Adapt or Die: Adaptations at the National Theatre

Nice exhibition at the National Theatre looking at why and how the theatre adapts works for the stage which have started in another format or language.

This was the first exhibition I’d been to which used code and Blippr to deliver further information. You pointed your phone with the Blippr app on it at the code and were shown a video or extra text. Sadly I couldn’t get the one where Idris Elba appeared from his Everyman costume.

I loved the fact the show looked at some of my favourite shows there. It began by looking at two adaptations of medieval plays, The Mysteries and Everyman, and talked about how to bring them to a modern audience. It also looked at Carousel and the controversy of casting a black actor as Mr Snow, a touch I’d thought was brilliant at the time. I also loved seeing the actors annotated script for the Waves which was a wonderful complex adaptations of the Virginia Woolf novel in which six actors swapped roles and played the different characters.

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