The Post-Dramatic Andy Smith

Andy Smith presents his adaptation of Chekhov's Seagull in respect to his practice based research regarding the post-dramatic actor, questioning what post-dramaticism means in relation to performance. 

He discusses the importance of 'version' in the construction of this theatrical piece, noting that the translation of Chekhov's original text and subsequent doctoring by Martin Crimp is integral to the post-dramatic nature of the piece. The reductive treatment of the dramatic devices lays the perect ground for implementing post-dramatic technique and paracinematic stagings. In this depiction the landscape is rotated 180 degrees to situate the audience not only on the opposing end of the performance but actually within its habitat, as they sit in the great lake that is a motif of the play. This then services the conceptual mise-en-scene as it overlaps with the performance space, the audience invades and the stage fragments. The drive is to disrupt the frame of the stage by offering the audience multiple perspectives. This is executed through a series of screen projections that mess not only with the space of the performance but with its temporality, by exploring the space between the acts. The grainy low-tech production value of the images produces an apocalyptic tone totally fitting to the thematic core. The ghostly captured images of the actors haunt the space and allude to the fatal conclusion. 

this beautifully epitomizes working practices collision with theory. it is a subtle, seductive, sensible, and somehow sorrowful, illustration of the post-dramatic put into play.