#Playwright: Yasmina Reza

[pers-books]

[Freema Agyeman. Photographer: Joseph Sinclair]

By Steven McIntosh

Entertainment reporter

Doctor Who star Freema Agyeman will appear in a new stage production of the Tony and Olivier-winning dark comedy God of Carnage.

The actress is best known for her role as the companion Martha Jones in Doctor Who and recently starred opposite Lily Allen in TV comedy Dreamland.

She will play Veronique Vallon in the revival of Yasmina Reza's play at the Lyric Hammersmith theatre in September.

Agyeman told BBC News she was "beyond thrilled" to be returning to the stage.

God of Carnage tells the story of two sets of parents, who meet up after one 11-year-old knocks out his classmate's two front teeth in a playground fight.

The boys' parents meet up to have a civil conversation about their children's altercation in a supposedly calm and rational way. But chaos ensues as the parents themselves descend into tantrums, name-calling and tears.

Agyeman said: "I'm happy to be staying in the genre of dark comedy post Dreamland - God of Carnage made me gasp and guffaw in equal measure.

"I look forward to performing in this play alongside the fantastic cast and am very excited to be working with director Nicholai La Barrie whose enthusiasm is infectious!"

Reza's play was translated for English-speaking audiences by Christopher Hampton, who won an Oscar in 2021 for best adapted screenplay for The Father.

God of Carnage premiered in the West End in 2008 before transferring to Broadway the following year.

The play went on to win both the Tony and Olivier Award for best comedy, as well as additional Tonys for best play and best actress for Marcia Gay Harden.

Agyeman's screen credits include Torchwood, Silent Witness, Law and Order and The Carrie Diaries, as well as the most recent film in the Matrix franchise, Resurrections.

She will appear alongside Ariyon Bakare, Dinita Gohil and Martin Hutson in the Hammersmith production of God of Carnage, which runs from 1 to 30 September.

Agyeman said the Lyric had an "incredible history and tradition" and praised its "consistently solid, inclusive and high-calibre work".

Director Nicholai La Barrie said: "God of Carnage pokes fun at wealth, power and money. It lifts the lid on civility which is immensely funny to watch. From the moment I read this play, I imagined it to be a reflection of the cosmopolitan cities that we live in."

In a review of a 2018 revival of the play in Bath, the Guardian's Arifa Akbar recalled how the show's 2009 run in the West End "put in just enough laughs, balanced with middle-class menace and marital rage, for the play to earn its reputation as a savage comedy that tears away the veneer of respectability in modern bourgeois lives to expose the bigotry, anger and predations that lie beneath".

Prior to God of Carnage, writer Reza made her name with the the 1994 play Art, which also won a string of Olivier and Tony Awards.

[monologuers]

Monologue From: God of Carnage

MICHAEL. Yes. This hamster makes the most godawful racket all night, then spends the whole day fast asleep! Henry was in a lot of pain last night; he was being driven crazy by the noise that the hamster was making. And, to tell you the truth, I've been wanting to get rid of it for a long time, so I said to myself, OK, that's it, I took it and put it in the street. I thought they loved drains and gutters and all that, but I guess not, it just sat there paralyzed on the sidewalk. Well, they're not domestic animals, they're not wild animals, I don't really know where their natural habitat is. Dump them in the woods, they're probably just as unhappy, so I don't know where you're supposed to put them.

[gilraenanarion92]

YVAN: I can no longer bear any kind of rational argument, nothing formative in the world, nothing great or beautiful in the world has ever been born of rational argument.

