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a razor-sharp delight
- The Guardian, UK
In a nutshell:
PHYSICAL SLAPSTICK AND MIME•
FILMIC EFFECTS ON STAGE•
NEW THEATRICAL LANGUAGE
The set is grim. Frosty brown wallpaper, a picture window overlooking the encroaching forest, a dismally institutional upper room. Things swiftly get weird. Clocks climb the wall, a television switches on unbidden, and children’s cries echo through the house......
Horror is a masterclass in time-and-motion stagecraft with the particular genius of Ahlbom’s company being in creating filmic effects on stage, with highly elaborate sequences performed with brilliant physical virtuosity. The tone veers from icy claustrophobia to gothic slapstick, and the music slides from the whisperingly suggestive to full-blown slasher-orchestral, with one particularly over-the-top sequence set to the Osmonds’s Crazy Horses.
Jakop Ahlbom’s work is not defined by a single style but packed with elements from slapstick, illusionism, acrobatics, dance, absurdism, music, visual art, poetry and magic, and he frequently draws on editing techniques that enable him to create magical-realistic universes combining all these styles, tools and techniques to build a new theatrical language; a new theatrical reality.
Even though the mime genre encompasses a broad spectrum of forms of expression,it still does not do full justice to his work. His highly visual and expressive plays originate in the physical body of the individual mime artist, dancer or actor with physical slapstick a thread running throughout his oeuvre.
His work revolves around people’s often strained relationship with themselves in a world that is not always what it appears to be yet he brings understanding to dark subject matter by lifting audiences into a magical, richly imaginative world, captivating and affecting them and making them laugh.
This is a must see work at the Festival for senior drama and media studies students. Be warned - while humour plays a crucial role in this reality because it allows Ahlbom to disrupt our expectations, distance us from familiar reality and create the space to laugh at the human condition he also toys with our basest emotion - Fear..........:
Years 10-13 (14+)
BOOK HERE
Extras for teachers:
Trailer
Jakop Ahlbom
Horror - Website
DANZ - The Lifeblood of Horror
RNZ Radio Interview with Jakop Ahlbom
Contains strobe lighting and haze
Photograph: Sanne Peper
POST SHOW TALK
Wednesday 22 March
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