."
I rang Spotlight, the actor's magazine.
Jenna says that when I put down the phone I had lost all my color.
"Hartman died yesterday." I was trembling.
"You poor darling!" Jenna thought for a moment, "Oh my God! He's haunting you."
"Yes that's why he's doing the ghost bit. Poor sod. Still it's not very nice to have to share one's brain with a spectre, wraith or phantom."
"There's nothing for it, we must have you exorcised."
That's how it all started. So far I've seen five catholic priests, several bhuddist monks, a voodoo practitioner and three Christian scientists.
I am still nightly haunted by Hartman's ghost who uses me for rehearsal.
From what I glean from my trusty tape recorder he’s currently doing Ibsen’s “Ghosts.”
Thursday, 21 February 2008
BURTON SINCLAIR
My eldest son Jeff playing Burton Sinclair.
Photo taken by Nicolas Tickle-us Chagrin.
“Burton Sinclair at your service.”
“Not…the Burton Sinclair? Underwater explorer, male model, brain surgeon, nuclear physicist, nobel prize winner for his work on baldness, Olympic five metre sprint champion, Oxford Swearing Blue, Specialist in Spices, particularly cinnamon and author of the first dictionary of Mongolian into cockney rhyming slang?”
“No, not that Burton Sinclair.”
“Oh then you must be Burton Sinclair the postman, who consistently fails to deliver the right letters into our mail box? And instead stuffs it with all the bills from next door. Who is obviously dyslexic because he folds articles into two when they say do not bend and drops them when they say fragile?”
“No, not that Burton Sinclair either.”
“Don’t tell me you’re the Burton Sinclair who singlehandedly painted the Forth Bridge in one weekend with one can of paint while balancing a bicycle on his nose?”
“No, not that Burton Sinclair, although we are distantly related.”
“Aha! So you must be the Burton Sinclair who invented a machine for turning used tea-bags into portable computers!”
“Alas no, I am not he. I am Burton Sinclair the Policeman and you are under arrest for impersonating a Burton Sinclair Specialist.”
“Not…the Burton Sinclair? Underwater explorer, male model, brain surgeon, nuclear physicist, nobel prize winner for his work on baldness, Olympic five metre sprint champion, Oxford Swearing Blue, Specialist in Spices, particularly cinnamon and author of the first dictionary of Mongolian into cockney rhyming slang?”
“No, not that Burton Sinclair.”
“Oh then you must be Burton Sinclair the postman, who consistently fails to deliver the right letters into our mail box? And instead stuffs it with all the bills from next door. Who is obviously dyslexic because he folds articles into two when they say do not bend and drops them when they say fragile?”
“No, not that Burton Sinclair either.”
“Don’t tell me you’re the Burton Sinclair who singlehandedly painted the Forth Bridge in one weekend with one can of paint while balancing a bicycle on his nose?”
“No, not that Burton Sinclair, although we are distantly related.”
“Aha! So you must be the Burton Sinclair who invented a machine for turning used tea-bags into portable computers!”
“Alas no, I am not he. I am Burton Sinclair the Policeman and you are under arrest for impersonating a Burton Sinclair Specialist.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)