4 stars The National Theatre of Scotland's third 5 Minute Theatre online extravaganza of bite-size plays performed largely live was focussed around the theme of youth. With some fifty-six separate performances beamed from hubs in Glenrothes, Glasgow and beyond in a myriad of classrooms, bars and living rooms, the event was run partly in parallel with this year's National Festival of Youth Theatre as well as the NTS' own young peoples' theatre programme, Exchange. The end result was a lively, non-stop five and a half-hour mix of rites of passage and a desire to be understood on the one hand, and a mourning for lost youth on the other. If technical gremlins hadn't prevented it, proceedings would have begun with Douglas Maxwell's 162 Bars Out, a lovelorn percussionist's interior monologue performed alongside Claire McKenzie's live orchestral score. Even on second, Maxwell's piece was a powerful dramatic lesson on the social and creative power of musical education. Elsewhere were vibrant meditations on knife crime, social media, a Julius Caesar on the streets of Belfast and a musical set in a dentist's reception. If many works leaned towards naturalism, all were keen to stress that young people had something to say. Kiana Kalantar-Hormozi and Elliot Cooper's the Curious Case of Tim, wonderfully performed by Cooper, especially captured the jumbled-up torrent of emotions growing pains bring with them. The final work performed was Uprising, a theatrical flash-mob orchestrated by members of Perth Youth Theatre. As participants seated in a refectory stood up one by one, it was akin to a scene from Spartacus. With the final words of the piece a defiant “Down with the government,” the future appears to be in safe hands. The Herald, July 16th 2012 ends
Intro – Snapshots – Deaf School
1
In 1980, the same year as the Manchester band, Magazine, released a 7
inch single called A Song From Under The Floorboards – a three verse
and chorus distillation of Dostoyevsky's novel, Notes From Underground
– an art school scandal occurred.
This scandal took place in Liverpool, and was based around a project
called the Furbelows, although it became better known in the Liverpool
Echo and other organs that reported it as the Woolly Nudes.
The Furbelows, or Woolly Nudes, were a group of artists who had come
out of Liverpool College of Art, who, dressed in grotesque woolly
costumes which featured knitted approximations of male and female
genitalia, made assorted public interventions around the city centre as
kind of living sculptures acting out assorted narratives.
The Furbelows project had been funded by what was then Merseyside Arts
Association, and, after the participants were arrested and taken to
court on obscenity charges after what…
1
In 1980, the same year as the Manchester band, Magazine, released a 7
inch single called A Song From Under The Floorboards – a three verse
and chorus distillation of Dostoyevsky's novel, Notes From Underground
– an art school scandal occurred.
This scandal took place in Liverpool, and was based around a project
called the Furbelows, although it became better known in the Liverpool
Echo and other organs that reported it as the Woolly Nudes.
The Furbelows, or Woolly Nudes, were a group of artists who had come
out of Liverpool College of Art, who, dressed in grotesque woolly
costumes which featured knitted approximations of male and female
genitalia, made assorted public interventions around the city centre as
kind of living sculptures acting out assorted narratives.
The Furbelows project had been funded by what was then Merseyside Arts
Association, and, after the participants were arrested and taken to
court on obscenity charges after what…
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