Recent Experiences
2000–2006
38 pages • Script
Available upon request:
Photo credit: Mathias Bothor
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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Par le biais d’histoires, d’entrevues et de projections vidéo, trois interprètes (Nadia Ross, Jacob Wren et Tracy Wright) explorent les parallèles qui existent entre l’entreprise psychothérapeutique, l‘isolement métaphysique et l’essence de la performance. La prémisse de Revolutions in Therapy est que la pratique de la méditation et des nouvelles thérapies puisse constituer un guide de survie pour quiconque mène une vie difficile. Les auteurs Nadia Ross et Jacob Wren débattent ensuite de la validité de cette hypothèse en invoquant leurs points de vue divergents. S’ensuit alors une performance d’une haute densité intellectuelle lors de laquelle ce qui est exprimé se révèle de façon profondément touchante, tout en étant impossible à définir.
Nadia Ross et Jacob Wren ont développé un langage théâtral faisant appel à une mise en scène et à une narration simples et minimalistes. À cela, ils ont ajouté des textes coups de poing qui vont droit au but. Recent Experiences, spectacle né de leur collaboration précédente, jouit encore d’un franc succès à l’échelle internationale.
Revolutions in Therapy est une œuvre contemporaine qui traite de nos préoccupations personnelles et collectives les plus intrinsèques.
Le production finale a été créé en residence à Usine C (Montreal)
International productions of play by other groups:
- 2003/2004: Stuttgart Stadt Theater, Germany
- 2003:Tehran Center for Dramatic Arts, Iran
Iranian production has since toured to a number of international locations.
CREATIVETEAM
Written and directed by:
Nadia Ross and Jacob Wren
Performed by:
Learie McNicolls /or Andrew Moodie, Tracy Wright, Andrea Davis /or Ngozi Paul, Charles Officer
Ingrid Veninger, Nadia Ross
Set Design and Staging Concept:
Paul Mezei
Lighting Design:
Steve Lucas
Technical Director:
Steve Lucas
Stage Manager:
J.P. Robichaud
Produced by:
STO Union in association with Candid Stammer Theatre
Touring Agent:
Menno Plukker
2006 / LOS ANGELES, UNITED STATES
UCLA Live, Los Angeles, United States
2004 / BERLIN, GERMANY
UCLA Live, Los Angeles, United States
2004 / BELFAST, IRELAND
UCLA Live, Los Angeles, United States
2004 / THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS
Theater Regentes, The Hague, Netherlands
2003 / HONG KONG, CHINA
The Hong Kong Festival, Hong Kong, China
2002 / MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
The Melbourne International Arts Festival, Melbourne, Australia
2002 / BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels, Belgium
2002 / VIENNA, AUSTRIA
Vienna Festwochen, Vienna, Austria
2002 / BONN, GERMANY
Theater der Welt, Bonn, Germany
2002 / FRANKFURT, GERMANY
Mousonturm Kunstlerhaus, Frankfurt, Germany
2001 / MONTRÉAL, CANADA
Le Festival de Théâtre des Amériques, Montréal, Canada
2000 / TORONTO, CANADA
The Theatre Centre, Toronto, Canada
With the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council
SELECTED PRESS QUOTES:
“With RECENT EXPERIENCES it’s above all magnificent, funny and moving. At the end of the show, we force ourselves to applaud. Because what we really want to do is to leave the room quietly, warmly embracing each of the actors, like we sometimes do with certain people we have been close to but have not seen in a long while, but who, nonetheless, will never leave our hearts.” LE SOIR, Belgium, 2001
“Ross and Wren are masters of nuance and theatrical ease: in the game of life there are winners and losers – a fact which these guests from Canada meet with humor and wisdom. Beautiful.” VIENNA KURIER, Austria, 2002
“So simple it could hardly be more complex.” STUTTGARTER ZEITUNG, Germany, 2002
“Life is not simple, but theater is beautiful. …This time, in any case, it is”. BONNER RUNDSCHAU, Germany 24.06.02
“Failed relations, violence, racial hatred, isolation, mourning. At the end the realization comes that life is rather simple – if one can take it as it comes. Recent Experiences is a European Premiere and a beautiful example of how theater can be intense without excess.” WIENER ZEITUNG, Austria, 17.06.02
“Low key, quietly intense performances and the intimacy of the actors’ presence, the refusal to fill in the narrational gaps, and the way north American performers hymn their delivery all make for a poetic evocation of a century at once terribly familiar and utterly strange:” REAL TIME ARTS. Australia, 2002