ART - Yasmina Reza

[larryland]

Review: "The Unexpected Man" arrives at Shakespeare & Company

Review: “The Unexpected Man” arrives at Shakespeare & Company

Corinna May as The Woman . Photo by Enrico Spada. From Frankfurt to Paris with “The Unexpected Man” by Yasmina Reza Theatre Review by Gail M. Burns A man and a woman share their thoughts with us in extended monologues as they share a compartment aboard a train traveling from Paris to Frankfurt. Only occasionally do they connect with each other. She knows exactly who he is – Paul Parsky, the…

[pirunika]

AND now i bought 2 tickets for God of Carnage... living internationally fr

I'm seeing the play The Prisoner of Second Avenue 😌

[aarlone]

A Podcast... About Plays

So my partner and I have been doing a podcast about plays that folks might not have heard of, or ones that are a little weird. We talk about production requirements and go through the plot, scene-by-scene. It’s called The Play Readers, and here are some of my favorite episodes that we’ve done:

R.U.R (Rossum’s Universal Robots) by Karel Čapek (Spotify link). RUR is what brought the word robot to the English lexicon! There are a number of English translations available, and they are all wild. Not only is this the first play about robots, it’s the first play about the robot uprising!

The Scarecrow by Percy MacKaye (Google Podcasts link). This play was inspired by a William Hawthorne short story, Feathertop, about a witch who conspires with the devil to get revenge on a man who wronged her 20 years ago - and that's just the first scene. This is another fascinating play that was a blast to talk about.

 Life x 3 by Yasmina Reza (Apple Podcasts link). One of the most modern plays we've talked about, Life x 3 takes the audience through three different versions of an evening - in each scene, there are small/changes in circumstance which naturally result in the events playing out with significant differences. Yasmina Reza is a French playwright who is well-known for several of her other plays (God of Carnage might come to mind).

[jamieroxx]

Happy Birthday. Today, May 1, – Yasmina Reza, French actress and playwright was born. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasmina_Reza)

[petnews2day]

UA director sees ‘God of Carnage’ as world metaphor

New Post has been published on https://petnews2day.com/pet-news/small-pet-news/ua-director-sees-god-of-carnage-as-world-metaphor/

UA director sees ‘God of Carnage’ as world metaphor

In Yasmina Reza’s “God of Carnage,” winner of the 2009 Tony Award for Best Play, a playground altercation between 11-year-old boys brings together two sets of Brooklyn parents for a meeting to resolve the matter. At first, diplomatic niceties are observed, as Dramatists Play Service puts it, “but as the meeting progresses, and the rum flows, tensions emerge, and the gloves come off, leaving the couples with more than just their liberal principles in tatters.”

The comedy takes the University Theatre stage Nov. 11 for six performances under the direction of Huan Bui, an M.F.A. directing candidate. Originally from Vietnam, he had “five years of making theater before getting here to pursue my intense training on theater directing. To me, theater is such a beautiful and powerful language. Every live moment happening on stage is magical, yet fleeting, and it’s such a great exhilaration to witness those moments just for once.”

Here, Huan Bui answers three questions for What’s Up!

Q. Was “God of Carnage” your choice? If so, why?

A. It was one of my choices that I proposed for my thesis shows. My previous productions here were all dramatic and dark plays, so I really wanted to try myself with a comedy for my last show. “God of Carnage” just struck me how funny it is, but moreover I love different nuances of laughter that this show can bring to the audience. The playwright, Yasmina Reza, called her plays “funny tragedy,” which is also quite close to what we know about satire, a genre of comedy, where the “tragedy” value can also be involved in the laughter. For “God of Carnage,” there can be a bunch of things to contemplate after laughing, because we may realize that laughing at what happens in the story is also laughing at ourselves.

Q. How does this play challenge the actors working in it? What are they learning about themselves and about theater?

A. In this nearly 90-minute play, there is so much going on. The complexity in the language of the play really challenges me, from politics, religion, marriage, parenting skills, gender ideology, to the story of the hamster. It’s struggling to decode all those languages and make it woven with the characters’ values, but it also gives way to a lot of fun and comic moments to take place in this serious content.

Q. What do you hope audiences are talking about as they leave the play? Is there a message you hope to convey?

A. The time that I worked on script analysis for this play, the Russia-Ukraine war happened in the other part of the world. It struck me immediately how the reality of the world is so relevant to what’s written in the play.

