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kaberettForward Arena are a tiny queer theatre company whose Kickstarter I'd been totally unaware of, but it turns out I love what they do so much that I went to see their two plays a combined total of five times -- Callisto and Children & Animals once each with sebastienne and shortcipher, then Callisto once with sebastienne, shortcipher and me_and once he'd joined us, and then Callisto and Children & Animals once more with me_and on the final day of the Fringe, after E-B & C had departed.
Callisto is on at the Arcola Theatre, London, next week only, in expanded form -- I'm going to see it on Friday, and there are till tickets available. Come squee with me, if appropriately located?
Callisto was described, in the Kickstarter blurb, as:
... and I love (loved! loved loved loved) it so much. It was brilliantly written, and brilliantly staged, and brilliantly costumed, and I love it.
sebastienne and I spent Quite A Bit of time talking about it; here's their review. The play opens with each protagonist making a statement of themes, not quite at cross-talk but in close succession, in a way that I experienced as disjointed and disorienting (in good ways!) on first watching, and which was about when I started crying on second watch, once I understood how it all fitted together.
The way I ended up describing it, at least to P, was that this is a set of four stories rather like a horn section in an orchestra: first and third horns generally have the tunes, whereas second and fourth have the harmony; first and second are generally higher in pitch, where third and fourth are generally lower. And it's not actually that -- harmony isn't less important but tends to be parsed that way, whereas each of these stories was given equal weight and was very much its own thing -- but it's a bit like that.
Arabella Hunt and Tammy Frazer, the actresses, make one primary thematic pairing; Turing and Cal-and-Lorn constitute the other. These pairings were subtly underscored in costuming -- Arabella and Tammy, and their friends and lovers and colleagues, wore flouncy draping browns and creams and red in splashes; Turing and Isabel and Cal and Lorn wore cleaner leans in monochromes, with the sci-fi setting brilliantly suggested via use of four bike lights (or possibly head torches) strapped to the actors' calves underneath their three-quarter-length trousers, creating spots of light just behind their heels. (That was it! That was the sci-fi set. I noticed the bike lights on my first watch;sebastienne pointed out the two pairs of stories after our second; and I noticed the costuming on the third.)
For Bella and Tammy, you've got actresses being controlled by self-absorbed and frequently violent men; Bella does not get a happy ending, but Tammy -- and Dolores -- do. Turing and Lorn have both lost someone close to them, and important; Turing doesn't, as we know, get a happy ending, but Lorn -- eventually -- does. So there's a cross-link, between tragedy and triumph.
(Bella opens the play with a speech in rehearsals for a play within the play, about one's own love turned against one; Bella's wife closes their arc, at the end of the play, by repeating it. It is heartbreaking.)
Unifying themes: there are several. Callisto, obviously: the play Bella is acting in; Callisto Studios for Tammy and Dolores; the moon Callisto for Turing; and something not-entirely-clear for Cal and Lorn, where they're on a moon but probably what's going on is Cal is short for, etc.) Names: Arabella's marriage to Amy, or when circumstances demand James, Hunt; Tammy's stage name, and Dolores being referred to as Dolores, or as her stage name, or as Mrs Lister (and the blurring of stage and wallet names for their other colleagues); Alan referring to Christopher's mother as, variously, Ms Swan, Mrs Morcom ("if you will insist on seeing me only as his mother") -- and finally, in the end, as Isobel; Cal and Lorn, with Cal playing the part of a deceased-or-disappered Est(h?)er, for Lorn's sake (-- and this was stage scifi, with fantastical music that did not fit the setting during the fantasy sequences). Queerness, of course. And: identity, and choice, and whether (and how) it's possible to start over, and living with instead of being smothered by grief.
Amy and Bella are separated by violent, angry and disgusted men. Dolores and Tammy escape theirs, all of them, in every possible respect, and start over. Alan is driven by the idea that he'll be able to replicate Christopher Morcom if he just gets AIs good enough; Cal and Lorn show us that people are their own, and even an AI that's repeatedly wiped and reset, from the same starting conditions, will develop differently (and be its own person).
I just -- it's so brilliant, and so complex, and so layered, okay.
I have been struggling and struggling to finish this post and I think, given that the run's already started, that I should just post this now and then write a follow-up after seeing the thing on Friday; but goodness, it's incredible.
sebastienne and shortcipher, then Callisto once with sebastienne, shortcipher and me_and once he'd joined us, and then Callisto and Children & Animals once more with me_and on the final day of the Fringe, after E-B & C had departed.Callisto is on at the Arcola Theatre, London, next week only, in expanded form -- I'm going to see it on Friday, and there are till tickets available. Come squee with me, if appropriately located?
