KAMP at the Samuel Beckett Theatre - an amazing piece of drama with no dialogue

I attended the opening night of KAMP, part of the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival 2009 last night. This is what they say it’s about: An enormous model of Auschwitz takes up the whole stage with crowded huts, a railway line, and a gate with the slogan “Arbeit Macht Frei”. The model of the camp comes to life with thousands of 8cm high hand-made puppets, representing the prisoners and their executioners. The actors, like colossal war correspondents, weave through the scene with hand-held cameras. They film the atrocities. The audience becomes witness. Not a word is spoken, the audience only experiences the sights and sounds, which transcend the powerlessness of the figures into much more than a mere reporting of events. It is, quite simply, amazing. Performed by Herman Helle, Pauline Kalker and Arlène Hoornweg has three amazing attributes that make it worth seeing: The camera angles The sounds The … There’s more

I’m a graphic novel virgin

With all the talk of Watchmen on Twitter and elsewhere recently, I decided to seek out the book and read it before seeing the film. A few comments I read indicated it would be a good idea to do this as well. So I set off for the closest branch of Waterstones to discover a whole new section of books that I had never seen before - the Graphic Novel section. All kinds of shiny books on the shelf which I’m sure I will return to look at in closer detail. Back to the Watchmen though, and the purpose of this post. I started reading at the weekend and found myself trying to read it in the same way as a text only book. It wasn’t long before I was found myself having to flip back the pages to try and work out who was who. I wasn’t paying attention … There’s more