Last play readings:

DAMASCUS  

                           
by David Greig
Friday, 4 June, 20:00 – 23:00
Crea, Room 2.07

Damascus, written by David Grieg was first presented at the Edinburgh Festival in 2007 winning the Scotsman Fringe First Award along the way. This play has been described as a fascinating tragicomedy about Arab and western misunderstandings, and the gap between what we think we know about the Middle East and the everyday realities of life there.

The story:

Welcome to Damascus, the oldest continuously inhabited city on earth, a jewel of the Arab world and the crossroads of the Middle East. Paul is here to sell English language textbooks. It's Valentine's Day and he'd rather be at home with his wife. He begins negotiations with his Syrian contact, Muna. Can he seal the deal? Misunderstandings multiply until their presumptions about one another fall away and new possibilities emerge. In this city of transformations, Paul grapples with language and love, meanings and misconceptions. And as his flight home is delayed by a bomb at Beirut Airport, he begins to wonder - will he ever leave?

 http://lebrecord.com/?p=306 

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MELANCHOLY PLAY   
a contemporary farce
by Sarah Ruhl
Friday, 11 June, 20:00 – 23:00
Crea, Room 2.05

“Melancholy Play mixes the absurdity of Pirandello and Fellini and the edgy prettiness of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Off-beat, lyrical and just a little bit nutty, it is a real charmer.”  
-- Chicago Sun-Times

“Reading a Sarah Ruhl play is a little akin to falling in love. You see the world with fresh perceptions: the man or woman sitting across from you on the bus seems mysterious and magnetic. Weeping feels delicious and laughing feels sexier than hell. And just for the brief few hours, you imagine you can sing and dance. And then you come to the end of the play -- all good things do come to an end -- and you sigh, and wait for your next fling with another of her plays.”
-- Paula Vogel, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of _How I Learned to Drive

PREVIOUS PLAY READINGS                     

MORT  - by Terry Pratchett

• to be performed in December 2010

The Dresser - by Ronald Harwood

Stockholm  - by Bryony Lavery

The Red Devils - by Debbie Horfield

At the Sign of "The Crippled Harlequin"  - by Norman Robbins

A Midsummer Night's Dream - by William Shakespeare

Arsenic and Old Lace - by Joseph Kesselring

Going Postal - by Terry Pratchett

Liquid Love - by Teresa Merilainen.

• This play was performed 7-9 May 2009 at the CREA theater
  

Loot – by Joe Orton
Scenes from an Italian Restaurant – by Michael Stirling

 The Real Inspector Hound – by Tom Stoppard

• This absurd parody of the mystery play made famous by Dame Agatha Christie was performed 26 Feb - 1 March 2009 at the CREA Theatre.

• A modern day Commedia dell’ Arte play
• Was our November 2009 production and entry in the FEATS 2010 festival in Bad Homburg, Germany

• The Goon Show was a comic British radio with surreal storylines, absurd logic, puns, and catchphrases which ran on the BBC from 1951 until 1960. It changed the face of British comedy, inspiring new generations of comics from the Monty Python crew through Eddy Izzard
• The decision to do a reading of a selection of scripts from The Goon Show proved an inspiring one. We clearly have Goon Show fans in our numbers as some came fully prepared with odd instru­ments for making the kind of sound effects associate with the original show, creating authenticity as well as a real racket. A grand time was had by all.

• offers a surrealistic impression of what Europe might have to look forward to in the 21^st Century by extrapolating from the continent’s (mostly) recent past, and choosing what certainly not the happiest chapters of that past are.
• In the translation of Johan Statius Muller

• A Who-Done-it with an undercurrent of emerging changes from the sixties with regards to emotions and homosexuality. In that sense it is an interesting revisit to the past.

• A series of short-short plays
• Performed in April 2008
• see review

• This play has since been performed in October 2008
• see review

• a political drama and a powerful plea for peace. Placed in a setting clearly inspired by occupied Palestine, it is an all too timely take about the roots of spreading violence, and a fine example of how theater can tackle contemporary problems.