THEATRE REVIEWS
Theatre of (losing) control
In the play An Oak Tree, the contradiction between what we see and what we hear is ever present
A man's life swerves out of control when a car hits and kills his daughter on her way to her piano lesson. The man behind the wheel is a stage hypnotist, whose ability to guide people's mind out of the realm of reality falls to pieces after the accident. Tim Crouch's An Oak Tree, which tells the story of these two men and their encounter three months after the tragedy, leads us out of the conventional state of control in theatre and into another form of hypnotic state.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF DRAMA CHULA
We witness various forms of control in An Oak Tree, but the play is as much about surrendering control as it is about being in and under it. Crouch plays the hypnotist. For each performance, a different actor or actress plays the father, Andy Smith, without having seen the script beforehand. As preparation, the two performers meet an hour before the show. Crouch gives the basic run-down of what to expect; the other actor practices reading some text, but not the real script, and using a headset, from which the guest actor listens to Crouch's instructions during the performance.
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About the author
- Writer: Amitha Amranand
- Position: Reporter
