Summary
- Julian Boal Brazil, Theatre of The Oppressed, 17-18-19/1/2003
- Marcos
Martinez USA, The Suzuki Acting Method, 20-21-22-23/1/2003
- JohnWright: Who do you think your are? Archetypical Masks, 21-22-23/1/2003
- DavidDavis UK, Teacher in Role, 27-28-29/1/2003
- ZeljkoVukmirica Croatia, CHORUS and the Mario Gonzalles Method, 27-28-29-30/1/2003
- JohnSomers UK, The relationship between DIE (Drama –In- Education) and theatre-making, 27-28-29/1/2003
- DavidPammenter & Alex Mavro UK, Drama in the Classroom: Towards a children's theatre of cultural integration, 30-31/1/ & 1/2/2003
- AndreaCopeliovitch actress, Brazil, The warlike actor and the imminence of death, Athens 30-31/1 & 1/2/2003
SEMINAR DESCRIPTION
SEMINAR 1
THE TECHNIQUES OF FORUM-THEATER, THEATRE OF THE OPPRESSED
Julian Boal
Athens, 17-18-19 January 2003
Theater of the Oppressed, which is celebrating it’s 30th birthday, has already spread in most countries in the world. It’s most known technique is the forum theater. Basically, this technique can be divided in two parts: the creation of a play with oppressed, play that is going to be built with the stories those oppressed wants to discuss about; the second part being the performance in which the spect-actor is invited to come on stage to try to find out, in a theatrical way, a solution to the problem posed by the play.
The seminar has different parts:
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Games and exercises who are not only warming up. They are also a way to construct a sense of community and confidence in the group, a way of de-mechanizing our bodies from the habitudes we learn in "normal" life, and a way of learning things that cannot be translated into words,
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Structure of forum-plays: forum-theater doesn't have a precise gestual vocabulary, as commedia del arte or kabuki, but it has an essential drama structure that can be reached by creating some shorts scenes with the participants,
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Role of the joker: The joker is the person who makes the link between audience and stage, who invites and incentivates the spect-actor to show his solution. His not a referee, but he is the guarantee of the respect to the audience that each performance of Forum Theater should have.
| Julian Boal: |
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November 02:
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Workshop with the International School Teachers Association in Geneve
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October 02:
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Workshop as Augusto Boal’s assistant with the theater group Domino in Halle, Germany
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August 02:
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Workshop at The 23 rd Festival Authorial Poetics "Days of Youth Theatre" in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina |
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July 02:
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Workshop with Malians refugees of the Foyer des Travailleurs de la Pierre-levée |
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March-April 02:
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translation of the new french edition of Rainbow of Desire |
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January 02:
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Film making at the World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, Brazil |
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January 01:
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Director of the documentary "Jana Sanskriti, la culture du peuple", workshop with the Jana Sankriti, Calcutta, India |
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September 00:
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author of the book "Images of a popular theater", Hucitec, São Paulo, Brazil |
SEMINAR 2
REAWAKENING THE SPOKEN WORD:
A WORKSHOP IN THE SUZUKI ACTOR TRAINING METHOD
Marcos Martinez
director, Master Teacher Suzuki Actor Training Method,
professor California State University, USA
Athens 20-21-22-23/1/03
The workshop consists of intensive physical exercises that require actors to develop a heightened awareness of themselves in motion. This work centers on the usage of the feet, and the relationship of the corporal (physical) center of the body to the earth (the ground). These exercises develop the actor’s voice and scenic presence by building physical stamina, increasing focus, concentration, and building the actor’s will. We begin with the basic stomping exercise, stances to assess balance and movement of the center, and a statues exercise. This last exercise is done in both sitting and standing positions. Its purpose is to show physical expression that reveals aspects of an actor’s engrained habits. Once the actors have achieved a working basis we introduce speaking duels and a singing exercise.
Marcos Martinez is Professor of Theatre in the Visual and Performing Arts Department at California State University, San Marcos. He is a director and actor whose writings include “Community and the Sacred in Chicano Theater” in El Cuerpo de Cristo: The Hispanic Presence in the U.S. Catholic Church edited by Peter Casarella and Raul Gomez (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1998); “Africans, Vikings and Chicanos: Observations on Decolonizing Effects of the Suzuki Method of Actor Training” (1983); a bilingual comedy, Poaching (1994); and two monologues developed and co-authored with Cheyney Ryan, Holy Dirt (1997), and Green Chile Vikings (2002). Martinez is a master teacher of the Suzuki Actor Training Method, which he studied with Tadashi Suzuki in Toga Mura, Japan. Directing projects in conjunction with teaching Suzuki Method include: Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, TX; Taos, NM; Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico; Faeroe Islands, Denmark; Ghana; Israel; and Bosnia-Hercegovinia. Acting projects include Bandido with Luis Valdez and touring Holy Dirt in the U.S., Holland, and Denmark. A co-founder and former Artistic Director of La Compania de Teatro de Alburquerque (1988-91) Martinez is a graduate of the University of New Mexico and the Juilliard School’s Professional Actor Training Program (Group 12).
