How to Hold Your Breath

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These are all great ideas for a play that prods intelligently at the global status quo, that questions where we’d be if white, Western male power collapsed. But are they great ideas for the same play? The trouble with Featherstone’s cold, brooding, two-hour production is that it smushes everything together to the point that the individual strands lose definition and intent. The Duchess [of Malfi] | The Lyceum | Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh". lyceum.org.uk. 17 May 2019 . Retrieved 2023-01-15. Sloane Square’s Royal Court is London’s theatre du jour. Challenging productions, new British talent and atmosphere of radicalism ensure it’s every thespian’s first port of call, despite the well-heeled, un-groovy location. So what, you may well ask, is going on? I assume Jarron, whose attempt at paying Dana for sex is steadfastly refused, represents the reduction of all human relationships to a monetary transaction. The librarian, who pops up at regular intervals in Dana’s life with a succession of “how to” books, symbolises a consumerist belief in easy solutions to every problem. Dana herself, meanwhile, is a woman of principle half drawn to, and half repelled by, the glittering prizes offered by a corrupt society. What we see is how Dana would react if the normal roles were reversed and, as Europe collapses, she were turned into an economic migrant. Wade, Mike (2017-07-31). "Zinnie Harris: the drama queen of the Edinburgh festival (she's got five plays on)". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460 . Retrieved 2018-10-12.

How to Hold Your Breath - Zinnie Harris | Culture Whisper Review: How to Hold Your Breath - Zinnie Harris | Culture Whisper

Alongside her original plays, Zinnie Harris has adapted and reworked a number of plays from the western dramatic canon revising female characters from those plays for a more contemporary and sympathetic eye. [2] What starts off as a seemingly innocent one night stand, Zinnie Harris new playtakes us on a thrilling and magical journey across Europe and examines the true cost of modern day morality. McGinty, Stephen. "Toil and trouble to put Lady Macbeth in the spotlight". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460 . Retrieved 2023-01-15.Nothing ever really bad happens in Europe,” one sister tells another in Zinnie Harris’ nightmarish fantasy How To Hold Your Breath. In little more than a few explosive minutes, this is proved unequivocally false as the banks close their doors, hospitals demand cash in exchange for aid and former female lawyers and primary school teachers scout out territory for a whole new line of work.

How to Hold Your Breath | Faber How to Hold Your Breath | Faber

Oresteia: This Restless House - International Festival | The Lyceum | Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh". lyceum.org.uk. 22 August 2017 . Retrieved 2018-10-12.Peake slices across the stage like a laser beam. She is an actor worth crossing the country to see. But the characterisation on which she has to work is slight. She is 1) an insulted woman; 2) an all-too-plausible specialist in “customer dynamics”; 3) a victim of European meltdown, desperately trying to reach the new economic beacon of Africa. In the most dynamic scene she is perched at the top of a vertiginous slope, trying not to slide down towards the outstretched arms of a drowning crowd. Embark on an epic journey through Europe with sisters Dana ( Maxine Peake) and Jasmine as they discover the true cost of principles in this twisted exploration of how we live now. Professor Zinnie Harris FRSE - The Royal Society of Edinburgh". The Royal Society of Edinburgh . Retrieved 2018-03-14. However, at the heart of the play is Dana’s own journey from a quiet, normal life working in Berlin to a woman driven to extreme measures by the suffering she later endures. Despite the bizarre and increasingly unreal situations that Dana finds herself in, Maxine Peake keeps the character grounded and believable with a gritty stubbornness as she struggles for survival. In a strong performance, Christine Bottomley takes Dana’s sister from sassy best friend to a creature broken by circumstance. Peter Forbes’ ever-helpful librarian injects humour as he offers increasingly absurd self-help books such as “How to Spot Danger and Know How to Deal with It” and “How to Catch up with the Times as They Change”. Harris has directed for a number of theatres, including the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Traverse Theatre, The Tron Theatre, 7:84 and the Royal Lyceum Theatre. In 2017 she directed Caryl Churchill's A Number for the Royal Lyceum Theatre and was awarded Best Director in the 2017 Scottish Critics CATS awards. [24] Recent directing work includes The Duchess of Malfi, Christmas Tales, Scent of Roses for the Royal Lyceum Theatre where she is currently directing her new version of Shakespeare's Macbeth with the title Macbeth (an undoing). [25]

Zinnie Harris’ How to Hold Your Being European Becomes a Sin: Zinnie Harris’ How to Hold Your

