Double

A Coproduction with the ARENA Festival, Germany 2004

Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead Scottish Proverb

Double – twice; one and one; first and second; multiplication; unnatural. Am I alone or is there two of me? When I walk, do I walk next to myself, behind myself or maybe in front of myself?
Double is beginning and end – two separate places that are interdependent. I run and run but at the end of the race I discover my double – the pursued. It is then that I remember that Death has two faces – happy & unhappy. I ask myself the question – which one of us is real?

Direction and Cast: Kuba Pierzchalski & Rachel Karafistan Cast: Urlike Hoffmeier, Adam Brown, Steffanie Miller, Liam Lane Original Music: Joel Kendrick & Kuba Pierzchalski Production: Angela Beyerlein & Urlich Blanché Artwork: Adam Brown Premiere: July 2004 – 14th ARENA International Festival of Young Theatres, Erlangen, Germany.

gallery

reviews

Erlanger Nachrichten

July 2004

Superbly imaginative and rich in imagery… The hungry heart breaks free of routine and finds itself confronted with dreams. Experience and imagination are fused, like in a Fellini film. Perfectly presented physical theatre with a beautifully stylized stage design that lives through its poetic images and appeals to all senses. One of the few pieces (if not the only one) of the festival that conjures up a positive utopia of life on the stage.

Manfred Koch

Abendzeitung Nürnberg

July 2004

...packs the central motifs of “doppelganger” stories by Edgar Allan Poe, E.T.A. Hoffman, Kafka and David Lynch in a pantomime memento mori horror-tragicomedy…

One has rarely seen the classic Doppelganger theme realized with more showmanship and slapstick-humour. Bravo!

Spark

ARENA

ARENA August 2004

The dynamic of the company created a fusion between conceptual western European experimental theatre and more traditional eastern European story telling and image making. Black meets white. Life meets Death. East meets West. …the performance created its own world that moved and delighted us. There were a few moments where the audience were united in response – when the briefcase was moved at the beginning there was a gasp. When the women gave birth to ice we were taken from laughter to despair. The story haunts me still – like the twist at the end of a thriller.

Michael Pinchbeck: ARENA Jury member August 2004

Spots Magazine

Arena Festival 2004 July 2004

It is a crying game, life is. At night, when only the lights from the buildings in this comic-like world shine in competition with the moon – that’s when you might, having laughed, jump out of your window. And then, Death dances in black light and there are tears in the eyes of the critic’s. This is how it ends, Death draws the curtain, game over. Double is a magical experience…

Is/sko

All German reviews translated by Stephen Koever

Feeast Festival, Riverside Studios

London July 2005

Riverside’s ‘Feeast’ of Central and East European Theatre goes into vertical lift-off with this central show, from Poland’s COSmino… Here is a witty, fast-paced piece, its images integrated into a phantasmagoria of opposites…. a finely thought-out set of ingenious polarities.

Timothy Ramsden www.reviewsgate.com

The stunning visual imagery is a sensual charm in itself… An agile and animated company, COSmino perform exquisitely. Inspired, but ostensibly effortless, movement combines sensitivity and emotional depth, as scene changes and subtle stage trickery are played out seamlessly. The beautiful simplicity of Double's imagery resists glibness and offers symbolism for deeper interpretation. Physical movement and thought processes cohere rather than confuse, in an integrated duality of ideas and expression.

Rhona Foulis www.culturewars.org.uk