Outrapo stands for "Ouvroir de tragicomédie potentielle", which translates roughly as "workshop of potential tragicomedy." It was founded in London, in 1991, and it seeks to mine the potentialities of stage performance, using new or preexistent constraints. [1]
Beginning with the Industrial Revolution era, a workshop may be a room, rooms or building which provides both the area and tools that may be required for the manufacture or repair of manufactured goods. Workshops were the only places of production until the advent of industrialization and the development of larger factories. In the 20th and 21st century, many Western homes contain a workshop in the garage, basement, or an external shed. Home workshops typically contain a workbench, hand tools, power tools and other hardware. Along with their practical applications for repair goods or do small manufacturing runs, workshops are used to tinker and make prototypes.
Potential generally refers to a currently unrealized ability. The term is used in a wide variety of fields, from physics to the social sciences to indicate things that are in a state where they are able to change in ways ranging from the simple release of energy by objects to the realization of abilities in people. Examples include:
Tragicomedy is a literary genre that blends aspects of both tragic and comic forms. Most often seen in dramatic literature, the term can variously describe by either a tragic play which contains enough comic elements to lighten the overall mood or a serious play with a happy ending.
Contents
The members, by order of entry in scene are:
- Stanley Chapman
- Milie von Bariter
- Cosima Schmetterling
- Jean-Pierre Poisson
- Anne Feillet
- Felix Pruvost
- Tom Stoppard
Stanley Chapman was a British architect, designer, translator and writer. His interests included theatre and 'pataphysics. He was involved with founding the National Theatre of London, was a member of Oulipo of the year 1961, founder of the Outrapo and a member also of the French Collège de 'Pataphysique, the London Institute of 'Pataphysics and the Lewis Carroll Society. In the early 1950s he contributed poems and designed covers for the literary magazines Listen and Stand and contributed translations to Chanticleer, a magazine edited by the poet Ewart Milne. His English translation of A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems was received with "admiring stupefaction" by Raymond Queneau.
Sir Tom Stoppard is a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, The Invention of Love, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. He co-wrote the screenplays for Brazil, The Russia House, and Shakespeare in Love, and has received an Academy Award and four Tony Awards. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship and political freedom, often delving into the deeper philosophical thematics of society. Stoppard has been a key playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation. In 2008, The Daily Telegraph ranked him number 11 in their list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture".
