Wajdi update: Our man Mouawad (playwright, director, artistic director of the French theatre at the National Arts Centre, etc) has penned a new French translation of A Streetcar Named Desire for his buddy, director Krzysztof Warlikowski. It's currently on in Paris at the Théâtre de l'Odéon starring none other than Isabelle Huppert.
The critical verdict? Huppert "is receiving some of the worst reviews of her career", according to this LA Times blog post. Bit of an exaggeration really - it's Warlikowski's experimental approach that is getting the bad reviews, and, in fact, while the English-language critics are unanimously not into it, a few of the French critics are more positive.
None of which really has to do with Mouawad, since, as he explains in this interview with Le Monde, Warlikowski has used his text as he does any text: as a jumping off point to add and subtract to at will.
In other Mouawad news, his reworked production of Littoral that premiered last summer at the Festival d'Avignon is in the French capital now, as well. Here's a neat photo gallery that shows what he's doing with paint on stage in the new mise en scene.
Littoral and the rest of his Sang des promesses trilogy is coming to Montreal and Quebec City this summer for the Festival TransAmeriques and the Carrefour international de théâtre, respectively. Wouldn't it be nice to rig it up with surtitles and bring it to Toronto's Luminato at the same time?
Former Cirque du Soleil creative Franco Dragone - he did Mystere and O in Las Vegas and four other of their shows - has given an interview to the Las Vegas Weekly in which he says he won't criticise "his former family" - and then proceeds to do just that.
Dragone's not wild about Cirque's accelerated expansion. Or at least I think that's what the Belgian director is saying. "I'm not sure if not now Cirque is not having a difficult time," is one of the more choice quotes and triple negatives always trip me up.