THEATRE WORKS
this distraktit globe first performed at La Mama, Melbourne, October 2000
(the great figure-head
of our cultural, constructed meaning)
should re-appear to tell us the truth?
Some time in the relatively near future, our society has suffered what could be described as a 'cultural catastrophe'. History, literature, philosophy, community - all that we use to make meaning of the world and our place in it - lies buried in the ruins of a civilization past.
In a world in which history has lost its meaning, three traveling players, inspired by hearsay of an age of meaning and culture, travel from town to town to perform their mystery drama - a sacred theatrical performance which attempts to make sense of how the world came to be in this shattered state, and to salvage some meaning from the world as it has come to be. Using the shards and remnants of a passed-down oral tradition, they entertain and educate their audience with a story which, they have been told, was once a defining piece of culture - Hamleth.
a meta-theatre reading of Hamlet, this distraktit globe utilizes a created language, a poetic, deformed quasi- Elizabethan language which serves to slow the audiences intellectual processes, allowing them to enter a more perceptual state, in which elements, character - and indeed meaning - can be experienced more deeply.
In a world in which history has lost its meaning, three traveling players, inspired by hearsay of an age of meaning and culture, travel from town to town to perform their mystery drama - a sacred theatrical performance which attempts to make sense of how the world came to be in this shattered state, and to salvage some meaning from the world as it has come to be. Using the shards and remnants of a passed-down oral tradition, they entertain and educate their audience with a story which, they have been told, was once a defining piece of culture - Hamleth.
a meta-theatre reading of Hamlet, this distraktit globe utilizes a created language, a poetic, deformed quasi- Elizabethan language which serves to slow the audiences intellectual processes, allowing them to enter a more perceptual state, in which elements, character - and indeed meaning - can be experienced more deeply.
this distraktit globe explores one of the mysteries of the complicity of theatre : how is it that the pretending of reality on stage can somehow sometimes be more 'real' than my 'real' life?
