Dubai Drama Group stages Steven Berkoff's Metamorphosis at thejamjar

Dubai Drama Group's production of Metamorphosis premiered yesterday at thejamjar. A Steven Berkoff adaptation of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, it's a tight staging that runs about an uninterrupted hour in length, at a pace that swung between frenetic and placid.

Faraz Javed, Beariz Browne and Lucasta Cummings

Mostly stage right, the characters of Mr, Mrs and Greta Samsa locked horns or wrung hands about their insect problem. Lucasta Cummings as Mrs Samsa was my favorite among them; I felt a very convincing portrayal of maternal concern, confusion and inner torment from her.

Yasmin Altas, Daniel Wakefield and Hani Yakan

Mostly stage left, Yasmin Altas and Hani Yakan had minor speaking roles as a boarder and a chief clerk, respectively, but played very important parts as the drives and emotional state of Gregor Samsa. Gregor's dejection, loneliness and resignation as a dutiful workaholic, and later, a "bug with a heart", were portrayed brilliantly by Daniel Wakefield, who was able to do this in sometimes challenging positions. Combining his powerful monologues with the physical expressions of Yakan and Altas, the three made for a compelling and visually dominating Gregor.

Directors: Emma Kay and Aimée Hedley

Overall, I found it a fairly enjoyable play, with some interesting use of theatrical techniques. The stage area was bereft of walls or backdrops, and featured minimal props, relying mainly on movement and mime to imply the existence of rooms (and transitions among them) and objects. The cast also broke fourth wall to indicate shifts across time, and the available lighting was put to creative use. We see too little of this form of theatre in Dubai, so I hope there's more of it to come.

UAENSO vocal-piano star concert at Brighton College

The UAE National Symphony Orchestra organized a special vocal-piano concert today at Brighton College Abu Dhabi, featuring the actor-singer Gretchen Hewitt performing to the skilled key work of capital-based Ioannis Potamousis ("the other Yanni").

Ioannis Potamousis

The concert, in support of The Future Centre for Special Needs, and titled "Con Anima", included guest solo and choir performances, a breathtaking classic solo by Potamousis, some established opera pieces, and a number of Hewitt originals. I think the concert had been truncated somewhere, though; some portion of the official program seemed to be missing.

Gretchen Hewitt

While I attended primarily as a piano fan -- to see the acclaimed, award-winning Potamousis in action -- I was also much entertained by Hewitt's operatic acting and soprano. Putting them together made for a great onstage pair and an awesome concert.

Courtyard Playhouse inaugurated with first ever MENA Theatresports

The Courtyard Playhouse, Dubai's landmark community theater and studio space, has been a venue for rehearsals and workshops for months. Those of us who took part in these activities saw floors, ceilings, walls, partitions, seats, fittings, lights and flats appear, one by one, week on week, as artists and donors* contributed their time and money* towards putting the place together.

Don't it look swankayyy?

This weekend, the Playhouse finally opened its doors to the public with a double act, double show, double night theater event. Most aptly, this event happened to be the first ever Theatresports event in the MENA region, put on by the first ever recognized Theatresports member organization in the MENA region - Drama Dubai.

Why, yes, that is me on the left

I and six other live improv neophytes, followed by six of the more experienced troupe members, competed with each other in teams of three to four, hoping to win the audience's favor and the coveted shrub of glory (no, really, it was a shrub) with our improvised games and scene work. I was fortunate to be part of a great team, which, win or lose, made the experience as fun for me as I hope it was for the audience.

(photo credit: Tiffany Schultz Art and Photography)

With our grand entrances and costumes, good-natured rivalry, and outrageous scenarios in mundane settings, we had ourselves a whale of a time.

(photo credit: Tiffany Schultz Art and Photography)

So did the successive full or near-full houses of cheering, yelling, laughing and otherwise involved audience members, it would seem. Technically, almost everything went much smoother than I would have expected for a first-time run of back-to-back unscripted shows.

The rest of the cast during the techs

I'm so proud to have been a part of this; it was history in the making that we witnessed over the last couple of nights, and it's only the beginning.

* The Drama Dubai team has thrown herculean effort behind getting the space working well enough and looking good enough, starting from practically scratch, so patrons could enjoy the experience of a real theater in the heart of Al Quoz. Because of all the resources that went into making it look and feel good at the audience-facing end, there are still a few things to finish backstage, which is where we still need a little more financial assistance. Click here to see how you can help, and to see the neat rewards donors can receive.

BOLDTalks Innovation 2013 at DUCTAC

BOLDtalks made its second specialized foray on 16 Nov, hosting a morning and afternoon of talks themed on innovation, held at DUCTAC.

The event began with Dubai SME's Alexander Mathew Williams talking about local challenges and cycles in innovation. From Williams' statistics-filled talk, a couple of points that stood out were obstacles faced in getting local universities -- many of which do not have R&D programs -- to foster innovation among their students, and local perceptions of mentoring as wasta-dealing rather than the provision of guidance. He also attempted to explain the fees levied on startups by the state as a sort of pre-earning taxation scheme; I'm not sure how many entrepreneurs would agree that is necessarily better than taxes on earnings.

Some of the other talks were about innovation cycles in the region, microfinance, regional fast food franchising, educational innovation, and branding. For me, three talks were particularly fascinating.

Bastian Schaefer is a designer from Airbus -- which was one of the sponsors -- but his talk was not a lot of PR spiel. He walked us through the innovation process in developing the airplane of the future, starting with demographic shifts, and why and how these matter. He presented an example of a lighter, computer-designed, 3D-printed crew rest bracket that they created, and concisely described how advances in technology will impact construction, seating, aesthetics and efficiency in the kind of aircraft they are developing.

