gogoparis.com » theatre

Festival Standard Idéal

kvdb — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:59:55 +0000

The 9th edition of the invigorating avant-garde theatre festival Le Standard Idéal is currently running at suburban theatre hotspot MC93. Presenting works The Fairy Queen and Israël from the 2012 festival revelation, Lisbon’s Teatro Praga company, star Hungarian director Péter Kárpáti presents Les Actes de Pitbull, Berlin’s Budapest born director David Marton returns to the festival with the international premier of Le Clavier bien tempéré, and the Catalan theatre director Calixto Bieito also returns to the festival with Desaparecer (Disappear), a rap on Edgar Allen Poe’s famous poem ‘The Raven’. Find complete details here.
Until Mon 13 Feb.
MC93 Bobigny, 1 bd Lénine, 93000 Bobigny. www.mc93.com

© Alípio Padilha

La Comédie Française pop-up theatre

kvdb — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:30:32 +0000

The country’s oldest theatre company La Comédie Française has closed for renovations for a year, but will maintain its 2012 programme inside a purpose-built wooden pop-up theatre in the gardens of the Palais Royal next door, and which opens to the public today. (Watch and AFP report here.) Despite a strike by the theatre company’s tech crew, Carlo Goldon’s ‘La Trilogie de la villégiature’ should open tonight in the new space.
www.comedie-francaise.fr/

© Christophe Raynaud de Lage. Coll. Comédie-Française

Festival EXIT 2011

kvdb — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 09:36:19 +0000

Creteil’s fantastic annual festival EXIT returns this month with its typically avant-garde program of international theatre, dance and music. A highlight this year is a 100% Parisian project, a collaboration between digital producers Dalbin, fashion designer JC de Castelbajac and musical outfit Nouvelle Vague, for a performance and homage to French artist Robert Malaval ‘Ceremony’ (Fri 18, Sat 19 Mar, 9pm, 10€, res 01 45 13 19 19, book your ticket here). Other highlights include the multimedia play in English ‘Bellona: Destroyer of Cities’ by New York theatre director Jay Scheib, and UK contemporary choreographer and dancer Wayne McGregor and his Random Dance company with FAR (co-produced by London’s Sadler’s Wells). Inspired by the controversial Age of Enlightenment, FAR mines an era that first placed ‘a body in question’…
Thu 10-Sun 20 Mar.
Maison des Arts Créteil, pl Salvador Allende, 94000 Créteil. M° Créteil-Préfecture. www.maccreteil.com/

Cheek by Jowl present ‘The Tempest’ at Les Gemeaux

kvdb — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 12:31:10 +0000

Declan Donnelan’s celebrated theatre company Cheek by Jowl, currently resident at The Barbican in London, present a new Russian production of ‘The Tempest’ by their Moscow sister company in Paris later this month. Shakespeare juggles magic, laughter, danger and love with all the flair and freedom of his maturity in this disturbing anatomy of power. Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod’s internationally renowned Russian ensemble, whose ‘acting is nothing short of sublime’ (‘The Times’), were previously seen in ‘Twelfth Night’, ‘Three Sisters’ and ‘Boris Godunov’.
In Russian, subtitled in French.
Wed 26 Jan-Sun 13 Feb. Les Gémeaux Scène Nationale, 49 av Georges Clémenceau, 92330 Sceaux (01.46.61.36.67/www.lesgemeaux.com). RER Bourg-La-Reine

Eonnagata

kvdb — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 10:57:27 +0000

‘Eonnagata’, last year’s triumphant production from London’s Sadler’s Wells, is in Paris till the end of the week. The production brings together three of the world’s foremost creative minds: internationally acclaimed dancer Sylvie Guillem, world-renowned theatre-maker Robert Lepage and award-winning choreographer Russell Maliphant. The piece tells the story of the Chevalier d’Éon, Charles de Beaumont – diplomat, writer, swordsman and a member of the King’s Secret, a network of spies under the control of Louis XV. De Beaumont was perhaps the first spy to use transvestitism in the furtherance of his duties and until the day he died his true gender was a source of constant speculation, even provoking public bets in the late 18th century. For this remarkable collaboration, Guillem, Lepage and Maliphant draw not only from their respective backgrounds, but also from the ancient Kabuki technique of Onnegata – in which male actors portray female roles in an extremely stylised fashion. The elaborate costumes of Louis XV’s court are by Alexander McQueen.
Until 9 Jan. Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, 15 av Montaigne, 8th. Mº Alma-Marceau. 01.49.52.50.50. www.theatrechampselysees.fr/

