By Dave
Link: https://vimeo.com/521488855
Available until: Unknown
Gate Generations is a series of works celebrating five past productions at the Gate Theatre. An extract from each of the five is being filmed as part of this series. It might be re-imagined, it might be rewritten. The only way of finding out is to watch.
Damned for Despair isn’t a play I’m familiar with so I don’t know what the original 1991 production was like but this short scene is very powerful. The play was written by Tirso di Molina and translated by Laurence Boswell.
Rufus Lovell, who acts in and directs the piece, has filmed one short scene from Damned for Despair. A man is in prison, waiting to be hanged. We see him in prison as Rufus tells us his thoughts in voice-over. We see him eating, trying to keep himself clean, sometimes twitching uncontrollably.
It’s quite uncomfortable to watch. We see the man eating something that doesn’t look very appetising. We see him doing something that looks like it hurts. We see different parts of his body in close-up. Even a foot can tell you so much. The voice-over expresses the emotion that’s echoed in the body movements and the part it is a voice-over, the words trapped in the man’s head, makes him seem even more isolated.
Yet there’s something in Rufus’ portrayal that makes us
care about him and makes it hard to watch him suffering.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from Gate Generations when I
first heard about it but judging from this scene, it’s going to be a very good
and very interesting series.
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