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Original title: "Una Specie di Gioco", by Andrea Jeva English transalation by Bert Bell and Gregory Conti, Copyright 1986, by S.I.A.E. Societa' Italiana Autori ed Editori.
The playwright asks to be informed of any production of this work by e-mail (N.B. Remove the name of the animal from the address)
- Classification:
- Tragicomedy.
- Rating:
- G
- Synopsys:
- "...There's one thing I'm really afraid of: thought is timeless. There's no before, there's no after... it's all a part of now". That's what Rudy says to his two best friends, Woody and Teddy, after a murder committed as a kind of game. A murder repeatedly analysed thanks to the extraordinary quality of thought which Rudy has discovered: timelessness, a quality which allows the three characters to investigate, understand and forgive.
Three friends ready to go to any lengths to live out their entangled destinies. A girl encountered at a wild party. These are the two threads that Andrea Jeva weaves into the fabric of "Sort of a Game". He challenges chronological time by evoking the time of the memory; just as his character Rudy challenges life by scripting the future.
Woody gives form to his fantasies by telling fascinating and useless stories. He gazes at the night sky and breathes in the pungent odours of rotting wood in the tropical jungle. Teddy doesn't sleep, but he dreams. He's not a passive dreamer, but one who tries to compose his dreams using a carefully chosen collection of pyjamas.
Three flights from reality, until reality strikes back in the form of Claire. Woody falls in love with her, and she willingly becomes his woman. Rudy wants her, and she seduces him. A tender friendship is born between her and the sensitive, awkward Teddy. Claire's irresistable energy sends the three men spinning out of orbit when, like a meteor, she blazes across the cosmos of their friendship to then explode like the three pistol shots that kill her. So order is restored and the three friends can go back to living in their parallel worlds, in the apparent calm of our age, living a life that can easily turn into a game... well yes, sort of a game.
- Cast:
- (All characters are between 20 and 25 years old)
- RUDY
- TEDDY
- WOODY
- CLAIRE
- Lenght:
- 80 min.
- Rewiews:
- THE DEBUT OF "SORT OF A GAME" SUMMER 1989 directed by ANDREA QUACQUARELLI, TEATRO DI PORTA ROMANA MILAN, ITALY.
Excerpt from La Repubblica - Thursday, 13 July, 1989:
A HOMICIDAL TRIO FOR QUACQUARELLI
"...The play's formal structure mirrors the internal rhythms of the text which recounts the murder of a woman and, above all, the psychological intricacies of a three way relationship involving her with the three protagonists. Rudy, Teddy and Woody relive recent events through a well measured interplay of flashbacks and time warps. These events have led them to flee to a no-man's land where, accompanied by the symbolic rhythm of the waves breaking on the shore, memories may be reordered in a coherent pattern in order to find a justification for their friend's murder. Urged on by the need th explain the imponderable, they reweave the episodes of their symbiotic friendship and the fragments of each one,s separate relationship with the woman who had played her triple role as the provocative and uninhibited friend, lover and fiancée. Events are reconstructed sometimes at an accelarated speed, sometimes in suspended moments and sometimes they are completely out during the period the characters create as a pretext for reshuffling their true natures. The lovably weak Teddy prefers dreams to reality. Woody finds an existential alibi in the very ingenuousness that spurs him on to his failed attempt to return to reality. Rudy, protagonist of the dialogue with Carla that ends, "who knows how", in a gun shot, is forced to confess his perverse desire to be contradicted by life". (Giampaolo Spinato).
THE SECOND PERFORMANCE OF THE PLAY "SORT OF A GAME" directed by CARLOS TOLENTINO, TEATRO ARGOT - ROME, ITALY.
Excerpt from La voce Repubblicana - 15 Feb. 1995:
"...In conclusion we would like to call your attention to a play being staged at the Argot in Rome: Sort of a Game written by Andrea Jeva and directed by Carlos Tolentino. Here things do get underway as a game but then turn into tragedy. The master of cerimonies has nickname Rudy. He is the moral and intellectual leader of the trio which includes Teddy and Woody. In his hallucinatory and neurotic Ubermensch philosophy, Rudy wants reality to unfold according to his plans. But his conflict with the world ends in the murder of Carla, sacrificial victim entangled in a dark web, while the three "heroes" consume themselves on the outer limits of the reality which they tried to interpret. Sort of a Game, running until February 19th, is an often intriguing and merciless one-act with obscure areas. It is worthy of interest in the panorama of Italy's ever more finely tuned contemporary drama - a drama which is finally replacing the American style of comedy". (Francesco Bernardini).
THE THIRD PERFORMANCE OF THE PLAY "SORT OF A GAME" directed by GIAMPIERO SOLARI. Edinburgh's Fringe Festival 1996 - Venue 45, Old St Paul's Church Hall (English version).
Excerpt from The Courier Wednesday, August 28, 1996:
ALLURING TALE HAS ACCENT ON TALENT
"...Indeed I found the performance all the more alluring and interesting. It gave this excellent play an air of foreign mystery and intrigue which only added to my overall enjoyment. Sort of a Game tells the story of friends who are torn apart by the apparence of a seductive lady. A shooting then brings them back togheter - or does it?". (Les Peters).
- Notes:
- Other scripts are available, at the moment in Italian version, please contact the playwright.
- Contacting the playwright:
- The playwright may be contacted through S.I.A.E. or by e-mail (N.B. Remove the name of the animal from the address)
- The playwright asks to be informed of any production of this work.
- Requirements:
- "Sort of a Game" is protected under copyright laws. All rights reserved. Performance or publication of "Sort of a Game" is subject to a royalty. Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to:
S.I.A.E.
Sezione D.O.R.
Viale della Letteratura, 30
00144 Roma - Italy
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