Tuesday, January 20, 2009

INK - January 2009

INK is an interesting concept. I'm very guilty of focusing on a piece as a whole. For me everything in a production should gel together; the look, feel and sound are all equally important and any one of those being off is a huge distraction. However in a monthly event alternating between The Tron (where we went tonight) and The Traverse, INK discards most of that by staging script in hand performances of short new plays with a common theme. Tonight, appropriately enough for the week before Burns' night, the theme was 'Scotland: An Alternative History'.

With five pieces performed in 50 minutes the plays are certainly short and it was interesting to see the diversity of approaches taken by the different writers to the subject in hand. Although the writing is put firmly centre stage here, it also gave a nice insight into the mechanics of building a production with the actors involved delivering the lines, not just reading it.

The post show discussion with the writers of tonight's works was an added, unexpected, bonus. An enjoyable evening and well worth catching at least once - for £3 you really can't argue.

Plays:
Armenian Reading by Alan McKendrick
Heretic by Andy Duffy
The Advert by Lewis Hetherington
Diamond Brooch by Joshua Makaruk
The Elvis Monologue by Oliver Emanuel

Performers:
Scott Hoatson
Jenny Hulse
Natalie McConnon
Jeremy Reynolds
Owen Whitelaw

INK will be at The Traverse 15th February and 26th April, and The Tron 24th March.

2 Heckles

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this post. Am glad you enjoyed INK and please do come along to the next one at the Traverse if you can. The theme is 'Love Hurts' (Feb 15th at 6pm) and although we'll say who we all are, the writing itself will be anonymous. Who is your Valentine? Should be fun. Cheers.

Waldorf said...

We'd already pencilled it in, and the Valentine twist has just decided it for us. Tickets booked (and for the one in April too - we'll sort March's at the Tron this weekend when we're at the Tailor of Inverness).