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Sprint Festival 09 |
Mendes bridges Atlantic with a project oozing class
SPRINT FESTIVAL 09
Camden People's Theatre
IT is always nice to be in the hands of professionals, so I was reassured that to open the Sprint festival of 2009 we were in the hands of two ladies, Chloé Déchery and Lucy Foster, who claimed to be as much.
Other rather lofty claims were made to begin this quirky experimental theatre festival. In Showing Up – The Launch Party the audience were promised an opening like “all your birthdays, Christmases, Bastille and Guy Fawkes days come at once”.
Party hats, bubbles, blowers and confetti were supplied, a clock set, and the countdown began to the Sprint kick-off. The foyer was then witness to scenes reminiscent of New Year’s Eve. This self-confessed “bad PR exercise” was to be one of four events hosted by Déchery spanning the first days of the festival.
This hi-jinx was followed by a rather stern monologue entitled The Invitation, in which Tom Marshman recounted tales told to him by groups of older people in response to his previous work, Everyone's Companion to Life and Love. Drunken debutantes and parachutes made into blouses feature in a work that, despite Marshman’s austere storytelling, does a wonderful job as advocate for the older generation, bringing these very human stories to life.
While standing in the foyer enjoying the complementary crisps, my picture was taken with Harriet Poole. I was unaware, but the (in)visible Exchange had begun. Poole suggested “we go somewhere more private,” this led to a conversation on a cold and graffiti-strewn stairwell. The details of this private conversation, were then scribbled down, developed into a photograph using a make-shift basement darkroom, the paper shredded and the photo exhibited in the foyer where the process had started. Such events such are what marks the Sprint festival out as a platform for original and inventive theatre.
The festival runs until July 4, with a performance lecture (June 26-28) by a pseudo-pregnant Mamoru Iriguchi entitled PREGNANT?! looking like a particular highlight. More details at www.cptheatre.co.uk
Until July 4
08700 600 100 |
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