I’m very excited about the plays for 2027.
St. Lucia: Pantomime, by Nobel-prize winner Derek Walcott. It’s not a pantomime, but a play about a black Calypso singer and a retired white English actor who attempt to write a pantomime together. This play-within-a-play is spiked with humour and chaos.
Reviews of Pantomime:
"The lines are fluid, the interchanges bristle with intelligence." The New York Times
"A brilliantly extended set of variations on the master-and-servant relationship." The Times, London
"Gentle wit, immaculately placed irony." New Statesman
Czechoslovakia: The Brewery by Vaclav Havel, leader of the Velvet Revolution that toppled the Communist system in 1989. Havel then became the president of Czechoslovakia. Havel drew directly from his own life, having been forced to work at a brewery in the early 1970s after being blacklisted following the 1968 Prague Spring suppression. Havel used satire to expose bureaucratic chaos. In the play, a dissident outsmarts the spies and tricksters in the brewery where he works.
Türkiye: The Painter by Tuncer Cücenoğlu. Tuncer's amusing plays have been performed around the world and translated into 20 languages. In this comedy, a doctor leaves his Istanbul surgery for a holiday. Kadir and his wife Gül are left behind to paint the facility. Patients then arrive and mistake Kadir for the doctor. Because Kadir is poor, he goes along with the misunderstanding, and the situation rapidly becomes more complicated.
Also included in the program are four short plays:
Hong Kong: Back to the Wall by Teresa Norton and Nury Vittachi. A woman makes a last-minute decision to leave Hong Kong on the last day before the city reverts to China. She frantically books a plane ticket, cancels her lease, packs her bag …but can she find a taxi? Will she get to the airport before midnight?
India: Kidnapped? In Dubai?! by Kamlesh Acharya. This is a funny, fast-paced play with an intense, life-changing twist. This award-winning Short + Sweet Festival play is published in 'Engaging Short Plays With a Twist’.
Zimbabwe: I Want to Fly by Thembelihle Moyo. A village girl is determined to become a pilot. The women elders know how to make it happen - by outsmarting the men elders. This is realism with humour!
Palestine: A Negotiationby Irish-Palistinian Hannah Khalil. A young girl visits the British Museum and becomes fascinated by the 'Mask of Warka’ (the Lady of Uruk). She recalls her own childhood discovery of an artefact. This short piece says much more than a longer play! Engaging, enduring and enticing.
These plays are short, some very short, and I have packed this rich program into 2 hours, including the interval.
Location: 169 Castlereagh Street, 1 minute from Gadigal Metro and close to Town Hall station.
Presented in partnership with The Castlereagh Boutique Hotel
Bookings open October.
Carol Dance Artistic Director