Trap Street & Dinomania

Two Plays by Kandinsky

Kandinsky

• Publisher: Salamander Street Ltd.
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781913630119
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Classes & Economic Disparity
• Index: Social Sciences

Dinomania????? 'Wildly inventive theatre company Kandinsky return with a head-spinningly smart show about Victorian fossil hunters…No-one else makes theatre quite like this.' Time OutDinomania was originally commissioned by New Diorama Theatre, running from 19 February to 23 March 2019.165 million years ago, an iguanodon is killed in the heart of a rainforest. Time passes, the rainforest becomes the South Downs, and every part of the iguanodon degrades and disappears – except one tooth.197 years ago, in safe, affluent 1820s Sussex, a country doctor finds the tooth. But where does it fit in the story of an earth created by God just 6, 000 years ago????? Evening Standard???? 'Consistently smart and inventive.' The Stage???? 'Brilliant comic timing… I have rarely seen such an electric cast' A Younger Theatre'This is such intelligent work from a seriously talented company' – Lyn Gardner for Stagedoor'Sharply funny and exciting throughout' – The TLS'For Kandinsky, this is yet another nuanced, reflective, and highly creative approach to theatre-making. Original and perceptive, this is storytelling at its best.' – Exeunt Trap Street???? 'Trap Street is an 80-minute show that melds an astonishing complexity of themes, a mastery of form and a deep, deep humanity … another triumph for Kandinsky' Time OutThis show premiered at New Diorama Theatre, running from 6 to 31 March 2018. It also ran at the Schaubühne, Berlin from 5 to 7 April 2019 as part of the Festival of International New Drama (FIND) where the New York Times described it as: 'not only the highlight of the festival but one of the most ingenious pieces of new theater I have seen recently… The three-person cast deftly shifts between time periods in a mesmerizing single act that combines minimal stagecraft, improvised music and finely chiseled performances to create an anguished cry of moral outrage about neoliberal economic policies, gentrification and the erosion of the social security system.'It's 1961 and the concrete's just been poured for a brand new housing estate. It's beautiful, not because of the clean lines, indoor toilets and wide windows, but because the idea behind it is beautiful. This is the future, and it's for everyone.It's 2018 and the last tower of the estate is about to come down. The dream that saw it built has long since died and now the estate has to follow suit to make way for new buildings, based on new ideas. This is the future, whether you like it or not.???? 'Timely critique about the housing crisis is both angry and humane.' Evening Standard???? 'Compelling and intelligent' The Stage'ferociously intelligent, poignant … Trap Street effectively maps the process of British dreaming, and how that process is permanently written into the landscape itself.' ExeuntKandinsky brings the company's trademark theatrical inventiveness to city life, exploring a community trying to find its way in a landscape shaped by power. TRAP STREET charts 50 years of changing attitudes to ownership and space in London, to ask what home means in 2018.

Dinomania

Dinomania was first performed on 19 February 2019 at New Diorama Theatre, London.

The cast was as follows:

Janet Etuk

Hamish MacDougall

Sophie Steer

Harriet Webb

Music composed and performed by Zac Gvirtzman

Directed by James Yeatman

Dramaturgy by Lauren Mooney

Production co-design by Joshua Gadsby and Naomi Kuyck-Cohen

Associate design by Lizzy Leech

Stage management by Hanne Schulpé

Additional material by Al Smith

The original production was developed and staged with support from the Royal Victoria Hall Foundation, the Unity Theatre Trust, The Dischma Charitable Trust, the Sylvia Waddilove Foundation, the Thistle Trust, The Geological Society, Theatre Arts at London Metropolitan University and supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. It was commissioned and co-produced by New Diorama Theatre London.

Dinomania was devised by the cast and creative team.

Note

This show could be staged with a company of any size.

We made it with four actors and a musician. The actors doubled as follows:

ONE Mum

Boy

Patient

Mary Mantell

James Ussher

Sarah (Servant)

TWO Dad

Dog

Doctor Logan

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Robert Grant

William Buckland [in part 3]

Society Member

Man 1

THREE Horse

Gardener

Dr. James Parkinson

Servant

Baron Cuvier

Richard Owen

Man 2

FOUR Gideon Mantell

William Buckland [in part 2]

All actors are part of the CHORUS.

PROLOGUE

A space with a piano upstage. In the centre a low platform. Above it a light, which is off.

The piano is being played as the audience enter the space.

The piano stops.

The CHORUS enter.

A low rumble.

ONE: Three hundred and five million years ago, there was a two-mile square slice of neotropical rainforest on the side of a mountain on the now-lost supercontinent Pangea.

TWO: During a period of climate volatility, a heavy rain caused a landslide, felling a copse of now-extinct sigillaria trees.

THREE: They lay where they fell for centuries – undisturbed by fungi and bacteria, which hadn’t yet evolved to consume wood – and were covered by layer upon layer of fresher trees over hundreds of millions of years.

FOUR: Gradually, this exposed them to enormous heat and pressure, carbonizing them into a rich seam of coal.

ONE: The coal remained undisturbed until June, when it was mined amongst thirty million tonnes from the Cerrejon mine by the Glencore Mining Company in Colombia.

TWO...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Contents
• Trap Street
• Dinomania