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STARC PRODUCTIONS
A NIGHT IN THE THEATRE – 5 Comic Plays by David Ives
Bakehouse Theatre, Adelaide
The extremely odd and theatrical world of David Ives is relatively unknown to Australian audiences. However, David Ives is one of the USA’s most prolific and extraordinary playwrights working today. He stands at the forefront of what could be called ‘American absurdism’. Time magazine wrote of David Ives that his is a ‘Theatre that aerobicizes the brain and tickles the heart...Ives is a mordant comic who has put play back in playwright’. His plays ‘constitute a virtual stress test of the English language – and of the audience’s capacity for disorientation and delight’. His work includes a series of one-act plays, which are more like vaudeville sketches, collectively published under the title All In The Timing. STARC is pleased to present 5 of these one-act plays – Sure Thing, Variations on the Death of Trotsky, English Made Simple, Long Ago and Far Away, and The Universal Language. If there is a unifying theme in this selection it is one that involves ‘Time’ and ‘Language’; how the pressure of ‘Time’, including history, influences ‘language’, how we communicate, and issues of ‘identity’. Whilst they may seem ‘absurd’, nonetheless, there is also a subtle depth in this odd reflection of the modern human condition that makes them very real. Complementing STARCS aesthetic, which is also to present bold works that ‘aerobicizes the brain and tickles the heart’, we present these 5 one-act plays in a seemingly informal way, and with a dynamic and engaging spirit of theatrical ‘play’.