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RESTLESS ECSTASY

“...Better be with the dead whom we, to gain our peace have sent to peace, than on the torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy...”

Macbeth – Act III, Scene II

Restless Ecstasy is an international performance arts company. Formed in 2013, our aim is to bring thrilling, fresh and challenging experiences to our audience, and explore the potential of live theatre to provoke, inform and elucidate as well as to entertain.

 

Our working influences include The Polish avant-garde tradition of Teatr Pieśń Kozła (Song of the Goat Theatre) and The Polish Laboratory Theatre, Eugenio Barba’s Odin Teatret, Ireland’s Loose Canon Theatre Company, Antonin Artaud’s principles regarding the Theatre of Cruelty, the political theatre of Bertolt Brecht, classical Russian psychological theatre and the more vaudevillian “plastic” theatre of Konstantin Raikin’s Москва Сатирикон (Moscow Satyrikon).

 

Through exploration of these diverse role models we derive our interest in the immersive, the didactic, the lyrical, emotional and psychological power of live performance – in all forms – to throw light into dark corners of the human soul, and to reflect back the innermost truths of our collective experience.

OUR SYMBOL

For our company insignia we have chosen the “Man in the Maze”, a traditional motif originating with the Tohono O'odham Native American people. Said to represent Iʼitoi (or Iʼithi), the mischievous creator god who resides in a cave below the peak of Baboquivari Mountain (part of the Tohono O’odham Nation). The symbol is usually rendered – as in this example – as a unitary spiral line forming a circular maze, the twists and turns of which are thought to represent a person’s path through life, with choices and experiences providing new directions. At the centre of the maze, a person supposedly finds their hopes and dreams, at which point they given one final chance to reflect upon the path they have travelled before moving to the next realm. As a company that is acutely concerned with reflecting diverse human experience, we find this labyrinthine metaphor highly appropriate to our work.      

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