An exuberant jogger crosses paths with a weeping woman; a defeated football fan stumbles around a champagne-quaffing toff; lovers embrace as a blind-folded prisoner is dragged towards execution.
In The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other, Austrian playwright Peter Handke offers a vivid and sometimes troubling people’s pageant in his famously wordless script that describes 450 different characters as they pass through an ordinary town square.
Later this week, the Lyceum theatre in Edinburgh twists the human kaleidoscope even further by staging the play for what they believe is the first time entirely using volunteers, in a production that certainly boasts the largest cast that the venue has ever hosted.
It is, explains movement director Janice Parker, a “gloriously risky” project, to invite nearly 100 non-professionals, the majority of whom have never stood on a stage before, to perform a notoriously abstract and challenging work – not least in the mammoth practicalities of fitting such large numbers into the wings at the same time while complying with health and safety regulations.