The playwright wants to display a whole drama of human behavior in a contemporary context. She puts everything in this script between the thin line of civilization and savagery, and I hope the audience can also see themselves sometimes struggle to balance on this line. I wonder, is this also what is happening in the world right now? In the middle of the 21st century, among the civilized societies that we have been trying to maintain and develop, people are still ready to execute each other by tanks and bombs and guns. The situation between the two pairs of parents in this play is somehow nothing different from what is taking place out there with two organizations, two communities, or two countries. At the end, it occurs right inside of every individual, this game, this battle — the fight between civilization and savagery, the fight between ourselves with the “God of Carnage.”

FAQ

‘God of Carnage’

WHEN — 7:30 p.m. Nov. 11; 2 p.m. Nov. 13; 7:30 p.m. Nov. 16-18; 2 p.m. Nov. 20

WHERE — University Theatre on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville

COST — $5-$20

INFO — uark.universitytickets.com

[monologuers]

Monologue From: God of Carnage

ALAN. Madam, our son is a savage. To hope for any kind of spontaneous repentance would be fanciful. Right, I'm sorry, I have to get back to the office. You stay, Annette, you'll tell me what you've decided, I'm no use whichever way you cut it. Women always think you need a man, you need a father, as if they'd be any help at all. Men are a dead weight, they're clumsy and maladjusted, oh, you can see the F train, that's great!

[thirsty-flygirl]

I appreciate the spirit of this post, and there are definitely some diversity issues in lighting, sound, and other technical fields. However, there are a number of incredible female playwrights out there, and to dismiss them is a disservice to their incredible work. Suzan Lori Parks, Lynn Nottage, Paula Vogel, Caryl Churchill, and so many more are still doing incredible things. Aphra Behn, perhaps the female playwright's patron saint, set us forth on a magical journey in the 17th century. Wendy Wasserstein, whose plays are some of my all-time favorites, is another stellar playwright who tackled serious themes applicable to women around the world. Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage is one of the most potent satires on the ridiculousness of the American marriage and family life that I've ever had the pleasure of working on

What I'm saying is yes, be indignant of all the silenced voices, and be aware that so many technicians are still being overshadowed by their male peers, but let's also celebrate the incredible contributions women have made to the landscape of world theatre.

one thing that has always bothered me about theatre, and broadway especially, is that ever since i was little theatre has always been “a girl’s things”. it’s shown as girly and young boys who are interested in theatre are assumed to be gay or are made fun of. and yet, in major theatre productions, you hardly ever see women. women aren’t known producers, they aren’t recognized playwrights and composers, and plays- mostly musicals- hardly ever have more than two female characters in the spotlight. it’s yet another “girl’s thing” that’s dominated by men.

[penslipsmagazine]

8 Must-Read Yasmina Reza Plays and Novels

8 Must-Read Yasmina Reza Plays and Novels

Crafting deep meaning behind simple words, Yasmina Reza is a phenomenal French playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. She is widely recognized for her satirical plays and novels that narrate the struggles and anxieties of the modern middle-class. Reza was born to Jewish parents who immigrated to France. Writing and acting has always been her top interests. So, it’s no surprise, she started her…

[stefankarlfanblog]

A fun study of the complexity of humans

Article written for Lesbók Morgunblaðsins on the 28th of September 2002, photographs by Sverrir Vilhelmsson: https://timarit.is/page/3522438?iabr=on#page/n12/mode/1up

What would my life have been like if ... Of course, everyone asks themselves at some point what would have happened if you had done things differently - reacted to situations in a different way than you did; - behave like this but not in a different way; - see things in a different light than you did; would not have let the emotions play with you in the way it did. These questions are the subject of a new play, Life x3, by Yasmina Reza, which premiered on the big stage of the National Theater last night. There are four actors, Ólafía Hrönn Jónsdóttir, Sigurður Sigurjónsson, Stefán Karl Stefánsson and Steinunn Ólína Þorsteinsdóttir, and the director is Viðar Eggertsson.

The play is about two astrophysicists, Henri and his boss, Hubert and their wives, the lawyer Sonia and Inès, who "does nothing, which is, a lot already." Henri and Sonia are expecting Hubert and Inès for dinner, where they will discuss Henri's possible promotion and an article he has just completed about research into the galaxy's, - and now they have arrived, Hubert and Inès, a day earlier than expected. , - and there's nothing in the fridge!

