Tonight’s performance was the directorial debut of a new theatre company called CVIVarts, so called because it adopts the director’s name. Carrieanne Vivianette, a theatre practitioner who has a dream to create her own unique and experimental theatre pieces.
This absurdist adaptation of Franz Kafka’s ‘A Hunger Artist’ takes a man, a cage and a clock and attempts to unpick the simple topics of the nature of art and the human condition.
As the doors opened to the small theatre space. we could see that the performance had already started. The simple set consisted of a cage marked out with chalk set central stage with piles of straw around the edges, a clock and a glass of water. This was the Hunger Artist’s (Henry Petch) domain for the whole performance. The Warder (Richard Koslowsky) sat close by and intermittently paced around the cage gazing at and guarding the Hunger Artist. The narrator (Carrieanne Vivanette) sat to the right of the cage and navigated us through the Hunger Artist’s days of starvation.
As the days went by, the narrator guided us through the Hungers Artist’s days and nights. As the crowds drew in close to watch this form of entertainment, the Hunger Artist performed with appropriate movements for a man who was starving himself, progressively getting more exhausted and tired as the days went by. The movement and choreography by Phil Sanger was superb and appropriate. It portrayed the tremendous pain and admiration of a man who was desperately trying to hold his audience's attention throughout the days and nights as they came to watch a man starve.
But as the days swiftly went by, the crowds got thinner and thinner and the Hunger Artist struggled to perform. He kept moving the outline of his cage further forward to try to hold their attention and retain the spectacle of curiosity and control.
As the 40 days of starvation drew closer, the narrator’s voice and strength grew and clearly portrayed the anger and desperation admirably of the Hunger Artist as he struggles to survive and keep his audiences.
Towards to end of the 40 days the Hunger Artist loses his battle to survive but not before giving a tremendous performance of movement portraying his sheer desperation.
After the Hunger Artist’s death, he was no longer the main attraction, so the warder simply replaced him with a new circus attraction: The Panther.
In conclusion it was a powerful and interesting performance which portrayed the Hunger Artist well with his desperation and endeavour to survive and stay the main attraction for as long as possible. All three characters were superbly acted but special credit to the Hunger Artist ( (Henry Petch) and narrator/ director Carrieanne Vivianette who should be proud of her directorial debut tonight.
Reviewer - Debbie Jennings
on - 21/2/20
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