Review by Gerhard Clausing • Roger Ballen is taking us on another trip – this time viewed through the mind of an alter ego named Roger the Rat. This creature is a life-sized human-animal combo who wears the mask of a rodent and serves as the tool of Ballen’s mysterious puppetry. The fixed expression on... Continue Reading →
Misha Friedman – Two Women in Their Time: The Belarus Free Theatre and the Art of Resistance
Review by Gerhard Clausing • As we know from Shakespeare, “all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” The ‘merely’ is to remind us that even the most powerful political actors, who can affect our lives greatly between their entrances and exits, are all subject to final curtains. We also... Continue Reading →
Agnieszka Sejud – Hoax
Review by Gerhard Clausing • When reality is presented as a hoax and made-up stories are flooding social media to substitute for reality, what do we have left to treasure as our actuality? When writers who question the government are attacked as enemies of the people, does the definition of ‘friends’ get altered to include... Continue Reading →
Dyba Lach and Adam Lach – How to Rejuvenate an Eagle
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Poland is a country that has been subjected to tumultuous ups and downs for many hundreds of years, with particular trauma inflicted in the 20th century by occupying forces, and most especially the horrors of genocide, as well as ever-changing borders. In the 21st century, with more open arrangements within... Continue Reading →
Niko J. Kallianiotis – America in a Trance
Review by Gerhard Clausing • It’s been more than half a century since Robert Frank stirred things up with his first major work, The Americans. Some of what he, the outsider, observed in regard to racial inequality and strife, economic hardships, and political swagger are still in need of improvement even as these lines are... Continue Reading →