Play selection and Stammtisch

Post date: 14-Aug-2014 21:08:21

Our next Stammtisch will take place in September due to the many Club members being on holiday. But when meeting again in September, we will have double the fun: On 10 September we will be meeting at 19:00 hrs at the West Side Theatre and be reading two one-act plays that have been proposed for the 2015 Spring production. All members are invited to come and participate! Of course, non-members are also welcome at the Stammtisch.

The two plays are:

• A friend of a friend - Written and proposed by Bruno Sousa

• For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls - Written by Christopher Durang and proposed by Ruth Armstrong

Bruno about "A friend of a friend"

Bruno: "I was walking, one day, pass the Georg-Büchner bookshop on Lauteschläger Straße and a book called my attention, it was called 'Freunde von Freunden' and was a photo book of Berlin. In the cover a guy on some white animal carnival costume was hopping on someone’s bed. As I kept walking images of a lively, hipster, bohemian city where friends drop by unannounced or even their friends, total strangers, and always find a place to stay while going about doing cool crazy things… Then I thought maybe there’s a play in it, a friend of a friend comes to stay, and to create havoc possibly… Then I sat down to write it and got the idea that it should be a play where one of the characters is fully made known to the audience, without them ever laying their eyes on him… I wanted the audience to develop feelings for this character just from hearsay, which is something that often happens in real life (we make mental pictures of people we’ve never met, but that our parents or friends keep talking about). The other aspect I wanted to explore was the concurrent evolution in opposite directions of feelings towards this character such as to make him somewhat ambiguous (should we like him or not?), and I wanted to explore classical married couple dynamics (basically arguments and power games). With these things in mind I composed a simple comedy, which I believe can grab a few laughs with our audience."

Ruth about "For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls"

Ruth: "Warning: This play is so funny there is a real risk that someone in the audience might die laughing!

Durang has described this play as ' a parody spin-off of Tennesse Williams' 'The Glass Menagerie'. Audiences unfamiliar with this play seem able to enjoy it anyway - because parent-child tensions are the core themes of it.' I first saw this play performed at FEATS two years ago and quite frankly, I laughed at practically every line. Mind you, the Hamburg Players were performing it and everything they've done has been brilliant! That aside, it inspired me; I instantly thought this would be a great play for the ESOC group to perform to our Darmstadt audience and so here I am proposing it.

It needs to be performed in American accents from the south, but I think we can manage that - it's a parody after all so exaggerated accents won't do any harm!

I think this will make a great companion play to Bruno's proposed 'A Friend of a Friend' and together they will be a very entertaining night out!"