I also liked Dr Alejandro Rios G.'s talk a lot, and not just because he is also from Masdar Institute. He described the food-water-energy nexus, the growth of aviation emissions growth, and talked about his research center's project to use seawater -- available in overwhelming abundance -- to farm marine life for human consumption, as well as grow specialized mangrove plants that can be used to produce biofuels. I have long wondered if something could be done using mangroves, and I was pleased to know that it's happening, and right here in the UAE.

Possibly the most inspiring talk that day was that of Hind Hobeika. Although she is developing a rather niche product -- albeit one related to her passion -- she captivated us with tale of a journey from inspiration to conception to prototyping to funding to manufacturing. Most importantly (from an entrepreneurial and innovation perspective, especially), she recounted both successes and failures, and provided specific anecdotes and observations from along the way, about team-building, investment, patenting, production, and challenges specific to the region. Only a tiny minority of us are training swimmers, but I'm sure she had everyone there sincerely and enthusiastically wishing for her success by the end of that talk.

Four plays Under One Umbrella by Resuscitation Theatre

For the past couple of months, I'd been looking forward to seeing how Resuscitation Theatre would implement the Saleh Karama scripts I had been reading with them over the summer. And this weekend, I finally saw those Arabic-language original plays premiere on stage, and in English - which is no small feat, considering that these plays are, for the most part, very metaphorical, and Arabic is often difficult to translate to English for even mundane purposes. I know, because I read all of them with the group, as we went over them, line by line, to refine the translation and find the best English equivalents. So, yes, I did go in knowing the plot for each play.

In fact, I had already seen One More Try on stage, in the same venue, in the summer. It was about the same this time, except with improved sound, and a markedly better performance by Prabhath Dhevindra. Betina had been re-cast as well, with Darcell Castillo adding a pleasantly fresh chemistry to the relationship between her character and Baya.

Sea Breeze, replete with allegorical lines and symbolic actions, must have been particularly difficult to adapt. I think it turned out very well, though, thanks to the directorial vision of Robert Liddington and whoever else was involved in production. It was very physical, with Sanoop Dinesh fitting well into his part. The use of props and colors was very creative; Dinesh's "healer jailer", interpreted as some kind of fabulous witch doctor, was a particularly brilliant touch.

From the reading sessions, my favorite script was Evening Chat, and I was not disappointed. Some of the lines did seem rushed and mechanically paced, but it was a good experience in sum. I especially liked Syed Sameer Ahmed's acting; he played the character of Sibran to perfection through all his character's transitions. The use of children's toys as physical symbols gesturing towards the past and the background of conflict was a good idea.

My expectations for Mobius were completely blown out of the water by director Zakaia Cvitanovich and the production team behind this interpretation. What I thought would be a dark, slow play, turned out to be an extravaganza of music, world dance, inflatable animal wrestling, and a human maypole. Splitting the character of Rima into five, each with a different actor, was definitely worth the additional cast management and blocking entailed by this idea. A surprise winner of a production is what it was.

Melisa Le Rue and Samvel Gasparyan jazz up Sorso at The Ritz

Jazz in Abu Dhabi is a rare find. So when you do find it, it's well worth a night out.

The Ritz-Carlton here is a massive gated complex on the island side of Maqta, with ample parking. Easy to locate, though a bit far from the heart of the city. I would strongly advise approaching from Mussafah Bridge, if you don't want to have to drive around in circles.

I'm digging its Sorso bar for the bold visual appeal and comfort. Country club charm meets modern baroque, colored in red, black and metallic grey. Drinks are very attractively priced too, and the cozy ambiance is great for chinwag.

And, of course, jazz. Samvel Gasparyan, who has collaborated with some of the more well-known acts in Dubai's jazz scene, was at his nord+KORG setup, backing Melisa Le Rue's vocals with delightful strains of piano and organ. It was nice to hear jazz and soul, standard and non-standard, from Melisa; her singing, while decidedly versatile, is very well-suited to these genres, and it's plain to see that she enjoys singing them.

Video Mapping with VJZARIA at Maraya Art Centre

Edgar Salmen, known to his Movida patrons as VJ Edmosh, presented about a dozen attendees with his extensive experience in video mapping in a demo workshop at Maraya Art Centre today. Edmosh, who founded and directs the VJZARIA group that specializes in this domain, has worked on a number of high-profile video mapping projects. This technology-heavy art form is great for clubs and EDM festivals, but has also made it to competitions and public art installations (including a scattered few in this region).

Remember this?

He started with a little history of video mapping, quickly moving on to a sequence of videos showcasing his work, including one at Sikka earlier this year. Far from being just an animated loop projected on an uneven target surface, video mapping requires careful environmental surveying, layout planning, surface mapping and computer graphics work, as Edmosh demonstrated with a sample project based on a picture of an antiquated building. He showed how the image is fitted to guidelines, divided into its component projection surfaces, and can have various effects and animations applied to it, all using specialized software and plug-ins.

Finally, he walked us through the mapping of a selection of random shapes stacked at the other end of the room. He showed us how to pick out and define shapes from a perspective, and play around with application of effects.

There were many, many audience questions - not surprising, given that this field is still growing in its range of tools and techniques. While we only covered static single-perspective video mapping (Maraya might be organizing a full hands-on workshop in future, for those interested), we also discussed some famous examples of multi-perspective and moving projection.