Surely we will never be able to repeat our lives; - yes, except in the theater.

I think cocoa puffs are great! Sigurður Sigurjónsson, Hubert, and Steinunn Ólína Þorsteinsdóttir, Sonia.

"The special thing about the work is that our knowledge after the first episode supports and multiplies our experience of the second episode," says director Viðar Eggertsson. "The spectrum of people will be even greater. And after the first and second episodes, we have a lot more knowledge about them than they give out, and we know more about how they feel after getting to know them through the first two episodes. The author plays with the same characters in the same situation, but then shifts the emphasis in their reactions and emotional life towards what is happening.

The result may be the same in the end, but we learn about the different reactions of the people in each episode; - depending on the day, - or just the way people get out of bed that day. Gradually, a holier and more complex picture of the people is created. This has been a very fun studio for those of us who have been working on it, and hopefully also for those who see the show. "

The form of the repetitions

Viðar says that in both literature and filmmaking, this form, repetition, has been popular recently, and it is worth mentioning films such as Sliding Doors, where a person lives two kinds of life after a certain event in his life. "I think the author, Yasmina Reza, does this in her own special way by moving a little bit about the sequence of events, but instead looking at the person and their different reactions in the same sequence of events."

"What does it matter to us here and now that the galaxy's covers are flat?" Stefán Karl Stefánsson, Henri, and Ólafía Hrönn Jónsdóttir, Inès.

Life Three Times is the latest play by Yasmina Reza, one of the most popular playwrights of our time. The play premiered in Vienna, Paris and Athens in the autumn of 2000 and has been shown with great popularity throughout Europe. Yasmina Reza's plays have been translated into almost forty languages and shown in theaters around the world. Her first play, Conversations After a Burial, won the French prestigious Molière Prize in 1987. The work, which was shown at the National Theater in 1997, won one of the Molière Prizes and also brought the author world fame.

Yasmina Reza is an actor by education, and worked in acting until she began composing plays in the mid-1980s. She is also educated in music, and her parents were both musicians. According to her in the play, Life x3 has come close to a piece of music in form. She says that the play is structured like Bach's composition, The Art of the Fugue: Four Voices, one theme that is repeated many times in different ways, with rapid changes of rhythm.

"By the way, I read it on astro dot com this morning…" Sigurður Sigurjónsson in the role of Huberts.

LIFE X3 by Yasmina Reza

Translator: Kristján Þórður Hrafnsson

Director: Viðar Eggertsson

Actors: Ólafía Hrönn Jónsdóttir, Sigurður Sigurjónsson, Stefán Karl Stefánsson and Steinunn Ólína Þorsteinsdóttir

Lighting: Páll Ragnarsson

Set and costumes: Snorri Freyr Hilmarsson

[rubyraespigel]

30 young female playwrights. Ruby’s contemporaries.

Laura Shamashttps://theatrenerds.com/30-female-playwrights-you-should-know/#:~:text=%2030%20Female%20Playwrights%20You%20Should%20Know%20,about%20a%20high%20school%20girls%E2%80%99%20soccer...%20More

1. Annie Baker 

2. Lisa D’amour 

3. Sarah DeLapp

4. Margaret Edson 

5. Liz Flahive

6. Amy Freed

7. Madeleine George

8. Rebecca Gilman

9. Gina Gionfriddo

10. DW Gregory

11. Danai Gurira

12. Leslye Headland

13. Amy Herzog

14. Quiara Alegría Hudes

15. Lucy Kirkwood

16. Young Jean Lee

17. Jennifer Maisel

18. Martyna Majok

19. Lynn Nottage

20. Antoinette Nwandu

21. Suzan-Lori Parks

22. Theresa Rebeck

23. Yasmina Reza

24. Sarah Ruhl

25. Laura Shamas

26. Lisa B. Thompson

27. Lucy Thurber

28. Joyce Van Dyke

29. Paula Vogel

30. Anne Washburn

[unpopularopinioncraig]

They are actually really fun. I took a couple of playwrighting classes in college. Make sure to look up resources on formatting too.