| Dates - Time: |
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Monday 20, Tuesday 21, Wednesday 22, Thursday 23 January 2003
17.00 – 22.00
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SEMINAR 3
WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?
Archetypical Mask
John Wright
director, Middlesex University, UK
Athens 21-22-23 /1/ 2003
“Who do you think you are”, is an exploration of acting through the archetypal mask. In this course John Wright will use a wide variety of masks designed to broaden our physical and imaginative range as actors. Masks like the devil, the innocent, the trickster, the mother, the hero, the virgin, the ogre and the king, all inspire very different but very precise impulses. This course will identify and define these qualities and apply them in opening up a text and exploring a scene.
John Wright is co-fonder of Told by an Idiot where he has directed most of their repertoire including: ‘I Can’t wake up’, ‘On the verge of exploding’, (nominated for the independent award) and ‘Don’t laugh it’s my life’, ‘I’m so big’, and ‘Happy Birthday Mr Deka D’. He is also co founder of Trestle Theatre company, where he co directed most of their repertoire until 1992 included ‘Top storey’, ‘Ties that bind’ and ‘The edge’ (winner of Time Out Theatre Award). Other work includes: ‘Soul in a Suitcase’ Edinburgh Festival) ‘Meeting myself coming back’ (Soho Theatre) ‘She’ll be coming round the mountain’, (Awards from the Sunday Times and The Guardian) King Ubu, (The Gate), ‘Don Juan’ (Commotion Theatre Co) ‘The man who woke up in the dark’ and ‘The Wife of Bath, both for Trading Faces ‘A Little Job for an Old Clown’, (R.N.T Studio), Hamlet and ‘The Changeling’ for Third Party Productions Ltd. His International work includes: ‘Macbeth’, (Act Three Theatre Co. Singapore). ‘Shooting Sons’, (The Hong Kong theatre ensemble) and development projects in Indonesia, Germany, Israel and Spain. He has directed two operas – ‘Master Peters Puppet Show’ and ‘Aesop’, (Scotsman Fringe First), both co-productions (Royal Opera House and National Youth Music Theatre). He is currently working with Theatre Ensemble (Paris) and on a new opera for Opera Circus. John is an international teacher of theatre and his workshops are in great demand. He has received the Greater London Arts Award for his contribution to Physical Theatre.
| Dates - Time: |
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Tuesday 21, Wednesday 22, Thursday 23 January 2003
17.00 – 22.00
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SEMINAR 4
TEACHER-IN- ROLE
(Teacher – in – Role)
David Davis
University of Central England, UK
Athens 27-28-29/1/2003
The technique of teacher taking a role to be alongside the pupils in the drama has many useful educational and artistic outcomes. In a world of growing tensions where more is required of a teacher than a passive transmitter of prescribed skills to prepare the pupils for a world of work, drama is a key way to invigorate the imagination and be part of an education for life. Teacher in role allows the drama teacher to work alongside her pupils in a way that can empower them to explore the world around them and their relationship to it. The teacher in role can deepen the exploration of meanings and promote reflection by adding other voices to the dialogic process of drama. This workshop will explore at least thirteen different role types and sixteen different role uses.
The workshop will give teachers a chance to practice a range of roles in the security of the course structure and examine questions such as: Is the teacher in role more of an actor or more of a teacher? How can teacher in role avoid always taking the best parts? How can teacher intervene without taking over? What role types best fit which role uses?