In truth, this show won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. But that’s the brilliant thing about the Royal Court; its fearless programming takes risks and stages challenging, divisive pieces of work that will leave you reeling and full of questions. How To Hold Your Breath is no exception, and if you like your drama delivered with a creative, witty, intelligent and political punch – with the exceptional Peake as a bonus, of course – this show’s surreal, dark vision is likely to dazzle. Zinnie Harris FRSE is a British playwright, screenwriter and director currently living in Edinburgh. [1] She has been commissioned and produced by the Royal Court Theatre, Royal National Theatre, the National Theatre of Scotland and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her plays have been translated and performed in many countries across Europe and the globe.Zinnie Harris (2015 UK)". Berwin Lee London New York Playwrights Inc. 15 May 2013 . Retrieved 2018-10-15. Harris places her protagonist in an Odyssean role as she traverses the storms brewing in European society. Maxine Peake, Hamlet Star and no stranger to leading roles, commands this position with ease. Strong support comes from Christine Bottomley, whose delivery of a monologue about the death of her child is awful and mesmerising, In 2017, she adapted Ibsen's The Master Builder for the West Yorkshire Playhouse, the resultant play was called The Fall of the Master Builder and was directed by James Brining. Starting with a seemingly innocent one night stand, this darkly witty and magical thriller by Zinnie Harris dives into our recent European history.

Zinnie Harris - Wikipedia

Among these adaptations, This Restless House (2017), Harris’ version of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, imagines Clytemnestra not as someone capable of murder, but as a woman more like herself with no intention to kill. [3] Her upcoming play Macbeth (an undoing) (February 2022) revisits Lady Macbeth as a ‘complex woman intoxicated by love, power and maternal longing; a woman out of time, fighting against the constraints of medieval patriarchy.’ [4] Harris’ writing is driven by the need to challenge representations of women in theatre. To that end, her plays place women at the centre of the story – relatable women, who are not defined simply by their gender or romantic relationships. This has resulted in a new legacy of leading roles for women in British theatre. Among this canon is How to Hold Your Breath, a modern morality play that reflects the contemporary refugee crisis. The play acts as a response to Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Woman of Szechwan, in which the titular character invents an alter ego to escape from a life that, because of her gender, is entirely devoid of agency. Whereas Brecht suggests that women must deny their femininity to effect change, Harris updates the narrative to portray a woman who remains true to herself, and who represents all of humankind in her search for agency. Dana is so upset that, the next day, she almost misses a presentation about “the customer experience” that she has to do for work. The nightmare deepens. Dana’s sister, Jasmine, tries to help. But she has her own intimate concerns. The pair eventually set off on a journey across Europe. The names Berlin, Budapest and the Adriatic drift through this symbolic itinerary. The nightmare deepens. More and more. Yet just as the devil persecutes them, so they acquire a guardian angel in the shape of an ever-helpful Librarian. Always on hand to offer a parody of self-help books, he has suggestions for every occasion.

Thankfully, there is always Peake to watch. The strange thing is that, with her tightly trimmed blonde hair, she bears a passing resemblance to Sarah Kane and the play itself has strong echoes of Kane’s Blasted, currently being revived in Sheffield. But Peake also has the priceless ability to lend her character a much-needed internal tension. With her expressive features and unwavering gaze, Peake suggests at different times a chirpy, bright-eyed resilience or a terrified surrender to despair as she endures her travail-filled travels. Zinnie Harris (2015 UK)". Berwin Lee London New York Playwrights Inc. 15 May 2013 . Retrieved 15 October 2018. Everything happens on the same junk-covered set, with no sense that Dana and Jasmin are actually travelling anywhere. Coupled with Dana’s hallucinogenic visitations from both Shaeffer’s increasingly agitated Jarron and Peter Forbes’s amusingly prissy, quasi-angelic librarian and Featherstone almost seems to be interpreting ‘How To Hold Your Breath’ as taking place in its protagonist’s head. But to what end? If none of it is really happening, the geopolitical stuff loses value, as does Jasmin, whose heartbreaking, ugly late monologue about her baby is one of the play’s stand-out moments. Clearly it is at least real on some level, but Featherstone muddies it enough to sap the play’s momentum, while the relentlessly dour tone squishes the considerable sparkle in Harris’s dialogue. Angels reach out across Edinburgh and Europe". HeraldScotland. 28 August 2017 . Retrieved 2018-10-15.