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Showing posts with the label Nikhil Vyas

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The brown word: Death on the Throne @gatehouselondon

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We’re warned at the start of the show with an upbeat number that this is not the usual sort of musical. And it turns out to be just that. But with boundless enthusiasm and energy from its two leads, who deploy a range of voices and breathtaking energy to create a series of voices for puppet characters, a bedtime story becomes a silly oddball tale about four souls stuck in purgatory. With puppets. And various toilet humour references. It’s currently playing at Upstairs At The Gatehouse . The piece starts as a bedtime story. Daddy (Mark Underwood) is about to read a bedtime story for Louise (Sarah Louise Hughes). But her stomach felt funny, and soon, she went to the bathroom. Then, for reasons that seem to only make sense in the confines of the show, they start telling the story of four people who died in unfortunate circumstances in the bathroom. Depicted as puppets, they’re stuck in purgatory as St Peter doesn’t have enough space for each of them in the afterlife. And so begins a puppe...
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We have ways of making you think: The Mosinee Project @newdiorama

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The revolution is partially re-enacted to scare the pants off an unsuspecting midwestern American town in The Mosinee Project. The piece, which was initially seen at last year's Edinburgh Fringe, is a retelling of the actual fake communist invasion of 1950s America, organised by ex-communists and funded by the American Legion. It's also an attempt to understand why a town would decide to stage a mock communist takeover, what it says about fear, and how it was a harbinger for a much darker period that would mark the Red Scares and witch hunts of the 1950s. It's currently playing at the New Diorama Theatre . Writer-director Nikhil Vyas deconstructs this obscure historical event, exploring what drives fear and how the use of the media to generate attention can manipulate viewpoints while assembling various facts behind the planning and preparation of the day. This includes exploring the motivations behind two ex-communists—Joseph Zach Kornfeder and Benjamin Gitlow—brought in b...
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