Davis David is Professor of Drama in Education at the University of Central England. He was Director of the International Centre for Studies in Drama in Education and also Pathway Leader for both the MA Drama in Education and the Certificate and Diploma in Drama in Education courses at this University. Previous to this he was for many years Course Director of the initial qualification PGCE Drama in Education course, which prepared drama specialists for secondary schools. He taught Drama in secondary schools for 15 years. He has presented workshops in many parts of the world and published widely. He now works part-time exclusively with his PhD students in Drama in Education and continues with research
| Dates - Time: |
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Monday 27 –Tuesday 28- Wednesday 29 January 2003
17.00 – 21.30
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SEMINAR 5
"CHORUS" AND THE MARIO GONZALLES METHOD
Željko Vukmirica
actor, director, writer
Athens 27-28-29-30/1/2003
In this Seminar we shall study the controlled human behaviour under the condition of public commencement. For this, we shall use the technique of the "small tasks" which originate in communication during "real situations". This research is equally useful for theatre, film, TV, education, sales, diplomacy, in any situation of public “commencement”. Seminar includes: a) the nature of the human look (what is public commencement as a type of communication, spectators as observers, actors as those observed, interactive (two-way) communication, differences between lie and illusion, technique of suggestions, lie for the truth, "normal" and "natural" on the stage, b) Neutral Chorus (zero position, neutral steps, balance, imbalance, rules of the chorus, c) chorus in the room (Stanislavski), d) interview (ID card, dialogue, creating a story).
Željko Vukmirica graduated from the Zagreb Academy of Film and Dramatic Art in 1976. He is member of the ITD Theatre and co-founder of the Theatre Workshop "POZDRAVI" (Greetings, E. Ionesco), after the homonymous performance, which was an international smashing hit during the 70's. He was professor of acting to the first generation of the Actor's Studio of HNK (Croatian National Theatre) Split in 1979. His independent career started with his first authorial play History of My Stupidity, which was performed for about 1000 times in the interval between 1979 and today. He studied in Paris for two years in order to improve his acting technique and was trained by Mario Gonzalles, professor at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Paris. On his return, searching for the "new opera", he founded the Theatre Laboratorium Simul, which was crowned with the performance Gluhlampe. He took part in lots of films, TV and theatre productions. He produced the feature film Nausica (Croatian representative for the Academy Award in 1996). He is President of the board of the International Youth Theatre Festival MKFM in Pula (Istria) and works professionally as a member of the Croatian Freelance Artists Association in Zagreb.
| Dates - Time: |
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Monday 27, Tuesday 28, Wednesday 29, Thursday 30 January 2003
17.00 – 22.00
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SEMINAR 6
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DIE AND THEATRE-MAKING
John Somers
University of Exeter, UK
Athens 27 – 28 – 29 / 1/ 2003
Drama in education is seen as an experiential form of learning in which participants create fictional worlds that have strong relationships with their reality. For many years in the UK, DIE was defined as NOT being theatre. This seminar will explore the proper place of theatre-making in DIE activity, giving participants the opportunity to create theatrical work from DIE processes for sharing with others in the workshop.
Suitable for teachers and actors, the seminar will be intensely practical with exploration of the theoretical underpinnings.
John Somers is senior lecturer at the Drama Department of Exeter University. He specializes in Drama and Theatre-in-Education and recently completed TIE programmes on bulling, alcohol education, racism, and young people’s self awareness. His teaching and research took him in many countries including Poland, Greece, Taiwan and Brazil. He is director of the MA in Applied Drama course, editor of the journal Research in Drama Education and director of an international research conference.
| Dates - Time: |
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Monday 27 – Tuesday 28 – Wednesday 29 January 2003
17.00– 22.00
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SEMINAR 7
Drama in the Classroom:
Towards a children's theatre of cultural integration
David Pammenter & Alex Mavrocordatos
King Alfred’s University College, Winchester, UK
Athens, 30-31 /1 & 1/2/2003
This three-day intensive practical seminar will explore the use of drama and children's creativity in understanding and affecting their own changing social and cultural environments. Through creating such plays the children themselves encounter those areas of citizenship and civil responsibility that are central in the minds of governance and education systems in many parts of the world today, but which affect the children's lives directly and often painfully. They discover their rights as children, their cultural identity and their diversity too. Empowered themselves, they can begin to use the power of the arts to build their own changed future.
What form of drama is appropriate? How do you do it? What would it be about? Who creates the plays and who owns the outcomes? These are some of the practical questions that the seminars will explore using improvisation, story making, and the creation of 'meaning' through drama.
This seminar is the first step towards a new post-graduate degree programme (Southampton University), available to students and teachers internationally. Within the seminar we will discuss the content of the proposed course. In this way, the proposed MA degree will take into account your experience of drama in schools and outside them, in relation to the issues of cultural values, ethics and the marginalisation of ethnic communities.
The course will be part-time and run at King Alfred's College in the UK, as a sister to the full-time MA in Theatre for Development. The taught elements of the course will take place in the UK, although supervised practical project work will be carried out locally as part of the study programme.
