Issue no.34

…some traces of her

Last night I saw one of the most interesting play this year(unless Punch and Drunk come up with another masterpiece). Stage is actually a film set where actors are making a movie that can be seen on huge screen above them. Seamless cooperation and simplicity of “old school” film tricks makes it a play about making a movie or film about the theatre stripped from all its backstages. A must to see, exceptional multimedia experience in a theatre.

National Theatre “..some traces of her” Dir. Katie Mitchell and the company

“..some trace of her is based on, or 'inspired by' as the programme semantically insists, Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot in which the Russian Prince Myshkin falls in love with the beautiful Natasya[…]

The actors double up as a film crew, and vice versa, as the action is filmed and projected on to a big screen behind the stage.

This allows the audience to simultaneously see all the action in 'real life' at the same time as the black-and-white onscreen images mediated through the camera's eye. It is all there for the audience to see, in front of us, and yet you can't help feeling as if your vision is being manipulated, particularly as you can only look at one of the numerous things happening on stage at any given time. The effect is therefore unstable and unsettling.” artshub

This week’s special

Back in London after its stint in Liverpool, the Turner prize exhibition opens to the public at Tate Britain tomorrow until January 18 2009. Four relatively unknown artists have been shortlisted for this year's £25,000 prize - Runa Islam, Goshka Macuga, Cathy Wilkes and Mark Leckey.