Playground Politics, a performance produced by level 2 students on the Writing after Beckett module was a feature of the Drama Showcase at York St John University 2017.
A delightfully refreshing performance consisting of 32 scripted vignettes; fleeting moments, comedy shorts, tiny sketches, dramaticules. Written by the group as a scripted piece, all the little plays established a world of their own, varying in lengths and driven by different content as tiny little episodes.
The general theme across all vignettes commented upon the ridiculousness and the failures encountered in current politics, in love, in competition and to some degree, it played upon and stretched, with absurdity, the mundane aspects of our lives. Played through the performativity of the absurd, not too far away from Samuel Beckett’s Dramaticule Come and Go and close enough to Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information, the performers applied a touch of wit created through a series of visual interruptions – custard pie goofs, Kaylee dance routines and farcical noises. Whilst the writing and the concepts were drawn from the work of Samuel Beckett and Caryl Churchill, the material in some vignettes was highly influenced by the conceptual dramaturgy of the TV series Inside Number 9, a dark comedy with each episode featuring an entirely new story in a conceptual space – behind a number ‘9’.
Text and Photos by Claire Hind