WORKSHOP 1
“Comic play and playful bodies:
Discovery of your own clown”
Marcelo Magni
actor, director, Theatre Complicite teacher
Language: English
The essence of silliness… a childlike state of curiosity and innocence.
A state for an actor, naive and open that exists in the playfulness of the body.
Every day in the workshop we took steps in physical work and improvisations in which the participants were challenged to make people laugh.
There were sessions to create comic numbers and physical exploits.
We sang songs, danced unseen ballet, spoke unknown languages and invented unparalleled acrobatic numbers and virtuosisms and made an entrance in the big top.
Improvisations to allow each one to discover oneself and our comic potential
Exercises to reveal our own idiosyncrasy and humanity.
Theatrical and circus situations to find a vulnerable state and in this moment of failure to find our authenticity.
In the research of one own clown we can find a comic and a tragic dimension. It is a fundamental step of creation to be in contact with our solitude and limitations.
Every participant brought very comfortable clothes to work in, like training clothes. Also each one brought a few old hats, big jackets, long T-shirt, colourful scarves and clothes that were used and exchanged by everyone as costumes for the research.
Marcello Magni was born in Bergamo, Italy. Ηe has lived in London since 1983 when he co-founded THEATRE DE COMPLICITE' after his studies in Paris at the JACQUES SCHOOL in 1980-82. In the first ten years he collaborated, performed and devised with the company in all the productions created in that period including A MINUTE TOO LATE, MORE BIGGER SNACKS NOW, THE VISIT, HELP I'M ALIVE, STREET OF CROCODILES, THE WINTER'S TALE, OUT OF A HOUSE LIVES A MAN. Marcello did touring all over the country, Europe and the world with these shows and participated in the creation of a film BURNING AMBITION for the BBC. Marcello has since encountered and collaborated with companies such as Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal National Theatre, The Shakespeare's Globe (for three seasons), Shared Experience, The Lyric, The Young Vic, Method and Madness. Marcello also collaborated with directors like Helena Kaut Housen (King Lear, Rose Tattoo, Measure for measure), Neil Bartlett (Scrooge, The game of Love and Chance), Nancy Meckler (Mother Courage), Annie Castledine (Foe, Spoonface Steinberg), George Kimoulis for the choreography of Antigone at Epidavros Theatre, Kathryn Hunter (Wise Guy Scapino, The Birds, Comedy of errors, Pericles and Arlecchino) and Jos Houben (Help I'm Alive, Arlecchino). Arlecchino is a solo show in which Marcello tried to conflate the experience of commedia dell'Arte's roles he had previously performed in Shakespeare, Moliere, Marivaux, Aristofanes and Ruzzante. Marcello has moved his curiosity to stories and wants to create a show with Kathryn Hunter and Gilles Aufrey based on stories from all over the world. Marcello has taught all over the world different types of theatre and also taught in Spetses Isl, Greece.
WORKSHOP 2
“GUMMO GAMMA GIMMI”
only the fittest will survive
performance workshop
Uta Plate
director, actress, educations and outreach projects
Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, Berlin, Germany
&
Michael Stasik
dramaturg, sound, Poland/Germany
Languages: English (and if needed German)
WHAT’S HAPPENING: During the workshop, the group devised a show through improvisation, which was based on acting and on movement. All participants fed in their thoughts and ideas.
On the one hand there was a clear structure, on the other lot of space for free improvisation; personal experiences and stories became part of the show. Together we created a special play, telling of our own life, our observations, directly or indirectly.
THE STORY: We wanted to speak about the small stories in big cities. Stories about the madness of our everyday lives; every one of us perceives the other as obstacle, which must be weakened.
This world is determined by rules. The stage is the play field, where the actors are players trapped in a survival contest. Over and over they have to race across the stage in the fight for the best available space. Each of them can rely but on themselves – it's everyone against everyone. Those who are not careful get kicked out.
What starts off as a simple argument about a parking space escalates more and more; it’s now about losing out on a flat, a job or a residents’ permit. The pressure grows until everyone cracks under it.
