By Cal
Link: Living
Newspaper: Edition 1 On Demand - Royal Court (cogplayer.com)
Available until: Sunday 20th
December 4pm
Living Newspaper is the Royal Court’s latest lockdown project.
There will be one a week for six weeks and judging from this first one, they’ll
last about ninety minutes.
There was a lot in this first episode.
It features the work of twelve writers, performed by a company of thirteen
actors. The cameras go to different locations in the Royal Court and in each
location, there’s a performance.
There are a few rules. As it’s a newspaper, it focuses on current events. It also has to allow for social distancing between the characters. It also needs to be possible to perform it inside the Royal Court. Apart from that, the writers seem fairly free to do what they like – whether that’s creating a drama, giving a speech or singing a song.
There are stories that mimic recent
events, such as The Bookshop by Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan. Sometimes, visual
images are used, such as in Cartoon of the Week by Nazareth Hassan. Some ask
questions, such as The Long Listen by Amir Gudarzi. Royal Court-ing by Miriam
Batteye looks at an issue which isn’t one of the most prevalent in society at
the moment, but which really does exist. In a shorter scene, a man talks on the
phone about scotch eggs and it’s brilliant. The Blank Space by Matilda Ibini is
probably the most theatrical of the works, focusing on a group of characters
who learn and discover things through conversation. There really is a bit of
everything.
But it’s not just a presentation of
new work – it’s all a tour around the Royal Court building. We get to see parts
of the theatre that the public don’t usually see, perhaps not even in their
backstage tours. Each place has been chosen carefully - a place where the
dramas could reasonably happen.
It doesn’t really feel like theatre,
but I’m not sure it’s particularly trying to. It takes place in a theatre and a
scripts are produced every week for the actors to read aloud (there’s no time
to learn them and I barely noticed the scripts most of the time), but it is
primarily a newspaper which is there to give news and opinions and the plays
are created to create real-life issues rather than to tell a story. Everything
in Living Newspaper Episode 1 feels real and relevant.
I also really like the fact that it’s
not all about COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter. Both have become so important in
2020, but other problems still exist and they shouldn’t be brushed aside
completely just because they seem less important. Living Newspaper Edition 1
acknowledges that other problems exist.
It’s not the kind of thing where you
can talk about a good piece of writing or a good acting performance. I didn’t
really feel like I was watching a performance – it felt like I was watching a
slice of reality. Though that in itself as a compliment to the writers and
actors who made it feel so real. But Living Newspaper Edition 1 is a
great and innovative idea and I’m glad there are more to come.
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