Comments on: Review: Same Same But Different – Project Theatre

By: mafalduki

mafalduki — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 11:42:23 +0000

Hi there,
I’d love to deepen as well in the discussion.
I did not intend to justify the production intellectually, and even less to imply that the team of Same Same But Different was seeking such an approach.
It’s only my personal and insignificant point of view, understanding and interpretation.
What I was trying to clarify was that when I used the word ‘reflection’ it was because I understood the piece was treated in the tenets of reflective abstraction, not cerebrally, which is what you seemed to understand by my using the term.
Because of that abstraction, it is so open to interpretation and reaction.
Personally, I found it very poetic and it touched me at many levels that cannot be rationalised. I am also a performer, so I appreciated the show at that level more than at any analytical one.

I am also glad that other people had different reactions to it, because then you can build up on discussion. And that is something theatre needs to be constantly revitalised.
So it is highly refreshing to know there are people like you, open to discuss constructively. Thanks.

By the way, you might be interested in the following review of the show and, especially, in the reply it got.

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/arts/avoid-notsogreat-danes-1047114.html

P.S. I would love to have seen those performances in the Peacock. I heard so much about McIntyre. But back in the 80’s I was still a teenager living in my country. Pity.

By: Dermod

Dermod — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 11:04:33 +0000

This is a discussion I’d love to deepen, and as I said in my review, I felt sad that the short run of the show was not well attended, it deserved better.

The sense I have from your contributions is that there is a context to the piece, an intellectual framework of post-modernism, that helps you to engage with it on the level that moves you to tears. I freely admit to not being au fait with this discourse, and am suspicious of the necessity to “read up” before attending any piece of theatre (it is for this reason I never read programmes before a show). Perhaps this places me at a disadvantage. But, just as Gerard Mannix Flynn’s installation Something To Live For has a little panel on Dame Street entitled “How To Read an Installation”, I believe it’s perfectly acceptable to prime the viewer/audience member of any art form to help them appreciate what they are experiencing. The programme of “Same Same But Different” contained no such primer, and indeed assumed a level of familiarity with the form that didn’t do the show much favours.

And yet, as a former performer in physical theatre (the plays of Tom McIntyre in the Peacock in the 1980s) I acknowledge the simple truth and beauty of physical theatre that you name: different people, different reactions.

By: mafalduki

mafalduki — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 10:24:22 +0000

Maybe I did not phrase it quite correctly.
Physical theatre engages an audience in a different level but not necessarily hits you in the guts.
Reflection in this case is, like in post-modern dance, is abstract. Reflective. Does not apply to analysis.
In fact the most moving moments are not to do with the text, but with the physical struggle of the performers, especially by the end of the piece, or when they have to let go of their loved ones before the corridor of death.
In those sequences, there were tears in the corners of my eyes.
Still, different people, different reactions. And that is the beauty of it. Otherwise the world would be quite boring. : )

By: Dermod

Dermod — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 23:29:12 +0000

Lovely comment. I’d like to have been moved, believe me.

“The aim is not sympathy but reflection on its nature.”

Perhaps that’s where the difference lies between us – physical theatre can sidestep the cerebral and hit one in the guts, which is what I was hoping for; reflection on a concept alone is not enough for me.

By: mafalduki

mafalduki — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 23:11:55 +0000

I have to say that if the monologues of Ditte Laumann didn’t move you, you’re made of stone.
Grief is not generic but it is universal. The aim is not sympathy but reflection on its nature.
And there are many ways of coping with it, especially when one is also facing his/her own death.
That’s the point of the play. When one is confronted with Camus’ absurdity.