Play On Earth
Dusk in Singapore, teatime in Britain, breakfast in Brazil. Nine people from three continents in one single production. A quayside building in NewcastleGateshead, a skyscraper in São Paulo and a theatre in Singapore merge to become a fourth imaginary space. Three audiences, one in each city, experience the performance simultaneously.
The transcontinental premiere of Play On Earth opened across the globe in June 2006, showing concurrently across three continents and time zones.
Projected simultaneously from three corners of the world, a narrative unfolds, immediate, unpredictable and alive. A Brazilian couple are eating breakfast, but the woman is more interested in the man sleeping in Singapore; and why is the Englishwoman watching so closely? When he leaves his flat, she follows him through the streets of NewcastleGateshead to his rendezvous in São Paulo. The revelation of their relationships is played out across the globe - by performers in three continents together telling a story which is both universal and true to its own locality, its own culture and concerns.
with Marcos Azevedo, Mark Calvert, Gerald Chew, Emily Jane Grant, Susannah Hart (camera), Jim Kitson, Beto Matos, Noorlinah Mohamed, Ana Souto, Andrea Tedesco, Lim Yu-Beng
Directed by Julian Maynard Smith, Jeffrey Tan, Rubens Velloso
“you are part of a genuinely unique theatrical event.” Metro (UK)
“Clearly it is a great feat... a thing of the future” Newcastle Journal (UK)
“...this fusion of theatre and technology can become something extraordinary. The transcontinental audiences sharing this experience may be witnessing the birth of some new cultural hybrid harbouring a world of possibilities. “The Straits Times (Singapore)
“..the degree of technical ingenuity is impressive. An object hurled in Singapore flies halfway round the world and hits a character in Newcastle... the performance is impeccably choreographed... Yet the most profound aspect of the experience is the metaphysical confusion it engenders by creating the sense that you are gazing into the past and future at once.” The Guardian (UK)
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Newcastle NGI - Phila 7, Sao Paolo - TheatreWorks, Singapore Arts Festival
An Artsadmin production 2006
