Cold War Modern at V&A

This exhibition was excelent!

http://www.vam.ac.uk/microsites/cold-war-modern/

Inside In-i: Juliette Binoche and Akram Khan

A performance co-directed and performed by Juliette Binoche and Akram Khan at the National Theatre, London.

The performance was about the relationship between men / women.

What I most liked was the minimalism of the cenario, which was basically a screen and two chairs and the plays with light and shadows.

No Man's Land, by Harold Pinter

No Man's Land, at Duke of York's theatre in London.























What an amazing play! Amazing actors! Amazing screenwriting!

Exactly a kind of play I like: Basically it was just four actors on stage (Michael Gambonm, David Bradley, David Walliams and Nick Dunning), in the cenario what is essencial and remained the same from the beggining till the end, as the story is passed in the same room, between an evening till the next morning. The dialogs are minimum and full of playing with words.

I liked so much that I had the urge to buy the book and go to watch another day!

An interesting quote from the beginning of the play:

"(...) there are some people who appear to be strong, whose idea of what strength consists of is persuasive, but who inhabit the idea and not the fact. What they possess is not strength but expertise. They have nurtured and maintain what is in fact a calculated posture. Half of the time it works. It takes a man of intelligence and perception to stick a needle through that posture and discern the essential flabbiness of the stance. I'm such a man." (Spooner dialog, act one, p. 3)

Ivanov, by Chekhov

Ivanov, by Chekhov, a Donmar Warehouse's production at the Wyndham's Theatre, London.

I read this play some months before I went to watch this production. When I read it, I liked it very much, but watching this production was very disappointing to me. I didn't like the approach of this director, which in my opinion took away the most interesting aspect of Chekhov's play and made it an ordinary meaningless superficial comedy.

Ivanov who is in constant oscillation between ecstasy and depression (characteristics of his despair) was turned into this middle-aged crisis man, which was the whole time depressed with a defeated posture.

I don't mean the actors. The actors were all great! What I really didn't like was the direction.

At the end, I clapped especially to Kevin R McNally.

Website of this production

Stomp

What an amazing show! Just saw it in London this weekend and became a fan of this group. It is a small group of people (only 7) on stage making sounds and music with very ordinary elements: bins, broom, paper, their body, balls, etc. The rhythm, choreography and acting are very well done and it's with humour.

What most attracts me in this show is the synchronized rhythm among the group, which reminds me of what I like in Delicatessen by Jean Pierre Janet and West Side Story. Objects and simple objects making amazing sounds.

More information:
http://www.stomp.co.uk/

YouTube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US7c9ASVfNc&feature=related

Wicked the musical

Wicked is a untold story of the witches of The Wizard of Oz. The play took place in Apollo Victoria, in London.

I haven't been to a musical for a long time, so I was looking forward to go to this play. Although I thought that the production was really well done, in terms of the lights, make-up, costumes, it was everything too "perfect", a "Disney-like", where even the dirty and mass are perfectly put in place. I really didn't like and I was very disappointed by the story, which I thought was very poor.

I'd rather go to a theatre play, where there are just actors on the stage than go to a huge expensive production that doesn't add any new experience in my life.

Official Website:
http://www.wickedthemusical.co.uk

China Design Now

China Design Now was an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum of design from the last 2 decades in the main cities in China: Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. It exhibited posters, toys, product design, installation, video, animation, etc.

What I got most interested was the Homescape by Chen Shaoxiong: a photo collage installation with pictures of furniture and objects from typical homes rearranged.

Website of the exhibition:
http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1636_chinadesignnow/

Brit Insurance Designs of the Year

An exhibition of the 100 best projects of design of the year in the Design Museum in London.

I liked very much some of the projects, especially in the Interactive session. Although, I was a bit disappointed with the Graphic Design session. I was expecting a bit more in terms of experimentation, new materials, print process...

The projects that interested me most were:

- Sketch Furniture, by Front
The group Front have developed a process to turn "air" sketches into real furniture.
Watch the video
Read more in the Front website

- Your house, by Olafur Eliasson.

This book was designed by Olafur Eliasson who relates the experimental narrative of reading a book to walking through a house.


- Sharkrunners, by area/code
Sharkrunners is an online game created for the 20th anniversary of the Discovery Channel's Shark Week.
In the game, players become virtual sharks researchers, but the sharks in the game are the real white sharks with GPS, which provides the position and movement of the real sharks.
Play the game

- Private View Exhibition for Trussardi, Palazzo Trussardi Alla Scala, Milan, by Paul Cocksedge
An exhibition at the Salone del Mobile in Milan. The walls are covered with a filter that for human eyes it appears black. People discover the hidden objects using their mobile cameras or digital cameras.

- The Replenishing Body Kiosk, by Ross Phillips

An interactive video installation where visitors were invited to make a one-second video recording which become part of the video portrait.

Showstudio website

The seagull, by Chekhov

The Seagull, a play by Chekhov, a Royal Shakespeare Company production.

It was the first time I watched a play by Chekhov. I liked so much that I bought the book and read other plays by him.

The production was great, basically just the essential actors on stage. This is the kind of play that I most like, more than huge and expensive productions.

The cast was amazing! It was staring Ian Mckellen. The whole cast was so amazing that Ian Mckellen, even being a great actor wasn't the focus.

About the story, what I most like is the parts that the writer in the play is speaking about creativity, its anxiety, isolation and sufferings:

"I am held day and night by one obsessive thought: I must write, I must write, I must... I've no sooner finished a story than I'm already driven by something to write another, then a third, after that a forth... (...) What, I ask you, is there here that is splendid or bright? Oh, what an absurd life! (...) I have no rest from myself, and I feel that I'm devouring my own life." (Trigorin's dialog, p. 108)

That makes me think how creative professionals have to give up their own life in order to be able to create. Makes me think the relationship between creativity and isolation.