zen baka

David appears as his mime-fool alter-ego, Limbo,

in new solo works in a series of short pieces

 under the title of

zen baka

created for his upcoming visit to Japan.

New works in the collection :

awkward travel : awaiting a lover's arrival

daydream : memories, hopes, alternate universes

stone : meditation & contemplation on a smooth white fact

take it easy : falling leaves learn survival skills

O : a zen calligraphy master draws a perfect circle

skuba : anagram 'a busk' in musical silence

-- a state of shibumi is understood.

*           *           *

KNOW THE SCORE

 Dance Base Performance Platform

Curator : Morag Deyes,  Co-Curator : Charlotte Jarvis

Saturday, 23 November at 8 p.m.
(Bar opens 7 p.m.)

Dance Base, Grassmarket, Edinburgh

0131 225 5525

Qx : A Quixotic Rhapsody

                                  
'LAZZI actor, director, writer David WW Johnstone plugs us into the terminals of madness with an absolutely riveting performance in his revisitation of Cervantes' classic.' 
- Chrys Salt, Convener of the Dumfries and Galloway Festival, June 2013.

Performance on the Edinburgh ragged fringe will be at The Scottish Poetry Library, Sunday 4 August - 3 pm.

In the works...

Qx : a Quixotic Rapture !   "The Hero is he who exalts Good... beyond Reality !"

"The Great Achievement, Sancho, is to lose one's Reason for no reason.  For if you go truly mad for a good reason... then, you feel nothing.  Find strength in your weakness."

"I do not have to Win at this.  I only have to Be it."


Don Quixote

Thinking about Laurel & Hardy and other things

A few introductory thoughts from Director David WW Johnstone about Lazzi's adaptation of The Comic Destiny...

Lazzi likes to delve into the rough and raw edges of theatre. Whether working with comedy or tragedy, I like to ask the audience to experience a courageous experiment on the part of the performers. 

Our piece starts with the actors themselves gathering to rehearse. How will they adapt and interpret the text? I wanted Lazzi to take Ben Okri’s story and show how the borderline between actor and character can dissolve in unexpected ways. The characters of the piece can be gloriously oblivious to our attempts to restrain them – the process of adaptation itself must be released into their hands.  

Ben Okri’s story The Comic Destiny confronts the violence and the predatory nature of our world through a cast of characters each with their own disturbing histories and personalities. Lazzi needed to find a way to approach this unsettling text – why and how might a company fond of commedia do this? Some insight was gained from comparing the relentless suffering in the myth of Sisyphus, where he is forced to roll a stone up a hill only for it to endlessly fall back down, with the film of Laurel & Hardy attempting to deliver a piano and having to push it up endless steps, with the inevitable comic consequences. Both have a futility, yet one torments us, the other makes us laugh. Both speak of the human condition – they are surreal and absurd... and slapstick is a somewhat violent art. 

Like the characters in the story we are all looking for a special place where we can start afresh - although often just as we discover it we realise it too is about to be torn down. Navigating the line between pessimism and optimism is a fragile path.

If you haven't seen Laurel & Hardy with that piano... here it is... enjoy!:

Easter Springs...

As a new springtime beckons and beguiles us all, Charlotte Jarvis, Robert Williamson and myself are stealing little run-throughs (not rehearsals) of our wildly surreal adaptation of Ben Okri's 
The Comic Destiny...

coming soon to an Edinburgh Festival Fringe Programme near you
with the kind hospitality of The Scottish Storytelling Centre
and then to the Riverside Studios in London in September.

We play wherever and whenever there is cosmic space and time. We are clowns --
no, more like imps on a quest for transcendence, spirits and the cosmic timing of the gods.

Ben Okri is truly a stand-up cosmic.

Komedia

Laurel & Hardy from The Music Box.... exquisite dumbshow.  --  dwwj

... colour ?