The Living Record Festival Archives

Deborah by Maud Dromgoole – The Living Record Festival

16Feb

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

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Deborah by Maud Dromgoole – The Living Record Festival

Deborah is an immersive audio play that brings you face to face with the anxieties and demons of a lonely, aging mind. Written by Maud Dromgoole and directed by Bethany Pitts, this 30-minute piece takes you through an extraordinary day in the ordinary life of its titular character who finds herself isolated, confused and disoriented after an unexplainable, almost supernatural transformation. This is the story of Deborah, an elderly woman living alone in a house with limited human contact. She spends her days watching old videos of Art Attack, an arts and craft TV program suited more for kids than seniors, and tries to keep herself busy with some self-care rituals. She has a grandson whose selfies on her smartphone serve as a welcome distraction from the daily humdrum and is in touch wit...

9Feb

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

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Take Care – The Living Record Festival

Take Care is an online adaptation of a stage play by the verbatim theatre company Ecoute Theatre based in Bristol and London. Crafted from interviews with carers over six years, the show first premiered in 2014 with a sold out run at Edinburgh Fringe Festival. This filmed version, produced for the Living Record Festival, has four actors of the company take you into the real lives, homes and stories of 20 such carers and the people they care for. Full of heart-wrenching, messy, hilarious and poignant moments captured through the actual words of carers without any ‘edits’, this show makes you introspect deeply about the formal (and informal) care industry in the UK. The show is directed by Zoë Templeman-Young who also doubles up on the screenplay with Sam McLaughlin, accompanied by Matt K...

Heads or Tails by Skye Hallam – The Living Record Festival

8Feb

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

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Heads or Tails by Skye Hallam – The Living Record Festival

Heads or Tails is a solo play written and performed by Skye Hallam for The Living Record Festival that asks us to deliberate the afterlife, our hang-ups about life (or those around our imminent death), and the decisions we make our in present ways of living. Presented as a 40-minute filmed performance that uses the free/shaky camera technique and has Skye speaking directly to the viewer, this piece makes you giggle, listen and reflect by exploring the life (and afterlife) of Steph, an actress gone in her prime who has now returned to the mortal world for one last show. By sharing candid experiences about the final years leading up to her untimely death and her encounters in heaven, particularly with God herself (please note the pronoun), Steph intends on sharing practical tips, suggesti...

This Little World – The Living Record Festival

7Feb

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

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This Little World – The Living Record Festival

This Little World is a solo adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry II, adapted by Owen Corey and Matthew Windham. Performed by Corey and directed by Windham, the piece utilises original body puppetry under the direction of Essie Windham to tell this story of isolation, desperation and the absolute loss of everything someone holds dear, whether that’s friends and family or the throne of England itself. Opening with Corey, playing Richard II, huddled up in his bare and dusty cell, wearing a torn tracksuit, we see him firstly engaging in desperate attempts to escape before scrawling desperately into a notebook. He pulls the camera towards him, a subtle push against the fourth wall, as he begins his first soliloquy. Using Shakespeare’s original text, Corey essentially tells the story to the a...

Ain’t No Female Romeo – The Living Record Festival

7Feb

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

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Ain’t No Female Romeo – The Living Record Festival

Ain’t No Female Romeo, created and performed by Lita Doolan, is a surreal and disconcerting story of social media, the relationships they create and how reliant people can become on both posting and consuming content on it, and, more importantly, receiving responses, particularly “likes”. Combining snippets of poetry, selfie videos, images, quotes and hashtags, the piece exposes social technology, as Doolan travels the world looking for Peter, someone she knows through Instagram, but how well is never made clear. It’s possible that she and Peter have exchanged messages and comments, but the more disturbing possibility is that their only interaction has been liking each other’s posts. The images, quotes and hashtags which flash up on screen from time to time are often very quick, crea...

Always on my Mind – The Living Record Festival

4Feb

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

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Always on my Mind – The Living Record Festival

Always on my Mind is a short snapshot of life in lockdown written by Liam Alexandru and directed by Theodore Gray. Based on Alexandru’s 2016 play of the same name, this impressively compact piece captures the spirit of today’s world while telling the story of two very real and complex characters. Stacey (Lucy Syed) and Curtis (Charles Lomas) have been apart for six months and Stacey has reluctantly agreed to a video call. Their breakup was messy and both of them are still upset about it, particularly Stacey. The video call is of course awkward as the characters exchange mundane pleasantries about life in quarantine. We hear the characters’ thoughts through inner monologues presented by the same actors in the background, and old feelings are quickly aggravated as tensions rise leading...