24 Minutes of Solitude

From the minute I set foot in the space, I felt a good atmosphere.

On a two-by-two square platform sitting in the center of the room, a young woman is buried in a heap of messy clothes. The seats are installed to encircle the stage from three different directions. Three trees also encircle the space, separating the seating blocks. An old gentleman is siting on a chair beside a tree. A young man by another tree...

I have to say that the introduction of the performance could have been better. It may be a harsh critique, due to the inadequate skill of the actor, it was not enough to draw the audience into the world of the play. When the young man sang his first song, I felt it was just another melody.

The young man has a tape recorder with which he replayed his message to the young woman again and again. This effect was interesting. It seemed like the old man was the young man in the future, overlapping in space but not in time. As fragmentary words and music linked little by little, a connection between the casts gradually became clearer.

There were only two musicians; violin and contrabass. They played together by the trees. They moved from one tree to another between each scene. It's indeed disappointing that the sound of the musician's steps interrupted the drama. (especially as later scenes got in the groove) You could say this counter-clockwise stage-managed movement was a sort of metaphor... However, it was not particularly successful.


In the end of the performance, three trees, three actors and musicians came together into the center platform. --it's like putting all the pieces of a memory back together.


24 Minutes of Solitude -
Friday 30 May 2008, 20.30 hrs. at Korzo5HOOG
Angus Barnacle (composition) and Milone Reigman (direction)