Celebrating the Play recorded plus polemics

Yay for TheatreVoice: the event, Celebrating the Play, which I reported on below, was faithfully recorded in two parts. You can listen to it right now if you have the time; and you could even correct my original paraphrases for me, if so inclined.

Just as important, Mark Brown makes a case on the TheatreVoice blog for political theatre that is political in its handling of metaphor, rather than in its topicality of dialogue. In part a report from the Theatre Europe Prize in Thessaloniki, in part a polemic on the dramaturgical rigidity calcifying much of English theatre, Brown makes the point that "a play is not a spanner." (So that's where I'm going wrong with the Ikea furniture...) He criticises Free Theatre of Belarus's aesthetic approach in the process, so there might end up being some hearty discussion of this one.