Theatr Clywd, Mold
Letting the audience choose props and costumes adds both absurd and affecting possibilities to this selection of 15 new short plays
Directed by Theatr Clwyd’s artistic director, Tamara Harvey, Curtain Up is an appropriately celebratory title for the company’s three-week season of 15 new short plays by writers from Wales, performed by a cast of 30. For each of the three weeks, five plays are performed by 10 actors at each performance.
With each play at little over 10 minutes in length, it allows for swift and playful variations in dramatic tone and formal experimentation. In the first week’s plays, Samantha O’Rourke’s Finding Feet was a movingly heartfelt monologue of love at first sight, while in The Ongoing Eternal Search for “Da” by Mari Izzard, sexual tensions were inflamed to Nintendo sound effects.
The central conceit common in all of these dramatic vignettes is that each contains an unspecified significant object. These props are chosen by the audience at the beginning of each performance, as well as a costume, unknown to the performers. We are also invited to intervene in the casting of roles. The performance begins, and the five plays unfurl according to the audience’s interventions, in this case performed by the first week’s uniformly great cast.