TO BE RESOLVED: POWER PLAY

Writer led, WordFreaks, presents public readings of three uncompromising new plays; each one takes a very different look at uses and abuses of power.

The Lamp Tavern, Barford Street, Birmingham B5 6AH. Thursdays  10 March, 24 March and

 7 April. 7.30 pm.

Why public readings?  Because the three writers, want your views before their plays go into production.  So come and make your points.

POWER PLAY 1: Unto Us a Son is Born, Rod Dungate.  Thursday 10 March

GABRIEL: Remember what it felt like when I breathed on you with the holy breath?  Imagine what it’ll feel like when I impregnate you with the holy spirit.

POWER PLAY 2: K, Ian Kendall.  Thursday 24 March

VISITOR:  Look, there’s nothing beautiful about this chair . . . I know what it is . . .

POWER PLAY 3: Grown Into a Hoop, Martin Drury.  Thursday 7 April

PROSPERO:       I want to know, but not in the abstract,

                        What power is, what it can do, how it feels.

No charge, admission free.  But there’ll be a voluntary collection.

More information from mail@wordfreaks.com.

TO BE RESOLVED: POWER PLAY

There are two things in common in the plays being road-tested in this POWER PLAY package; each of them explores and questions our notions of power and each of them exploits the power of language within challenging theatrical conventions.

To some, this focus on language is unfashionable; to these writers and the rest of the teams it’s central to theatre.  But there are genuine questions to be answered: Is the playwright exciting and challenging or self-indulgent?  Does the world of the play stimulate  and convince, or leave us cold?  Each writer wants to engage us in their play’s debate; do they grab us, or leave us unmoved?

UNTO US A SON IS BORN: Rod Dungate (Thurs 10 March)

Director: Graeme Braidwood

A darker than dark farce.  Pelham, the central character, is hurtled into a male world of power politics, gender confusion and religious iconoclasm.   Church vies with state in a drama in which every person is solely out for what they can get.  Powerful, funny, ground-breaking or just going for the sensational?

K; Ian Kendall (Thurs 24 March)

Director: Josh Dalledonne

Two complementary plays, one theme – THE CHAIR and APPOINTMENT.   In THE CHAIR a state visitor unwittingly attends an execution. Why does the officer in charge refer to the chair as a ‘beautiful machine’? How pivotal is this machine and is the prisoner really only charged with ‘insubordination’?  In APPOINTMENT a young man turns up in a town to take up his appointment as Head of the Judiciary; but the woman in charge of the local pub seems to know more about it than he does.

GROWN INTO A HOOP: Martin Drury (Thurs 7 April)

Director: John Adams

Prospero and Miranda, central characters from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, have just been left on a desert island.  They meet the witch, Sycorax, and her much loved son, Caliban.  It is Sycorax’s island.  As emotions run deep, as relationships ebb and flow, so power passes backwards and forwards.  Who is manipulating what and to whose ends?  Poetic, philosophical, political, Shakespeare’s understanding of sexual politics is put under a microscope.

The Lamp Tavern, Barford Street, Birmingham, B5 6AH

Each performance, 7.30. (Tel 0121 622 2599)

The Lamp Tavern is a small, local free house; it’s famous for its selection of real ales from micro-breweries.  The Lamp is on the Junction of Macdonald Street and Barford Street, just off Sherlock Street and Hurst Street near Birmingham City Centre.