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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Plimpton offered role of a Lifetime? |
| 2004-03-22 |
| A British theatre group is to hold an unprecedented casting call for its next production. The experimental company requires a dead body to take a leading role in its latest show. The consent of the donor of the body is being sought beforehand and the production team aim to treat the subject of death with absolute seriousness, challenging modern taboos about a condition that comes to everybody at some point. Called Dead: You Will Be, the play requires a dead body to ’lie in state’ throughout the proceedings. ’The body will not necessarily be touched by the actors at all,’ said Jo Dagless, one of the company’s artistic directors. ’But all those details would be worked out in advance with the donor and with their family.’ Unfortunately Yassin is probably interested. The production, which is being put together by 1157performancegroup, will run for 24 nights in mid-May and will be staged inside a warehouse studio in Hackney, east London. Tickets will be available to the public and the directors are not anticipating legal problems since, they say, the law only prevents dead bodies from being dissected in public and they plan simply to put the cadaver on display. ’It is an element of the show that we think is important to help us to dispel some of the mystery that surrounds death,’ said Dagless.Dagless and her fellow artistic director Matthew Scott expect the respondent to their appeal to be a terminally ill hospice resident who has had a strong interest in confronting popular prejudices. They are writing to hospices and charities appealing for someone to come forward. I thought the show was about a corpse not performance art. ’It is about a kind of contact with death that is more than just a philosophical experience. Perhaps we do all have to deny death in order to go on. That is something we will be exploring. We don’t have any answers,’ said Dagless. Dagless and Scott insist they will explore the issues of death and dying in a respectful manner. The company has consulted an embalmer to find out how to treat the corpse so that it could take part in the full run of the show. They may need a understudy if the weather is hot and humid. The appeal comes on the heels of other plans to bring dead bodies into the public arena. The Science Museum is planning to display a decomposing body in its adults-only wing. Does anyone else find it bizarre that a museum of science would have an adult’s only wing and be willing to display decomposition? Dagless explained this increased interest as a reaction to the fact that Western cultures have ’grown unaccustomed to death in the flesh. We have become de-sensitised to images of death and dying in the media,’ she added. ’The use of a body in this piece is integral to the direct confrontation of the issues that 1157 want to encourage in the audience and the company and will, we hope, reawaken a collective response to our inevitable fates.’ A French version could be titiled, Return from Vacation. · Dead: You Will Be runs from May 11 at Space 44 in Hackney, east London. The 1157performancegroup can be contacted at Norden Farm Centre for the Arts, Altwood Road, Maidenhead, Berkshire SL6 4PF - See it early, see it often and front row seats are not recommended. At this point it doesn’t sound like a musical. |
| Posted by:Super Hose |
| #4 Or maybe they can flash a brest when their audience isn't expecting it. Oh better yet a fag could jack off while the chorus chants, "I'ts your birthday". I'm thinking of doing a painting of a really scary clown. |
| Posted by: Lucky 2004-3-22 11:30:25 AM |
| #3 yawn. The "art" community is running out of ways to shock people. When the shock value comes out of this, what next? Volunteers to perform suicide, rapes, murders? Here's an idea, why don't they perform ART - oh wait, that's right, you need talent for that. |
| Posted by: B 2004-3-22 10:54:58 AM |
| #2 for 24 nights in mid-May and will be staged inside a warehouse studio "its a shame that he won't keep, but Summer's comin on and we're runnin out of ice." |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-3-22 10:26:21 AM |
| #1 Anyone else remember the Monty Python sketch about the director that cast Marilyn Monroe in his movie? |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-3-22 10:13:04 AM |