The characters tore down the existing rules and celebrated a new, liberated world. The play field was cleared and the characters invented new movements and a new language, which made up a new community.
We explored ways to express our visions of a different world. What happens when the rules dissolve? What other worlds are possible?
Each participant brought a song or piece of music (on cd) which he/she identified with and clothes and trainers which allowed to move freely.
Uta Plate: After finishing her studies in cultural education in Hildesheim (Germany) Uta Plate worked as director of the African-German theatre company ‘Rangi Moja’, consisting of African asylum-seekers and German students. The intercultural exchange within ‘Rangi Moja’ is described in her publication 'Fremd bleiben' ('Staying a stranger', co-author Wiebke von Bernstorff, IKO-Verlag 1997). In 1996, she joined the theatre Nordhausen to start off the project 'theatre in prison' in cooperation with the local ministry of justice. She then ran this project for two and a half years, developing plays with young men, all inmates at the youth prison Ichtershausen, near Erfurt. During this time, Uta Plate also ran theatre projects with elderly people living in old people's homes, as well as projects with children living in homes for asylum-seekers. In 1999, Uta Plate joined the ensemble of the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, being one of the few educational staff across German theatres to form an integral part of the artistic team. As part of her work at the Schaubühne Uta Plate runs workshops and after show talks to accompany each production, offering an approach to the content of the plays on show within the context of the 'laboratory' Schaubühne. Often collaborating with schools and universities, Uta Plate creates contact to new groups of audience-members. Uta Plate further runs the youth theatre company 'Die Zwiefachen', who, through improvisation, movement- and writing-workshops devise a show per year. Their show is performed in the studio space at the Schaubühne and tours across Germany. The members of the company, between 16-23 years old, all are or were part of a housing programme run by social workers. Besides her work at Schaubühne, Uta Plate has been running theatre and movement workshops internationally, at the University of Santiago, Chile (2004), and at the University of Beijing, China (2005).
Michael Stasik was born in Bydgoszcz, Poland. Moved to West-Berlin in 1986. He was trained in the field of theatre-pedagogic at the Schaubuehne-Theatre in Berlin (2001)and at the press office of the "European Capital of Culture 2010" in Görlitz (2005). He studied philosophy, history and African studies at the Humboldt-University in Berlin; polish and philosophy at the Jagiellonian-University in Krakow and has a scholarship for political and European studies at the University of Wroclaw. He took part in the setting up, coordinating and directing of a youth-theatre-group in Accra, Ghana, as well as founding several work-possibilities with artistic-cultural-backgrounds for volunteers in Ghana and the Ivory Coast; since October 2005: artistic cooperation with the polish video and performance artist Daniel Banaczek.
WORKSHOP 3
“From tales to epic theatre Narrative techniques”
Takis Tzamargias
director, Greece
&
Zoe Hadjiandoniou
dance choreographer, Greece
Language: Greek
Storytelling is the origin of all narrative techniques. Old storytellers told their stories with passion, plot, tension identifying themselves with the hero. So often they were both themselves and the hero.
Is there any relation or similarities between this traditional storytelling and the “alienation” technique Brecht used? In Brecht’s plays the actors performs while they keep a distance from the role.
In this workshop we investigated the two techniques through the tale based on Brecht’s play “The good man of Setsuan”. Participants through speech and movement tried to arrive to emotional tension via routes other than “pseudo-identification”
Takis Tzamargias was born in Piraeus, Greece. He studied Theatre and Education and gained a Master's Degree from the Athens University on "Theater in Education". Currently he works on his doctoral thesis on the same subject. He is the artistic director of the Municipal Theatre "Theatre Company of Keratsini". He has directed more than twenty plays including production with Greek National Theatre. Currently he teaches at the Primary Education Department of Athens University.
Zoe Hadjiandoniou graduated from the Theatre Studies Department of Athens University and went to study dance and choreography. She has performed and directed a great number of dance performances. She has also taught theatre in primary education.