the great warriors

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

THE GREAT WAR IN PORTRAITS

The Rock Drill / Jacob Epstein / 1913 (first version)

2nd Lieutenant Gilbert S.M. Insall / Edward Newling / 1919

The Dead Stretcher-Bearer / Gilbert Rogers / 1919

La Miltailleuse / C.R.W. Nevinson / 1915

houstoun: pact with pointlessness

Wendy Houstoun's
PACT WITH POINTLESSNESS
Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall

'Asking the Big Questions: a philosophical piece of stupidity driven by an urgent sense of futility.'

• the microphone
• the fairy lights
• the two 'red' chairs
• the red fire bucket
• the fire bucket grit
• the mess
• the projections
• the scrolling text
• the running in circles
• the dance audience
• seeing a director after 23 years!

eat the fish

tuppence a bag

a taste of honey

american psycho

antigone - youtheatre 27

Photo: Steven Laffoley-Edwards

Many are wonders and none more wondrous
Than man with skill to cross the ocean,
Harnessing the gales and driving
A path through storm-grey seas that threaten
From all sides to engulf him. Earth,
The mother of the gods, and inexhaustible,
He furrows with his ploughs drawn by young colts
To and fro, year on year, engraved with lines.

The whistling race of birds, and tribes
Of wild life, and fish harvested,
He snares in nets he wove, so cunning is he.
And through his craft he masters that fierce beast
The lion roaming in the hills and forests.
He puts the halter round the horse's neck
And rings the nostrils of the angry bull.

Words and quick thought and how to rule the city
He's taught himself: and to take refuge from
The icy arrows of the rain and hail.
He has devices to meet all occasions.
With many ruses that can trick diseases,
Only against death he fights in vain.

Ingenious beyond dreams, his diverse skills
Lead sometimes towards good, sometimes bad, ends.
When he obeys the law and honours justice,
His obligation to the gods, the city
Can lift its head in pride: but he who sins
Makes himself of no city citizen
Nor shall he share my home nor share my thought.

ANTIGONE | Sophocles | Stephen Spender | 1983