YORK Theatre Royal and Company Of Angels are linking up to present Theatre Café York 2014, a festival of contemporary plays by European writers and an accompanying conference.
The plays will be presented in staged readings on Wednesday, complemented by new companion or response pieces from six emerging British playwrights.
The festival will continue with a three-day Theatre Café conference from Thursday to Saturday.
Debates and panel discussions with the writers and translators will take place, alongside networking meals with peers and a guest production of Macrobert’s Titus by Jan Sobrie, from Belgium, in a new English version by Oliver Emanuel.
Theatre Royal artistic director Damian Cruden will chair the EU Debate: A Cultural Or Financial Union? – hosted by the University of York with a panel that includes translator David Johnson.
The finalists of the Company of Angels’ Young Angels’ Theatremakers Award will attend Theatre Café for a week of research and development on two European texts.
Action To The Word and Hal Chambers & Zoe Squire will present extracts of Ralf N Hohfeld’s Busstopkisser, from Germany, and Ingmar Villqist’s Helver’s Night, from Poland, and the winner will be awarded £20,000 towards a full production of their play in York Theatre Royal Studio this autumn.
Wednesday’s theatre programme will open with Mark O’Thomas’ new translation of Tiago Rodrigues’ Portuguese play Sadness And Joy In The Lives Of Giraffes, from Portugal, and Martin Baltscheit’s Heading For High Ground, from Germany, from 10.30am to 12.30pm. Steve Bloomer has written the response piece to Rodrigues’s work.
Rodrigues’ play is the story of a nine-year-old girl who crosses the city of Lisbon searching for the only person who can help her: the Portuguese Prime Minister. In this strange world, the audience will encounter the economic crisis, the heroic adventure of a teddy bear with suicidal tendencies, a photo of a violinist, a black panther, a Bulgarian scientist, and a girl too tall for her age whose mother called her Giraffe.
Baltscheit depicts a family of wolves struggling to survive in the cold woods. Two sheep who can’t conceive are suddenly confronted with a baby wolf, which the ewe is keen to adopt as their own; there follows the story of Ferdinand, the baby wolf, struggling to fit into both worlds.
The 2pm to 4pm slot begins with Holger Schober’s Austrian play My Mother Medea, in which new kids with strange names have arrived at school. Tired of introducing themselves, they are always on the run, away from home, away from friends, away from everything that was important. Medea’s children tell the story how they experienced it, how they understood it.
Next up will be Savianna Stanescu’s White Embers, a Romanian drama that opens with Shari holding Vicky at gunpoint in her apartment. Meanwhile, Alex and Leslie are flying to Bechnya to adopt a child and bring her home. The stories interlink in a dark yet humorous tale of poverty and lonely, unloved children.
The 7.30pm to 9.30pm slot will combine Peer Wittenbols’ Watchdog, from the Netherlands, with Fredrik Brattberg’s The Returning, from Norway.
In Watchdog, mother has taken to her bed, felled by grief at the death of her husband. Her two young daughters take over the household and must ensure that mother is not upset by the slightest thing, in case she starts crying again.
One day, the boy from over the road knocks at the door. He has to give a class presentation and has questions to ask them on his chosen topic: death. After all, they are bound to be experts, aren’t they?
In The Returning, a mother and father mourn the loss of their only son. Several hundred people turn up to say their last farewell at the funeral, after which they struggle to get back to everyday life. One day there is a knock on the door and their son is back.
All these plays have been translated into English and each will be accompanied by a short response piece by a British writer.
Steven Bloomer’s The Warlock, The Warrior And His Mother was inspired by Rodrigues’ play; York writer Hannah Davies’ Snowflakes responds to Baltscheit’s work; and Shireen Mul’s Singing Goodnight echoes Schober’s My Mother Medea.
Stewart Melton’s He She It reacts to Stanescu’s White Embers; York writer Bridget Foreman’s Airlock replies to Wittenbols’ Watchdog; and Jane Wainwright’s A Guide To Removing Corpse Stains answers Brattberg’s The Returning. Founded by Company of Angels in 2004, Theatre Café sources, translates and showcases new European plays for and about young people. It has presented 64 plays from 21 European countries involving 55 writers, 36 translators and the commission of 29 new translations.
• Tickets can be booked on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
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