Rachel West- director RAW Theatre company

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PROGRAMME NOTE: Tanja Auroris, a young journalist from Belgrade, in conversation with Rachel West Click HERE to View Irish Times article- 'Putting the horrors of the world on stage' Click HERE to View	FAMILY STORIES by Biljana Srbljanovic translated by Rebecca Rugg directed by Rachel West A *bspoke theatre company production. This Irish premiere was first presented in Project Arts Centre, 24th June 2005. “ Family Stories, first performed in Belgrade in 1997, when Milosevic was still in power, uses the notion of child's play to create the same mixture of casual, cartoonish violence and nightmarish disturbance. Srbljanovic picked up on the quality that makes children's drawings of war so eerie - the lack of explanation. Kids don't have the filter of larger reasons. They see what they see and understand what adults often don't - that it doesn't make sense. Family Stories works like this. It explains nothing and leaves the context unstated. With adults playing children playing adults, we see guilt through the eyes of innocence, madness through the eyes of everyday survival. Srbljanovic's play is rather unusual in the annals of political theatre in that it treats a conflict, not from within the culture of the victims, but from within the culture of the oppressors. The four children who play out a series of related but not continuous scenes are Serbs. If they and their creator were, for example, Bosnian Muslims, the indirect, angular style would probably, at this stage, be impossible. Experiences would be too vivid, memories too raw. In this sense, Family Stories probably gains as theatre what it lacks in political immediacy. For a dissident Serb writing from within the poisonous hysteria of Milosevic's world, there is probably no choice but to be subtle, devious and disorienting. What we enter, then, is not so much a reflection of 1990s Serbia but a hall of distorting mirrors in which a recognisable history takes on a series of shifting shapes." The Irish Times*- Fintan O'Toole (read below for more)* CAST: Rory Nolan Mary Murray (Nominated best supporting actress- Irish Times Theatre Awards) Pauline Hutton Andrew Bennett PRODUCTION DESIGNERS: Set &Lighting Paul Keogan Composer Denis Clohessy Costume Design Joan Bergin Fight Director Paul Bourke COMPANY: Martin Cahill, Margarita Coscadden, Aoife Habenicht, Sam Carpenter, Barbara Conway, Amelia Stein, NicoleMcKenna, Martin Fahy, Sarah Parker, Eavan Brennan and for bspoke, Jane Brennan, Alison McKenna. REVIEWS:* “ There are moments in Rachel West's impeccably calibrated production for Bspoke Theatre Company when we can see quite directly that Andrew Bennett's hectoring Daddy figure is Milosevic and that the excellent Pauline Hutton, tapping away at her typewriter with a red flower in her hair is his wife and chief ideologue Mira Markovic. But these are occasional splashes of primary colour in a much more muted pattern of political commentary. [......] Nadezda, embodied in a fiercely physical performance by Mary Murray, who is both a traumatised child and a dog. Chained as she often is to a dumpster, cowering and whimpering, she evokes the terrible violence against women that underpins Srbljanovic's tracing of the conflict to a warped sexuality. The challenge of having adults playing children is, of course, the natural tendency of such a device to become winsome almost regardless of the tone and subject matter. It's a challenge to which West and her cast rise superbly. If anything, the humour and playfulness of the writing, which come across strongly in Rebecca Rugg's translation, are reined in a little too tightly - a very minor problem that stems from the overwhelming virtues of the production: its tact, intelligence, clarity and utter commitment.” The Irish Times- Fintan O'Toole “ Rachel West's production for Bspoke Theatre Company is as pared-back and uncompromising as the script. Paul Keogan's smart set lines the floor with dirty cardboard and papers the walls with children's drawings of warplanes and bombed-out houses. The four fine performers are committed and effective as they play the layers of the story[...] Bspoke and West are doing brave work here, trying to create a context for important European plays in a theatre culture whose politics are still very much defined by national issues.“ **The Guardian – Karen Fricker “ Family Stories is an extremely sobering play [...] it picks the bones of nationalism until they shine with a nightmarish glow, and it is given a splendid production by bspoke.” Irish Independent- Emer O'Kelly BACK to TOP				Photo-Amelia Stein



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