In brief
- Seminar 1
Marcos Martinez, California State University, USA
Reawakening the spoken word:
A workshop in the Suzuki Actor Training Method
Athens, 9-10-11 March 2004, 17.00-21.00
- Seminar 2
Lilo Baur, actress, Theatre Complicite teacher
“Le Jeu” – Theatre, Playfulness, Movement
Athens 9-10-11 March 2004, 17.00-21.00
- Seminar 3
Andrea Copeliovitch, Universidade Federal Rio, Brasil
Theatre and personal stories
Athens 15-16-17 March 2004, 17.00-21.00
- Seminar 4
David Pammenter & Alex Mavrocordatos, King Alfred’s University College, UK
Theatre for development: naming our world
Athens 15-16-17 March 2004, 17.00-21.00
- Seminar 5
Marta Cotrim, performing artist, Brasil
CAPOEIRA as training method for actors and dancers
Athens 19-20-21 March 2004
- Seminar 6
Fabio Tolledi, director, University of Lecce Italy
The secret of Commedia dell' Arte
Athens 9-10-11 March 2004
SEMINAR 1
Reawakening the spoken word:
A workshop in the Suzuki Actor Training Method
Marcos Martinez, California State University, San Marcos USA
Athens, 9-10-11 March 2004, 17.00-21.00
In performance, are you repeating yourself in ways that seem to lock your creativity? Work towards finding and addressing your particular physical/mental/spiritual barriers that get in the way of creative performance and discovery. The Suzuki Method of Actor Training workshop develops the actor's innate energy and presence through specific exercises aimed at challenging established boundaries of comfort and repetition. This workshop requires participants to push beyond self-imposed and believed limitations towards discovery of a heightened awareness of the body in motion. This work focuses specifically on finding and strengthening the corporal centre while identifying habits that inhibit new expression.
The goal of this work is to make the actor much more interesting to watch onstage, and to facilitate a more scenically present actor by striving to regain the perceptive abilities and powers of the human body.
Specific aspects addressed by the training include: centering the body, identifying and moving from the corporal center of the body, assessment and projection of energy, strengthening the actor's legs, abdominal area, and voice precision of movement, fluidity of motion in relation to the Earth, vocal grounding and speaking from the corporal center, identifying habits in movement, thus creative expression. Consciousness of building the will through physical work is a centerpiece of this work. Aspects from Native American culture including music and perspectives relating to the Earth vary from other offerings of this training.
This is a practical seminar intended for practitioners of theatre i.e. actors, directors, and teachers. Participants must be able to physically exert themselves since the seminar has exercises intended to exhaust the body through vigorous cardiovascular work. This version of the workshop will include an exchange between the chorus and a central character in a Greek play as one example of how the technique can be applied to theatre.
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 articles, plays, and monologues. A master teacher of the Suzuki Actor Training Method (a physical theatre technique), which he studied with Tadashi Suzuki in Toga Mura, Japan. Directing project’s 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-Herzegovina. 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).
SEMINAR 2
"Le Jeu": Playfulness, Theatre and Movement
Lilo Baur, actress, Theatre Complicite teacher
Athens 9-10-11 March 2004, 17.00-21.00
Everywhere theatre is performed in a thousand different ways and thousand different places.
What makes me engaged and understand one play more than another, especially if I don’t speak the language? What is deeper than just the cultural language, what is common, what is permanent?
There is a universal language which the body speaks. Children of different cultures are put together and they communicate and play with each other without hesitation.
It’s spontaneity of movement and word at the same time which we as adults struggle to find again. This is the base for me to approach theatre.
Let’s find that playfulness again.
A teacher of mine used to say "the word is the crown but you have to have the body to carry it".