-For anyone that is actually interested, I used to practice acting as the characters when I would write plays. By talking out loud you help cultivate how characters actually talk. What they would and wouldn’t say, and how they would say it. This way your characters don’t sound like the same people, repackaged.

-Make sure your characters are doing something. It’s different from a novel. The stage directions contain actions that the audience will never hear. They will SEE it. When they’re tired and throw there hands up, include it. When the set something down hard, include it. Make sure the actors KNOW what is going on.

-When starting out, it’s good to keep the setting in one place. A house, a neighborhood, a bar. Plays focus on the character conflict. It’s useful to put these characters in a box and make all the conflict spill out.

-When writing, time your silences. A minute is a long time for actors to not do anything ESPECIALLY if they’re in the middle of a conversation or argument. If it feels too long for you, it probably is. Try 5-7 seconds.

-Read. Read. Read. You’ll want to read plays. Not just that old dusty copy of Shakespeare’s Hamlet you have. Read a lot. A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams. Three Days of Rain by Richard Greenberg. Who’s Afraid if Virgina Woolf? by Edward Albee. Those are great plays to start. God of Carange by Yasmina Reza too.

-Give your characters objectives. They don’t exist just to oppose the protag/antag. They want something out of life. What do they want? Why do they want it? What are they willing to do to get it? We all want something real bad.

-And finally, good people do bad things. Bad people do good things. Make sure your characters aren’t one sided. What does the antagonist do that makes him more sympathetic? What does the protagonist do that makes him less perfect and more human? We all live in one gray area. Write about it!

And lastly, have fun! Try and pace yourself at the begging too. In college I would aim for five new pages a day. This helped me see progress but avoid burnout. I found that sometimes I wasn’t in the mood. Sometimes the writing wasn’t good. But it’s okay! You can go in and change it later! Just put words on a page! Happy writing.

Reasons to Write a Play

If you’re an author, you should write a play. Even if your genre is high fantasy novels, even if your genre is romance novellas, even if your genre is poetry, even if you don’t watch theatre often, you should write a play.

Why?

1. It’s a completely different medium for storytelling that still puts your writing skills to use.

2. It’s an incredibly helpful exercise in show-don’t-tell. Like seriously. Wow.

3. A new way to write characters. You can’t shoehorn in extensive physical descriptions most of the time, so you have to resort to defining them by their actions and words. Again, see point 2.

4. You’re creating a piece of performance art without even getting up off the couch? Woah??

5. It’s so gratifying to watch it performed, or even just read, if you can. Like oh wow.

6. Lots of stuff that you never think you’ll need or use again outside of playwriting follows you back into your prose work.

7. The world needs more plays that aren’t just adaptations of Disney movies or 80′s jukebox cash grabs trying to ride the coattails of Heathers. Seriously.

8. It’s fun.

9. Like, really fun.

10. For real, I have never finished a writing project more quickly or with less burnout.

[reviewsphere]

THEATRE REVIEW: God of Carnage @ Theatre Royal Glasgow ⭐️⭐️⭐️ @GlasgowKings #godofcarnage This revival of French playwright Yasmina Reza’s dark satire highlights the slapstick over the savagery. The Novaks, parents of 11-year old Henry who has had two teeth knocked out by his playmate, meet up for truth and reconciliation with the perpetrator’s parents.

[make-the-choice-be-the-voic-blog]

📽️ Movies that Matter 🎞️:

Eden (2012)

Age rating: M18

Summary:

A young Korean-American girl, abducted and forced into prostitution by domestic human traffickers, cooperates with her captors in a desperate ploy to survive. This gripping story is based upon the real life story of Chong Kim, a human rights activist.

Rotten Tomatoes rating: 85%

Review:

A quite moving performance comes from Jamie Chung as Eden, repulsion sliding into fearful acceptance without the extinction of hope.

Stanely Kauffmann (The New Republic)

Trailer:

Theatre is a mirror, a sharp reflection of society

~ Yasmina Reza ( French playwright, actress, novelist and screenwriter)