International Festival of Contemporary Theatre
Programme
The Notebook
9, 10 September 18:00, Museum stage of New Riga Theatre | 15, 10 eur
Based on the award winning novel by Ágota Kristóf and set during WW2, The Notebook tells the story of a pair of twin brothers evacuated to their impoverished grandmother’s farm in order to shelter from the conflict. These unnamed children are social outsiders, mavericks who survive and understand the world by a harsh private code. As the war deepens, the brothers are slowly revealed as struggling moralists, trying to live by consistent principles in a Central Europe crumbling into cruelty and opportunism.
Directed by Tim Etchells, The Notebook is an unraveling knot of naïve logic, weaving dark and subversive humour from wartime hardships. Forced Entertainment performers Richard Lowdon and Robin Arthur stand side by side to tell their story in an unsettling and uncanny double act that traps two people in a single voice and a shared perspective. Kristof’s narrational language – bold, crisp and reduced – provides the basis for a unique and compelling performance.
About artist
Forced Entertainment is a Sheffield based group of six artists who have worked together since 1984 to make compelling, inventive and provocative new theatre. Combining discussion, improvisation and writing, its rehearsal process is a creative laboratory that discovers unexpected and inspiring answers to questions of life and art. The group’s work is rooted in theatre but it also makes ground-breaking forays into durational performance, gallery installation and digital media.
Credits
Conceived and devised by Forced Entertainment
Direction: Tim Etchells
With: Robin Arthur, Richard Lowdon
Set design: Richard Lowdon
Light design: Jim Harrison
Production: Jim Harrison / Forced Entertainment
Co-production: PACT Zollverein, LIFT and 14–18 NOW, WW1 Centenary Art Commissions
A House on Fire co-commission with HAU, Kaaitheater, Teatro Maria Matos, LIFT and Malta Festival
The Notebook is based on Le grand cahier by Ágota Kristóf, Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 1986. English translation © (1988) by Alan Sheridan
Premiere in Essen, 2014
9, 10
September
18:00
15 and 10*
Eur
Language
In English with Latvian translation
Duration
2h10
Address
Website
* Reduced price for pupils, students, seniors, people with disabilities