Meet David Furlong : Theatre to question the world INTERVIEW of David Furlong by Norbert Louis, for Le Mauricien Published in the Week End, cultural supplement to the main National Mauritian newspaper, July 2009. A Young theatre director and actor, David Furlong, based in London is a man of performing arts. Moved by a force fed by passion, he has this way of always being cutting edge, outside the box, and constantly connected to contemporary matters. This creates David's theatre. As he's about to present his new translations of Feydeau farces (Feydeau Double Bill) at the Tabard Theatre in London, he takes the time to go back on his coherent artistic journey with his company, Exchange Theatre. Week-End : How do you conceive the performance in relation to the plot and the dialogues ? David Furlong : I started theatre with a very classical training. It was about telling stories. But throughout my work, while looking for the meaning of a dramatic work and by exploring deeper all forms and styles, one thing appeared constantly: the story must trigger something in the audience, it's an emotionnal aim. Theatre is unique because it's the only form of art where there...
An interview with the director, David Furlong. At the Jermyn Street Theatre, 25th July 2006. The British Premiere of The Exchange. Michael Donley : David, The Exchange is your first directorial work in the Uk ? David Furlong : In England, yes. I share my life between Paris and London and I worked in France as a director and as part of a devising team. And as an actor of course. But The Exchange represents my first work as an artistic director with my own company. MD : In the artistic file, you say that you were influenced by the 'méthode Vitezienne'. Can you tell us a few words about it ? DF : With pleasure. When Antoine Vitez directed the French National Theatre and created the National School of Chaillot -which is where I trained- he brought something very new and special, it was in the eighties. I remember when I watched for the first time some videos of his work - The Mysanthrope, for example - what hit me every time was his way of making the text so modern and contemporary ! And that's precisely what I aim to do myself with ETC with the promotion...
As a background, the wide painting of a beach. A set reduced to its minimum. To the right, a pink fridge from the 50's, big and curvy, and a hammock where an acoustic guitar stands; to the left, a Tv set. With a musical background from the Beach Boys, Louis enters, carrying a surfboard. This opening gives the tone to all that is going to follow, because David Furlong wants the audience to see in Claudel's text a contemporary message. The way he uses to match his statement is interesting. First of all, the original use of the props. The guitar, for a start. Louis' nostalgic memories of his first encounter with Marthe are put in music. The folksong he sings and plays himself -an very simple air - captures with perfection the simplicity and the beauty of their first moments. The television is immediately deviated from its original function. As soon as Louis starts to dream aloud (« I fly in the air like a hawk, like the hovering falcon... »), this dream machine ‘awakes' to accompany every allusions he makes with some footages found among old movie archives. When Thomas Pollock Nageoire pronounces a speech on the...
Low Down In 1943 The Flies was a play of intense social relevance. The parallels between Sartre's vision of the population of Argos, enslaved by their own cowardice, and the predicament of the French people during the Nazi occupation of Paris are vivid. Can it still pack a punch today? YES, this production enthusiastically answers. Review Co-directors David Furlong and Kevin Rowntree use The Flies as a springboard for a host of theatrical innovations including fight scenes, musical numbers and a live soundtrack by three-piece rock band A Riot in Heaven. But their bold, experimental approach is paired with terrific fidelity to the words of the script. The cast speak Sartre's lines with great clarity and graphic gestures make the intention behind their words explicit. Overall the effect is totally engaging. It's enthralling to watch the piece juggle so many disparate elements without collapsing into a confused mess. The live soundtrack is always interesting, flirting with cliché at times, but never distracting from the scene or too-literally illustrating the emotion. Deft touches of set and costume help hold it all together. Orestes' companion and tutor films the early scenes on a camcorder, for example, perfectly expressing the vicarious nature...
This play is important because it isn't afraid to talk about issues that we all think about. Stuck in what feels like a peculiar windowless chamber, stopping and speeding up time by winding up clocks from different countries (an effective device), the three characters are forced to confront themselves and challenge their preconceptions. The rather odd set immediately makes it feel more like a 1970's spaceship than an airport departure lounge, and therefore the tone of the whole piece feels less realistic, and strangely more sci-fi like. The writing sometimes comes across as too clever and overly complicated, yet what makes the piece work well are the character definitions. They are self consciously clichéd, and this allows them to analyse themselves. First, the big burly Englishman who likes football and beer and goes from place to place teaching the locals in customer service to 'out source' the labour force. What is he? He starts with observations on airports and corporate advertising. He is like a voice box, coming out of himself, stepping into a more brooding light as if reciting from the book of a more articulate writer. His observational, philosophical streams don't fit his character. The Frenchman is...
Review: The Flies At Camden Fringe Mega-multicultural Echange Theatre, a company that draws on eastern and western influences as well as incorporating live music into their productions, have done the unimaginable: The Flies is an existential Jean-Paul Sartre rock opera. Camden People's Theatre has had one Oresteia in its small space already with Elektra; while that had us enthralled with it's precision and focus, The Flies is Sartre's philosophical re-working of that Greek tragedy, and we were stunned by Echange Theatre's approach to this weighty text. Modern dress, alarming, disturbing imagery, religion, politics, personal and social morality, a town plagued by disease and guilt put the tough existential philosophy in second place to the gripping action. Ultimately, however, it was a political rock opera with long passages arguing morality, guilt and religious oppression that got increasingly hard to follow. Mauritian rock band A Riot in Heaven were on stage throughout, providing brooding bass notes and aural doom as well as the songs. The immediacy of their guitars and the throb of the notes through the floor made us feel the performances deep in our guts. Violence, when it came, was shocking and loud. This was powerfully affecting but just...
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