More Drama

12 August 2008

Last year I wrote the text for Drama Queens, a project by the artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset. Comprising a short (40 minute) play for 6 radio controlled sculptures (scale models of real ones by Jeff Koons, Sol LeWitt, Giacometti, Warhol, Barbara Hepworth et al)  it was presented at Munster Skulpture Projekte and, more recently this year, at Art Basel. Here’s what I wrote about it back then with links to some reviews etc here and here.

Ingar was in touch with me a while back to say (slightly mysteriously) that “a London theatre” might be interested in staging the piece on a one-off basis with live actors providing the voices for the sculptures. The two presentations of the work so far featured recorded voices, as done by actors in Munster. Anyways. Things went quiet on all this and I thought any London plan was dead in the water. But now it’s all happening.

The Old Vic, no less, will present the work as a one off on Sunday 12 October 7.30pm, with artistic director Kevin Spacey reading one part and various other actors great and small looking at the script in due course with a view to joining the cast. Drama Queens is £250 a ticket gala fundraising type event but there are regular priced tickets too. The performance comes just a month before Forced Entertainment’s Spectacular at Riverside in London and alongside a new show by Elmgreen & Dragset at Victoria Miro.

Currently hard at work on the text – one sculpture is getting cut (sightline and space issues – The Old Vic stage is ‘in the round’ this season, and a general spring-clean of the text is going on). I’m definitely going to make it to the performance in October.

 

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