Detectives Jimmy McNulty and Lester Freamon who love each other’s company are re-united as Iago and Othello at Sheffield Crucible from 15 September to 15 October.

I stumbled across the brilliant theatre group of sorts, Improv Everywhere, the other day and was pretty amazed – founded in 2001 in New York, they’ve been staging undercover performances in public for a decade now, ranging from spontaneous musicals in supermarkets to gathering thousands of people to do weird things according to instructions given by mp3 to public installations and interferences prompting a reaction.

It works along the classic hidden camera set-up, in a way, but without the glee and the schadenfreude, just a good sense of humour and the aim to make an ordinary moment, well, less ordinary. It’s interactive in the literal, analogue sense, it’s surprising and it’s utterly charming.

The British experimental theatre company COMPLICITE was founded in 1983 by Simon McBurney, Annabel Arden, and Marcello Magni. The company’s work – usually created jointly by the performers and directors – combines realistic and stylized acting with narrative text, movement, music, and visual art. Their early shows were regarded as quite anarchic and 27 years later they they experiment in all directions – this autumn the company puts on their first opera.

In an interview in today’s online edition of The Guardian McBurney talks about his group’s productions, his experiences with Al Pacino and how he directed the 2008 production of All My Sons by Arthur Miller at Schoenfeld Theatre, which marked the Broadway debut of Katie Holmes (aka Mrs Tom Cruise).

If you’re in London this autumn try to get tickets to one of the three shows that they’re putting on: A Disappearing Number (until September 25 2010, Novello Theatre), Shun-kin (Barbican, 4 – 13 November 2010) and A Dog’s Heart (ENO at London Coliseum, November 20 – December 4, 2010).

It wasn’t until yesterday I found out why: for the time of the summer holidays, Volksbühne invited OSA – the Office for Subversive Architecture, a practice that seems rather like a network of ideas, meddling in as many media as they have offices across Europe – for a public installation while the theatre was closed. OSA added five replica columns to the already imposing patio, literally excluding the audience from the building, as if to say, ‘It’s summer, go outside and play, there’s no one here.’

It’s yet another beautiful gesture by a theatre that is tireless in questioning itself and its role as a public institution, in challenging its audience, in experimenting with new ideas and continuously breaking new ground in terms of what a theatre could be in the digital age. There’s a lesson to be learnt here on how an old and venerable lady can stay young at heart.

‘Eintritt Frei’ by OSA is in place until August 28, 2010, when Volksbühne starts its new season.
A recommendation on the side: Moderat will be playing on September 28, 2010.

Volksbühne
Linienstrasse 227
10178 Berlin

Photography by Ulrich Schwarz

DORKYPARK’s newest production Oedipus Rex will premiere in Dresden this Thursday, November 19. Igor Strawinsky’s “opera-oratorio after Sophocles” is mise-en-scène at Festspielhaus Hellerau by Argentinean choreographer Constanza Macras, the set is designed by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota. The productions by DORKYPARK are hard to describe with words: expect opera singers, dancers, a choir, a full orchestra and with Shiota’s atmospheric artwork it will be a truly exciting show. Dresden also offers a great local christmas speciality called “stollen“, be sure to try it out on your visit.