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Bear with me: Sun Bear @ParkTheatre

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If The Light House is an uplifting tale of survival, Sarah Richardson’s Sun Bear gives a contrasting take on this. Sarah plays Katy. We’re introduced to Katy as she runs through a list of pet office peeves with her endlessly perky coworkers, particularly about coworkers stealing her pens. It’s a hilarious opening monologue that would have you wishing you had her as a coworker to help relieve you from the boredom of petty office politics.  But something is not quite right in the perfect petty office, where people work together well. And that is her. And despite her protesting that she is fine, the pet peeves and the outbursts are becoming more frequent. As the piece progresses, maybe the problem lies in a past relationship, where Katy had to be home by a particular hour, not stay out late with office colleagues and not be drunk enough not to answer his calls. Perhaps the perky office colleagues are trying to help, and perhaps Katy is trying to reach out for help. It has simple staging

Last chance: Curtain Call @RoundhouseLDN


Arad’s Curtain Call at the Roundhouse has completed its summer season of live performances. But you have until the end of the bank holiday weekend to see the installation before the silicon rods are packed away.

Created by Arad in 2011, it's made up of 5,600 silicon rods suspended from an 18 metre diameter ring. The curtains first appeared in 2011 and returned this year as part of the Roundhouse’s Bloomberg Summer. The live performances with invited guests were part of a series of late night events.

Closing the live performances on Thursday were the London Contemporary Orchestra. With a combination of cool music and vocals, it was a reflective and sophisticated musical experience.


They performed a series of pieces including Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel and John Tavener’s Svyati accompanied by projections on the round canvas.

Being at the Roundhouse it was a promenade performance. With the installation you could move in or out of the "inner circle". Depending on the projections that were moving or whizzing by it was at times a disorienting. How fast the projections were moving also seemed to be an indicator of the number of people opting to sit on the floor. And not always did the music and imagery gel.

But there was enough going on to inspire many to create their own little pieces of Instagram artwork in response to the evening.

Curtain Call ends on the bank holiday Monday.

A video posted by Paul In London (@paulinlondon) on

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