Space Club shall be hosting a very exciting collaborative multidisciplinary event on Thursday 20 November from 14:00-20:00, based on the Traverse Theatre’s Theatre Uncut. This project, begun in 2011, began as a response to the coalition government’s cuts in arts funding. It gives five established young playwrights a platform with which to have a play they have each written performed all over the world, in addition to producing them themselves. The overall theme of the project is “knowledge is power, knowledge is change” and all the plays embody this somehow. The Space Club event will see the production of three out of these five plays, including Inua Ellams’ Reset Everything, directed by Jaimie Wolbers, a play that takes a farcical look at state of society and at the controversial Bedroom Tax law; Clara Brennan’s Pachamama, directed by Shreya Chatterjee similarly looks at the government’s influence on daily life; and Anders Lustgarten’s Finger of God, co-directed by Kate Brown and Lucy Evans, which reinvents the idea of the lottery as a platform for punishment as well as for gain. These plays are also accessible on the Theatre Uncut website entirely copyright-free for a month.
In addition to the performance of three official Theatre Uncut plays, four plays by Turkish and Scottish writers following the same theme shall be performed. These were written in light of the Gezi park protests, whereby protesters opposing the construction of a mall were so badly treated by police that many were injured and a couple actually died. Their purpose is look at the current state of democracy in Turkey. Two of these plays, both written by Scots, deal directly with the riots: Davey Anderson’s Police State, directed by Vlada Nebo, deals with two Turkish girls living through the protests and their increasing awareness of them, whilst Olivier Award-winning Stef Smith’s Smoke (and Mirrors), directed by Sibylia Archdale Kalid, looks at three girls’ experiences of the protests. Also being shown is Derem Ciray’s Apollo 8844, directed by Rosie Tricks, which explores the role of journalism and the internet in country where knowledge and news is limited. The seventh and final play performed, Ayfer Tunc’s A Lesson in Lynching, directed by Selin Senkoken, concerns some rowers who were attacked for wearing revealing clothes, resulting in a mock trial where the way the law should represent moral values is explored.
This event has further extended the Theatre Uncut project to various other art forms. The day will also comprise of art exhibits by Elif Öngüt, a Turkish photographer, of the Gezi Park protests in addition to the work of nine other artists; movement pieces in response to the original theme. These include a piece from Chicago-based Anya Yermakova, an interactive piece by Sarah Lamb, a piece called ‘Genderventions’, designed to provoke discussion on the body choreographed by Niranjani Iyer, from Delhi. Also performing is Delhi’s Third Space Collective theatre company. The multidisciplinary event should be an exciting and varied day of thought-provoking creativity. The event’s organiser, Melanie Phillips, initially came up with the idea for the project in August, and has seen it grow both in scope and scale, diversifying to cover all sorts of relevant issues today.
The free event is structured in a way that allows you to reflect on what you experience: the doors of the exhibition space open at 14:00, followed by refreshments and an opportunity for discussion of the exhibition at 16:00. The performances will be between 17:00-20:00. Due to limited capacity, you are encouraged to reserve your free tickets early to go and experience some diverse, political and creative artistic responses to the project.
