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The Significant Other Festival – 2.5

Significant

The Significant Other Festival

The Vaults

Reviewed – 17th April 2018

★★½

“ultimately it is the attempted scale of the performance that lets it down”

 

Over the last few years New Writing Nights have emerged and flourished across the London Fringe, with themed nights and unique ways of engaging with audiences allowing artists to take risks. The Significant Other Festival from The Pensive Federation proposes something unique: ten different plays set in one location, set over the course of an evening and merged into one single piece. All have been collected and created over the course of just ten days.

We are back in 1988 within the fictional factory of Reseal 9. Jack is leaving the company and it is the day of his retirement party. Beforehand, we jump between the stories of various employees, from office staff through to box sealers. The time of a major figure leaving in any group can be a catalyst for change, and it provides an opportunity for many to evaluate their relationships and anxieties. These scenes have been created by ten writers, interwoven by a group of employees that help the piece to flow, referring outside events and carrying us through. The level of ambition in achieving this is to be admired, but ultimately it is the attempted scale of the performance that lets it down.

The scenes themselves form somewhat of a mixed bag. A shame in terms of an audience’s point of view is the lack of variation and repetition of themes. Couple after couple form ‘Will they, won’t they?’ partnerships, and by the fifth scene using this pattern it drains. If there was a clearer separation, it would be fairer to distance scenes, but the structure forces to judge the performance as one whole. It also feels unsatisfying as no play or storyline feels complete, instead feeling bitty despite some nice writing from Chantelle Dusette and Emma Bentley in their various sections.

The slightly overlong production from Pensive Federation Artistic Director Neil J. Byden operates in broad strokes, and is hugely impressive in its smoothness, feeling confident in the world it chooses to explore. This unity can lead to a lack of variation, but lip sync and detailed bright spots keep us moving forward. They are aided by a cast who are far too many to even try and review in detail. They play their parts with uniform clarity, though as a general point can feel rather stock in parts, but this does allow for a distinction between them so is understandable.

This Significant Other Festival is a difficult show to review due to the nature of its creation and the structure of its performance. On the one hand an exploration of a single day in the life of many within a factory, put together in under two weeks is simply incredible. But while acknowledging that you wish for more. More fire in its politics, more courage in its variations and more exploration of depth rather than pushing for scale. As a New Writing Night it is a beautiful idea, and you look forward to the day in which it is mastered.

 

Reviewed by Callum McCartney

 


The Significant Other Festival

The Vaults

 

 

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The Significant Other Festival

March 14th – 18th 2016

The Pensive Federation are proud to present the 6th Significant Other Festival, this year at the Vaults under Waterloo Station, giving them their biggest stage ever. For the sixth time, they will present 10 new 10 minute plays, including a new musical, created in just 10 days.

The Significant Other Festival is an attempt to explore relationships and our connections with the people around us in more detail, and to really celebrate modern relationships. We start with the theme of the significant other: colloquially used as a gender-blind term for a person’s partner in an intimate relationship without disclosing or presuming anything about marital status, relationship status, or sexual orientation.

We ask 10 writers to create a 10 minute play in 5 days with this theme in mind. We then hand the scripts over to a director and a company of 3 actors and give them 5 days to stage it. Every year we now add a further theme and stimulus, previous themes have included, genre, undercover (which gave us 10 different bed covers) and object of affection. This year our added theme is conditions.

 

Director Neil. J. Byden

Dramaturgy Serena Haywood

Stage Manager Davie Byden-Oakes

 

The Pensive Federation are a small theatre company who have a shared aspiration in theatre which reflects people like you, situations you may have faced and reflective of the ordinary world around you. They strive to create accessible work that examines the hopes, fears and dreams that live in all of us; the need for a connection with those around us, the instinct to love and the desire to be loved, to be seen in the world and acknowledged for the person you are and not the labels you wear.
The Federation are now in their 5th anniversary year of bringing their special brand of collectively devised and created theatre to London – including the Collective Project, the Significant Other Festival and their new Rewritten project, which asks writers to develop new work from an original 5 page script.

Listing

 

The Significant Other Festival

March 14th 2017 – March 18th 2017

Tuesday – Saturday, 7.30pm
Saturday matinee at 2.30pm

 

The Vaults, Launcelot Street, London SE1 7AD

Ticket Price £15 (£12 concessions)

 

Box Office

 

Tickettailor – 0207 401 9603

tickettailor.com

 

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