Alex Mavrocordatos is Senior Lecturer at the School of Community and Performing Arts at King Alfred's University College, Winchester. He specialises in Community Drama and works with theatre in both the formal and the non-formal education sectors, exploring the use of drama to support marginalised communities in the expression and articulation of their own concerns. He has worked with street children, schoolteachers, development workers, farmers - oh yes - and actors as well. In addition to his work on the MA degree in Theatre for Development, his international training and consultancy work has included extensive programmes in Africa, Asia, the Pacific and of course in Britain.
David Pammenter is currently Principal Lecturer and Director of Pedagogy at King Alfred’s University College, School of Community and Performing Arts. He is also visiting lecturer, director, consultant and external examiner in a number of Colleges, Companies and institutions in the UK and abroad. He is founding member of the Belgrade TIE Team Coventry, the first Theatre-In-Education team which became a model for national and international development of TIE practice and contributed greatly to the development of DIE (Drama in Education). He has worked extensively in Africa and Asia and his research interests are in the area of TfD -Theatre For Development.
SEMINAR 8
The warlike actor and the imminence of death
Andrea Copeliovitch, actress, Brazil
Athens 30-31/1 & 1/2/2003
It is not enough to contemplate the canoe, approach it,
embark quickly on it and abandon it again;
it is not enough to imagine being on it.
It is necessary, it is urgent to get in the canoe
and become navigator that nothing stops,
traveling to the origin of times.
Chamalu.
The relationship established between actor and spectator goes beyond an objective comprehension, what happens is a communication in subtler levels. The comprehended signs go beyond words, what makes an actor become more interesting than another? Even if both says the same text, with the same intonation, with the same gestures. One might call it charisma, Garcia Lorca talked about an artist possessing or not "dwarf" (duende), others may simply talk about talent.
In order to reach these subtle levels in the performer's art, Actors and dancers have been looking for training processes and techniques. The actor should learn how to manipulate his scenic instruments (body, voice and eventual objects and scenic accessories) in a way to produce a different kind of energy, capable to call the spectator's attention, involving or bestirring him.
Eugenio Barba refers to this type of energy as extra-quotidian energy, and he explains that the use of quotidian energy (the energy we use to do things we are conditioned to) happens in a way that the individual saves as much energy as possible in each action. But the actor should try to expand his energy as much as he can, transforming his energy in an extra-quotidian energy.
Artaud talks about sensorial communication in which the actor would send codes to the spectator that would be felt directly in his physical organs, as jets of energy addressed to parts of the body, beyond rationalisation. Artaud speaks of an ideal actor as being an affective athlete, that knows the equivalent to each emotion in his physical organs, with total domain of his body functions and of the emission of energy produced by him. Therefore, capable to address it to the spectator's physical organs.
We are proposing a specific training that leads the actor to a state of creative awareness, in which it's easy for him to create. He becomes able to transmute himself into the character as in an alchemic process. Artaud preached the existence of an alchemic theatre; a theatre, whose function is such an energy exchange between actor and spectator, that both would end the process obligatorily transformed. We work with chanting and dancing techniques that we call ritual. Ritual is the celebration of a passage, of a transformation, of a death, of a myth.
We consider those deaths / transformations fundamental to reach the magic communication with the spectator that Artaud talks about. To prepare the actor for them, we propose a practical training, composed by preparation exercises and celebration of the theatrical act itself, in which the actor celebrates his own preparation, through songs and dances mixed to other specific exercises.
Those songs and dances were introduced in the training and they constitute its main stage; they are based on the observation and studies of rituals in which people dance together to strengthen the contact with the sacred world. Dancing together, people create a "collective self", in which they dissolve their everyday personality, becoming part of that collective unit. The actor can use that process to celebrate the transformation of his "everyday -self" in "actor- self", fluid and ready to receive any mask that the theatre might offer.
In this seminar we are going to practice this training and play with characters that will appear from it. On the first day we are going to make them come out, working on the training and collective improvisations. On the second day we will work on the relations the characters will establish among themselves dividing the group in pair or small groups that will work on a sketch or small scene. On the third day we will work on the scenes, schematising, directing and presenting (the scenes might be small performances, in which the actors play with the unexpected and improvise).
Andrea Copeliovitch is an actress, body expression and acting professor. Now she is concluding her Doctoral studies at UFRJ, Literature Department - Poetics, developing the project "The Warlike Actor front to the Abyss", that is a search for understanding the essential in Art, with a glance at the actor, his action and the language that results from that action. Master in Theatrical Practice, she has been developing research on actor's practice since 1991 (as a teacher, as an actress and as a performer); focussing on pre-expressive processes, subject of her Dissertation, "Building a Character through Ritual: an apprenticeship proposal for actors."