Taking place over the course of one hundred years, Recent Experiences recounts the story of four generations of a single family as they wind their way through the historical backdrop of the difficult 20th century.
The audience sits around a large table alongside the performers. With everyone sitting around the same table the traditional hierarchy between the stage and the audience is diffused, thereby creating a common situation and providing a possible space for the intimacy of story telling.
Recent Experiences is a performance in the form of a micro-epic. It examines a gradual change in thinking: from a worldview that saw ethics and morality as something to be derived from tradition, to an outlook that searches for meaning in the potential of the future.
Each generation strives not to repeat the mistakes of their parents, as the minutiae and melodrama of everyday life weave and clash against the major turning points in the 20th century. These stories stir up a legacy of shared beliefs about happiness, love and the yearning for truth, and they wrestle with the moral, ethical and human dilemmas that evoke notions of responsibility, death, guilt, solitude and despair.
Recent Experiences re-invents the 20th century as a family story. The only thing left to do is sit with us at the table and gently partake in the wonders of this humane and tender play.
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Six comédeans prennent place a côté des spectateurs. La table est mise, le théâtre peut commencer. Chacun relate des morceaux de vie intime. Peu à peu, une histoire se forme, en marge des grands évènements mondiaux. Les années se succèdent au rythme des récits commentés, interprétés, dansés, par quatre générations d’une même famille qui traverse le siècle.
Pour Nadia Ross et Jacob Wren, le but recherché était doublement ambitieux : Il s’agissait de pousser les limites des formes théâtrales traditionnelles. Mais il fallait aussi trouver une structure d’écriture elliptique, des dialoges qui révèlent sans retentissement, afin de renouveler la dramaturgie. RECENT EXPERIENCES amène le spectateur à vivre au-delà de la simple anecdote dramatique une experience théatrale inusitée.
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Text et mise en scène/Written and directed by Nadia Ross et/and Jacob Wren Interprètes/Performers Learie McNicolls /or Andrew Moodie Tracy Wright Andrea Davis /or Ngozi Paul Charles Officer Ingrid Veninger Nadia Ross Decor et conception scenique/Set Design and Staging Concept: Paul Mezei Conception des éclairages/Lighting Design: Steve Lucas Direction Technique/Technical Director: Steve Lucas Stage Manager: J.P. Robichaud PRODUIT PAR/PRODUCED BY STO UNION IN ASSOCIATION WITH CANDID STAMMER THEATRE Agent de tournée/Touring Agent: Menno Plukker