English-subtitled program at Théâtre de la Colline

m.osucha — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 08:45:08 +0000

Don’t miss Le Théâtre de la Colline’s last two English-subtitled performances of the 2009-2010 season. After A Doll’s House and The Just Assassins, the theater will enhance their presentation of the play Black Battles with Dogs by Bernard-Marie Koltès for an English-speaking audience on the evenings of 16 and 25 June, and they’ll even be handing out a program in English. Set in West Africa, the play treats such turbulent themes as racial conflict, frustration, desire, and failure. The play is directed by prominent German director Michael Thalheimer (his first time working with an all-French cast). Initiated by Stephane Braunschweig, La Colline’s new director, this project aims at opening the theatre to a broader English speaking audience, whether living in or travelling through Paris. It will be renewed next season with Lulu by Frank Wedekind in December, The Grown-ups by Marie N’Diaye in March/April 2011 and Miss Julie by August Strindbergh in May 2011. For information on La Colline’s 2010-2011 program visit their website.

‘In the Penal Colony’ by Philip Glass

j.phelan — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 09:42:48 +0000

French director Richard Brunel may have chosen the elegant Athénée Theatre for his production of Philip Glass‘s chamber opera, but it couldn’t be further from the gilt-and-plush world of traditional opera. Based on Kafka’s short story of the same name, the piece is a two-handed drama between a gentleman traveller touring a remote island prison and one of the outpost’s authoritarian commanders. The visitor has been invited to witness a public execution performed by a sinister ‘apparatus’, whose cruel and unusual punishment is losing its popularity under the colony’s new regime. Glass’s taut, pulsing score, performed here by the Opéra National de Lyon’s string quintet, is at once a recreation of the workings of the torture machine and a soundscape of the claustrophobia of colonial existence. Meanwhile Brunel, seizing on the themes of spectatorship and complicity suggested by Kafka’s story, confronts the audience with a machine that resembles a nightmarish theatre set – complete with curtains – in a stark parallel that forces the audience to examine its own role in the horrors unfolding on stage.
Performed in English.
Until 17 April.

‘Macbeth’ by Cheek by Jowl

j.phelan — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:33:37 +0000

Director Declan Donnellan cements UK theatre company Cheek by Jowl‘s reputation for pacy, pared-down productions of the classics with this exhilarating version of Macbeth, which comes to Les Gémeaux in Sceaux as part of a European tour. Already a relatively short play, in Donnellan’s hands Shakespeare’s tragedy of a man who would be king moves at breathtaking speed. By overlapping scenes and making some bold cuts to the text, the director brings the performance to a taut two hours that are intense but never rushed. He keeps the play’s staging equally lean: set, props and costumes are all at a minimum, allowing nothing to distract from superb acting by the Cheek by Jowl troupe. The cast are more than capable of conjuring the play’s nightmare imagery with their speech and movement alone; the three witches, for instance, become an entire stage full of shadowy, whispering figures far more terrifying than any amount of dry ice and fake blood. Yet grounding it all in human tragedy are two outstanding central performances by Will Keen as Macbeth and Anastasia Hille as his Lady, who bring compelling naturalness and believability to even the most familiar lines. The result is an exceptional production that is contemporary without being modern-day, theatrical without being stagey, and classic without being traditional.
(Performed in English with French subtitles.)
Until 21 Feb.

‘Eleven and Twelve’ by Peter Brook

kvdb — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:43:38 +0000

Legendary director Peter Brooke presents a new production at his Paris theatre Les Bouffes du Nord. ‘Eleven and Twelve’ is based on a novel by Malian writer and ethnologue Amadou Hampaté Bâ on the life and teachings of his spiritual leader Tierno Bokar. Bokar (1875–1939) was a Sufi sage, a member of a distinguished clan, and a spiritual leader in his village in Mali. His clan, exponents of repeating a Sufi prayer 12 times, was embroiled in a debate with a rival clan that advocated repeating it 11 times, a debate that devolved into a conflict over power and leadership in the Tidjani Sufi Order. When Tierno eventually became a follower of Hamallah, a member of the rival clan, he was cast out by family, relatives and clan, branded a traitor, and forbidden to teach or pray publicly. Tierno died impoverished and isolated. Brook’s new play is a theatrical exploration of the power of tolerance in a world of religious violence. (In English; 24 Nov-19 Dec).