Plays: 1

Three plays are gathered in this book - The Street of Crocodiles, The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol and Mnemonic. They are in many ways quite separate in time, space, meaning and style. The world of The Street of Crocodiles is that of the unconscious and the imagination. The short stories by Polish Jewish writer, Bruno Schulz, which form the inspiration for the piece, describe small town life in Galicia at the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire seen through the eyes of a child. The play is constructed of fragments from these stories. Fleeting, apparently random images and fragmentary scenes evoke pungent feelings and imply a story; but it is one that is never made explicit. People drift across the lost world of a small town in turn-of-tl1e-century Poland, turning the stage into a dreamscape. By contrast, in The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol, John Berger confronts us with unflinching reality. It is the story of a peasant woman born in the Haut Savoie in 1900 and describes a pitiless life of bone-breaking physical labour in the French Alps. The narrative is direct, explicit and moves relentlessly towards its tragic conclusion. In Mnemonic, there are multiple stories. Five contemporary stories set in different countries and spanning thousands of years are interwoven, unfolding at the same time in the same space...

...

...Which is why this book is dedicated to all those who have in any way participated in the creation of these pieces - those passing, and those who have become eternal.

(Source: Plays: 1 Introduction)

Donated by the estate of Tim Nga.