Hello everyone!
Welcome back to etude on Monday. This week I hit a bit of a wall becuase…well..I couldn’t find any live streams this week that took my fancy. This brought up a question about the curation side of etude, should I just share any show that comes my way or should I be a bit more selective? I don’t know what the answer but I ask you, what do you turn to etude for? Is it for the shows that are live this week or just for general theatre suggestions? The answer is probably a mixture of the two but I wonder how it feels when there just…no shows this week.
There are shows on, of course there will be streaming somewhere. I’m someone who checks all my socials and theatre websites to see whats on and yeah, for some reason I just couldn’t find any. So…sorry about that. If you do have a show on over the next coming weeks do drop me a message.
Anyway, I think this weeks selection is a good mix of stuff and I hope you find something you enjoy!
Three Kingdoms by Simon Stephens, Sebastian Nübling & Ene-Liis Sempe
free
archive recording
Note: I haven’t read or watched this yet and I’m trying to find exact content warnings but can’t find specifics. I remember that when it was first presented there was a lot of discussions about how dodgy the representaiton of women and the blurb points to some pretty horrifc stuff. Although this content warning isn’t explicit in what to expect, I’d say tread carefully.
Three Kingdoms is a blackly entertaining and unsettling detective story cum parable about the devil in us all, international human trafficking and the changing state of Europe. As the severed human head of an Estonian woman is found in a river in Hammersmith, two British detectives set off in search of her origins in Europe and how she came to be found dead. Accompanied by a mephistophelian German detective acting as their guide, they gradually sink deeper and deeper into the world of prostitution and international human trafficking. Fighting to cross international borders and language barriers, they enter a nightmarish world that will change one of them forever. Three Kingdoms tells the stories of trafficked women, the gangs and the police forces across Europe that attempt to control them. This dark new thriller by Simon Stephens, set across three countries, explores an international business where the goods are not products, but people. Questioning and undermining not just tenets about the nature of Europe with its old and new borders, Three Kingdoms also explodes moral certainties. With good and evil presented not as polarised forces but as disturbingly shifting, overlapping and contradictory, the play provocatively unbalances convictions of truth, ethical codes, violence and justice.
We Are Here Because of Those That Are Not by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley
free
archive recording
a film and performance centered on remembering Black Trans ancestors who have been forgotten to time, as well as installing Black Trans existence in the present. Brathwaite-Shirley use electronic sound and animation to create a virtual archive for Black Trans bodies who were wrongly archived or never archived at all. By applying their own lived experience to imaginatively retelling Trans stories, the artist reclaim space for their forgotten forebears.
Emata (Bloods) by Efthimis Filippou
free
archive recording
A bizarre performance-concert full of oddness and black humor. Following on from the triumphant reception given to “Dogtooth", "Alps" and "The Lobster”, the writer of the scripts that got foreign critics talking about a New Weird Greek Cinema has written his first play, exclusively for the distinguished VASISTAS Company and the Onassis Stegi. Argyro Chioti, an outstanding director of the younger generation, known for her vibrant theatricality and ability to conjure up an atmosphere on stage, stages "Emata" ("Bloods") as a punk oratorio about our open wounds.
This is the Real Thing by Anna Nowicka
10.00 zł
Until 31st July
I crush my skin’s landscape. I roll it up, put it on, drop it, move it, reveal it, hide it, send it back. Searching, losing and finding it, in the absolute here and now, before “it is!”. I am slowly transforming, constantly forming, I unexpectedly destroy, knot, tear apart and carefully unscrew. The endless process of becoming enchanted into a visible image/object. I put together a poetic, fleshy album for newspaper clippings, mythical stories heard by chance and carefully hidden dreams. This is the real thing is a performance where the body is at the centre of the performance. A single dancer creates and deconstructs her environment, playing in the landscape of visual meanings and possible references. Her own body flickers and transforms, remaining in the process of continuous becoming. Various qualities, textures, fragments of emotions, associations, situations, intentions, characters, actions, become embodied, but none of them is fixed in the form of a visual object. The physical body functions rather as an infinite hypertext, referring the viewer to more and more new associations. The dialogue between the real body and its visual representations raises the question of what the body actually is, how we perceive it and to what extent we can consciously construct it.
free
archive recording
An evening-length duet that invited audiences into what dance making feels like, sounds like, thinks like. It was both the evidence and performance of a creative process. The artists—appearing live and virtually—created a dynamic exposure of how we do what we do. These multiple points of entry gave artists and audience the interactive spontaneity of truly accessible theater and made use of the flexibility of digital media.
Like last etude, I just wanted to share this fundraiser for brilliant human Griffyn Gilligan and if you have a spare quid or 2 or 10 or 100 then please consider donating.
This week etude hit 200 subscribers! A big milestone for this little newsletter. Please do sharing and telling your friends to subscribe!
Hope you have a lovely week and see you soon
Josh xx