The Lucerne World Theatre Company came home yesterday from the 4 day FEATS festival in Luxembourg with an unexpected bonus: The Grand Duchy Award for best stage presentation. This covers best set design, lighting, sound, video and beginning to a show proving that when a group of expats put their minds to it anything is possible!
LWTC will celebrate its third birthday in September; in that time they have already put on 3 shows of one-act plays, play reading evenings, the hugely successful Bollywood Brides & The Gruffalo. The group has been to the FEATS festival in Antwerp & The Hague but this was the first time it took part in the official competition. The standards were very high and the professionalism required may have initially seemed daunting but the group took it in their stride.
The play they chose was an original piece written by John Lucarotti in the 60s called “It’s on you John” and adapted by his daughter Charlie Lucarotti for the theatre. With no proper theatre to rehearse in, it was very challenging to come up with a stage concept that was simple yet effective, could easily be transported and would look impressive on stage.
Luckily the Luzern expats community is as versatile as it is international and it wasn’t long until a professional set designer stepped forward to help as did a theatre lighting expert, someone else offered to do the sound track and before long the group of mainly actors had put together something which not only could be operated without the presence of professional techie but obviously was so arresting that the audience and adjudicator were won over.
During the 4 days, 12 groups from all over Europe competed with one act plays and, when they were not rehearsing, the LWTC team were in the audience taking in all the different styles and enjoying performances as varied as a one man show to farces and dramas.
This was not only a great opportunity to meet other theatre enthusiasts from around Europe but also a great chance for us to promote Luzern and have a great time together. next year we will be doing our best to keep our winning streak going at FEATS 2015 in Hamburg.
For those who would like to see the LWTC performance of “It’s on you John”, there will be one more performance on September 6th at the Kleintheater, more details to follow.
We will also be performing The Grinch who stole Christmas in November, go to the theatre’s website if you are interested in joining us either on stage or backstage.
