Hello everyone!
Hope you’re having a very lovely Monday. In preparation for this months Mystery Theatre Club, I thought I’d share what was show at the first edition.
If you’re a long time reader, you’ll know that I love Stream by Katarzyna Minkowska. It was one of my favourite shows of 2021 and having the chance to share this piece with a group of people was an experience that I’ll hold dear. My whole perception of the show changed and seeing the energies of audiences sat with each other shifting between moment to moment gave me a real sense of what the show was doing and saying. It also made me realise just how sad this show is! Fuck! ahhhh! It felt like listening to a mid western emo band with the lyric sheet open on your phone. You like how it sounds and the aesthetic principals of it match your vibe but you’re reading the lyrics this time and you realise the tensions your body holds and these lyrics area vessel to release them. Oh man, I loved it even more.
I had a chat with one of the attendees a few days later whilst sat in Kitty’s Laundrette and we discussed how there’s one section of the piece where temporary tattoos are used as bullet holes how genius that was and it felt so nice being able to share that admiration of Katarzyna’s work with someone else.
For the first one, friend of etude and friend of Josh, James Varney, came down to check out what it’s all about. Here’s a revew of Stream. Enjoy
Stream by Katarzyna Minkowska
Katarzyna Minkowska’s Stream begins with a hole in history. Inside Greek ruins we are introduced to Kore and Demeter, daughter and mother, ancient characters from ancient stories. Our story is built on an incomplete understanding; ‘We don’t know what the feast celebrating Kore and Demeter looked like.’ Sure, Greek myths are impressive but they are crumbling ruins – our own stories can take their place.
Stream uses languages which already exist – of theatre, vlogging, Greek tragedy, mothers and daughters. Like Greek myths, languages only work when they are both dead and alive. We have to be able to understand their meaning, and willing to create new meanings from them. Kore is fascinated with death and dying, and persistently refashions herself – the date Narcyz and Kore are on doesn’t go well, so they begin again, restart the recording.
Narcyz to Kore: ‘I may be wrong but I don’t think you were ever really frank – ever really yourself.’ The way we style ourselves, reevaluate and reassert who we are, makes us fragile. We are both dead and alive. Stream proposes to us that who we are is not a consequence of our history or source, but a consequence of a process of negotiation. Who we are is how we argue, how we process grief, how we anticipate life.
When Kore drinks the waters of the river Lethe, she forgets her life. Among the living, her records, memory and plans for her funeral are all that survive of her. It is up to Demeter to sanction her plans, it is left to those who knew her to remember who she was. Kore still is herself, her moods, her personality, but now she is dead she has no control over her image.
Theatre is a form which uses the past; Stream repurposes ancient modes of storytelling, and whenever we have actors, scripts, directors, audiences, we are doing things which have been done for thousands of years. Mystery Theatre Club uses the old languages of theatre: coming together before the show, staying after to talk about it. In Kitty’s Launderette in Anfield we remake that language by using it. Occupying space is a language, sharing our opinions, our perspectives, is a language.
Old stories hold as much or as little power as we allow them to. Myths aren’t above us; they only matter when we use them. We come together, we use stories, we create something new.
James xx
Well, that was the first edition The second edition review will come soon. In the meantime, why not come down to Kitty’s Laundrette for the third edition.
Wednesday 18th October
7:00pm
Kitty’s Laundrette
Pay What You Can
Hopefully see you there!
Josh