Callisto was described, in the Kickstarter blurb, as:
CALLISTO: A QUEER EPIC, by Howard Coase
"I don't believe the word love has ever meant the same thing twice."
London, 1680: Arabella Hunt is the star of La Callisto, and one half of the first recorded gay marriage in UK history.
Worcester, 1936: Alan Turing pays one final visit to Isobel Morcom, the mother of his lost first love.
San Fernando Valley, 1979: Tammy Frazer lands in Callisto Studios searching for the love of her life.
The Moon, 2223: Lorn is building a paradise to sleep in but Cal is determined to keep him awake.
Callisto: A Queer Epic circles around a constellation of four queer stories scattered across time and space, spanning the historical and the fictional plus everything in between, reframing past narratives and sculpting future worlds, unravelling closed ways of thinking and straight ways of seeing.
... and I love (loved! loved loved loved) it so much. It was brilliantly written, and brilliantly staged, and brilliantly costumed, and I love it.
sebastienne and I spent Quite A Bit of time talking about it; here's their review. The play opens with each protagonist making a statement of themes, not quite at cross-talk but in close succession, in a way that I experienced as disjointed and disorienting (in good ways!) on first watching, and which was about when I started crying on second watch, once I understood how it all fitted together.The way I ended up describing it, at least to P, was that this is a set of four stories rather like a horn section in an orchestra: first and third horns generally have the tunes, whereas second and fourth have the harmony; first and second are generally higher in pitch, where third and fourth are generally lower. And it's not actually that -- harmony isn't less important but tends to be parsed that way, whereas each of these stories was given equal weight and was very much its own thing -- but it's a bit like that.
Arabella Hunt and Tammy Frazer, the actresses, make one primary thematic pairing; Turing and Cal-and-Lorn constitute the other. These pairings were subtly underscored in costuming -- Arabella and Tammy, and their friends and lovers and colleagues, wore flouncy draping browns and creams and red in splashes; Turing and Isabel and Cal and Lorn wore cleaner leans in monochromes, with the sci-fi setting brilliantly suggested via use of four bike lights (or possibly head torches) strapped to the actors' calves underneath their three-quarter-length trousers, creating spots of light just behind their heels. (That was it! That was the sci-fi set. I noticed the bike lights on my first watch;
sebastienne pointed out the two pairs of stories after our second; and I noticed the costuming on the third.)For Bella and Tammy, you've got actresses being controlled by self-absorbed and frequently violent men; Bella does not get a happy ending, but Tammy -- and Dolores -- do. Turing and Lorn have both lost someone close to them, and important; Turing doesn't, as we know, get a happy ending, but Lorn -- eventually -- does. So there's a cross-link, between tragedy and triumph.
(Bella opens the play with a speech in rehearsals for a play within the play, about one's own love turned against one; Bella's wife closes their arc, at the end of the play, by repeating it. It is heartbreaking.)
Unifying themes: there are several. Callisto, obviously: the play Bella is acting in; Callisto Studios for Tammy and Dolores; the moon Callisto for Turing; and something not-entirely-clear for Cal and Lorn, where they're on a moon but probably what's going on is Cal is short for, etc.) Names: Arabella's marriage to Amy, or when circumstances demand James, Hunt; Tammy's stage name, and Dolores being referred to as Dolores, or as her stage name, or as Mrs Lister (and the blurring of stage and wallet names for their other colleagues); Alan referring to Christopher's mother as, variously, Ms Swan, Mrs Morcom ("if you will insist on seeing me only as his mother") -- and finally, in the end, as Isobel; Cal and Lorn, with Cal playing the part of a deceased-or-disappered Est(h?)er, for Lorn's sake (-- and this was stage scifi, with fantastical music that did not fit the setting during the fantasy sequences). Queerness, of course. And: identity, and choice, and whether (and how) it's possible to start over, and living with instead of being smothered by grief.
Amy and Bella are separated by violent, angry and disgusted men. Dolores and Tammy escape theirs, all of them, in every possible respect, and start over. Alan is driven by the idea that he'll be able to replicate Christopher Morcom if he just gets AIs good enough; Cal and Lorn show us that people are their own, and even an AI that's repeatedly wiped and reset, from the same starting conditions, will develop differently (and be its own person).
I just -- it's so brilliant, and so complex, and so layered, okay.
I have been struggling and struggling to finish this post and I think, given that the run's already started, that I should just post this now and then write a follow-up after seeing the thing on Friday; but goodness, it's incredible.