27-1-19

I went to watch “Play Reading” produced by a youth group Fiesta Space. The work is called Paid Moaning, a sad comedy about 4 unpopular gigolos with a poor boss and few bad customers. It is an amazing experiment: 6 actors just sat in front of 20s audience. They acted while reading the script: very simple, nothing fancy but full of delicate heart.

The model of “Play Reading” is a very good way to incubate and develop great theatrical pieces: practice makes perfect. Instead of jumping to a final, formal and expensive stage performance, the performing art group can be given a small sum of money so that they will be enabled to invest time and effort to test out the audience comments in order to let the work nicely improve and evolve: 0.5 to 1, 1 to 1.5, 1.5 to 2…

Some named such an experimental process “co-workshopping”. I would call the process “from tadpole to frog”. I heard the musical master piece of Hamilton was incubated and grew in this same manner.

I wish Paid Moaning a similar success.

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