Lilo Baur is a Swiss born actress with a British citizenship and an international career. She has worked with directors as Peter Brook, Simon McBurney, Annabel Arden, Katy Mitchell, Richard Olivier, Peter Yates; she has performed, among others, at National Theatre London, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, Theatre Grottesco in New York, at the Festival of Avignon in France, at Barcelona. She has appeared in films and BBC TV. She has directed herself plays and dance shows in UK, France, Greece and she has won the Dora Canadian Award for Best Actress and the Manchester Evening News for Best Actress Award for her performance in the “Three lives of Lucie Cabrol”. She has performed in most plays of Theatre Complicite in London and in world tours and teaches regular seminars and workshops on “Physical Theatre”.
SEMINAR 3
Theatre and personal stories
Andrea Copeliovitch, Universidade Federal Rio, Brasil
Athens 15-16-17 March 2004, 17.00-21.00
The seminar will focus on constructing small scenes based on a personal memory. The training will consist of a ritualistic process, and certain techniques such as Brazilian dances, meditation and body conscience will be used as a path to lead the actor to a neutral state, a start point of creativity. The training will specifically consist of six stages: a) Self- awareness development, b) Consecrating the workspace, c) Becoming aware of individual presence in space, d) Emptying and metamorphosis, e) Individual transcendence, f) Return to the individual self- awareness, g) Comments.
We will use the training to empty ourselves in order to rescue a personal memory and turn it into a scene. Then we will work on individual scenes’ theatrical issues through an accurate direction, in which the group also plays the role of a director. Aims: To concentrate the training on scenes’ development, to achieve an internal silence and through it a different quality of energy, to learn how to produce energy capable of attracting people’s attention, to get in touch with the body and express one’s self through it, to awaken memories and creativity through the body, to develop clear expression and theatrical skills, to develop group work, to present tools so that the group could work on its own. Chronogram: On the first day: getting familiar with the basic techniques and with the group. On the second day: working on a song and on a memory. Beginning to develop individual scenes. On the third day: constructing scenes, understanding and showing clearly what each one has to present.
Andrea Copeliovitch is an actress, researcher, body expression and acting teacher. She has a Master in Theatrical Practice and has been developing research on actor's practice since 1991, focusing on pre-expressive processes. The subject of her Dissertation is “Building a Character through Ritual: an apprenticeship proposal for actors”. Now she is concluding her Doctoral studies, developing the project “The Warlike Actor In front of the Abyss”, a search for understanding the essential in Art, with a glance at the actor, his action and the language that results from that action, at the department of Literature Sciences of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro since 2000, under the supervision of Professor Manuel Antônio de Castro, PhD, and Professor Jean-Marie Pradier, PhD, University of Paris 8, Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, where she has been developing part of her project ‘ The warlike actor facing the abyss’. She has presented workshops and participated in Conferences in Brazil and in many places around the world such as Irvine (USA), Exeter (UK), Athens (Greece), Paris (France).
SEMINAR 4
Theatre for development: naming our world
David Pammenter & Alex Mavrocordatos,
King Alfred’s University College, UK
Athens 15-16-17 March 2004, 17.00-21.00
This three-day intensive practical seminar will explore the theory and practice of drama and theatre as tools through which we may explore and develop our creativity, criticality and our capacity for cultural transformation. We will examine questions of our own identity and the identity of others. We will look at narrative and counter narrative in terms of the dominant culture and the counter-cultures. We will explore the potential of drama to develop and stimulate children’s creativity and criticality in understanding and contributing to their own changing social and cultural environments.
We will “play”! We will find out how, through our play we can construct a theatre which we own and which can speak, to others, for us. We will learn how we, as teachers, may facilitate this dialogical education with our young people in order that they may construct their own theatre which speaks for them. We will learn about how the Arts can inform and help our own personal transformation in order that we can, as teachers, facilitate our young people to move towards their own personal transformation as part of the process of societal transformation.
We will explore the cultural and political purposes of those who control the Globalized world and the effects of their purposes and systems in the construction and control of cultural and personal identity and communications. Whose identity, lived experience, voices, dreams and potentials are being marginalised? Through our creativity, criticality and imagination we will explore ways of transforming ourselves into articulate citizens, confident and capable in rejecting this marginalisation. If our sense of being and becoming is in the control of somebody else, what is the capacity of play, of drama, of story building, of authorship, of ownership, of language, of communication, of democracy, of development and of truth in the articulation and making of our transformation? Can we as artists and pedagogues, teachers and children transform our domination into the sphere of liberation through the “Naming of our world”?
