theatreSCOTLAND

23 February 2010 Unpublished

What We Know

By Pamela Carter. An Ek Performance/Traverse Theatre review.

WE live in a society disconnected from death. For a certain generation this messy inevitability takes place unseen in far away hospitals and care homes. When finally it intrudes, as intrude it must, it generates a sense of outrage in the bereaved, as if it had no right to be there. This is why so many contemporary plays treat death as the starting point of a study of mourning and not, as in the less sentimental classical tradition, the end point of a tragedy.

4 November 2004 The Guardian

Habitats

By Philippe Minyana. Ek theatre review.

WE expect dramatists to get to the bottom of their characters, but French playwright Philippe Minyana is interested only in their inscrutability. People are unfathomable, he seems to say. First seen in France in 2000, Habitats now receives its Scottish premiere in a studio production by young company Ek. Minyana ditches conventional dialogue for fear of appearing to reveal the "truth" of his characters and instead opts for three unrelated monologues. Each takes a different approach to understanding a character and each draws a blank.

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