This workshop is related to the MA in Theatre and Media for Development (Education and Cultural Action for Social Transformation) at King Alfred’s (University College Winchester) in England. Although it builds on the earlier workshops it is not a repeat of the 2003 sessions. It is open to new participants as well as those who attended last year.
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.
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, school teachers, 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.
SEMINAR 5
CAPOEIRA as training method for actors and dancers
Marta Cotrim, performing artist, Brasil
Athens 19-20-21 March 2004
Capoeira is a Brazilian art form that transcends the boundaries of martial art, dance and improvisation. Set to the rhythms of Capoeira music, two players improvise a dance with martial art movements of attack and defense. This fight simulation serves as a stage for the development of one’s physical, mental and emotional abilities. Because of the nature of the interaction with the partner, one makes use of all reflexes and develops 360 degrees awareness. By also exploring physically the three levels (floor work, standing and jumping) the muscles are worked in a constant flow of contraction and extension using your own body weight, resulting in a lean and flexible body. Furthermore, the playfulness of Capoeira allows space for the individual to express him or herself in a safe environment. Last but not least, the live music is an important aspect of the game that introduces the student to different kinds of percussion instruments and singing. Basically, Capoeira is a lot of fun in an extraordinary ensemble of fitness and creativity.
Marta Cotrim is a performance artist who has lived and studied different forms of theatrical techniques in six countries: Brazil, France, Holland, Indonesia, England and nowadays she is established in Greece. Marta is trained in classical and physical theatre in Paris, Choreography in Amsterdam, Topeng in Bali, and completed her M.A. in Dance Anthropology in England. In London she had the opportunity to study with Monika Pagneux, Peter Brook’s collaborator and mentor of the Theate de Complicite group with whom Marta followed many workshops. More recently Marta attended Ariane Mnouchkine seminar and Tapa Sudana’s workshop in mask, ritual and martial arts. Marta works as a Theatre Director and Choreographer, as well as dancer and actor in contemporary and street theatre. Teaches Capoeira, Topeng and Physical Theatre for different levels of experience for high school students, actors and dancers and drama teachers.
SEMINAR 6
The secret of Commedia del' Arte
Fabio Tolledi, director, University of Lecce Italy
Athens 9-10-11 March 2004
The seminar on commedia dell' arte aims at deconstructing a series of commonplaces concerning this theatrical tradition. There are a lot of concepts on the work of the actor coming from commedia dell' arte: improvisation, relation with the text, joke, use of the mask, (just to mention few).
How is it possible to make this tradition alive?
In order to give an answer to this question three levels of intervention will be developed in the workshop:
a) the first level is represented by the body, the training of the actor, the relationship to one's energy, the discovery of the sound, the use of heterogeneous materials related to the body;
b) the second level is represented by the attention, by the presence of the actor's body in a specific place and by his/her relation to the space and to the other (another actor and/or the audience);
c) finally the third level is given by the rhythm, the rhythm of the action and the rhythm of the montage of the actor.
The work will be focused on these three basic levels that will be put in relation to the tradition of commedia dell’ arte in order to open a first awareness of the 'secret' of commedia dell' arte
Fabio Roberto Tolledi is a graduate of Modern Literature at the University of Lecce Italy. His published work includes many books and articles in literature, political, sociological Italian and European journals. He is also collaborator of the daily newspapers Lecce Sera and Corriere della Sera-Corriere del Mezzogiornio. Since 1992 he has been artistic director of ASTRAGALI TEATRO organizing events and festivals and directing the performances of the Company. He has worked with some of the most important theatre masters of contemporary theatre of research (Grotowski, P. Brook, J.Slowiak etc) as an actor and assistant director. In collaboration with several Universities in Italy, he has given many lectures and seminars on sociology, culture, art, literature, sociology of religions.