Theatre Summer Camp “Pelion Greece 2019”
Agios Ioannis Pelion Greece, 25-31 August 2019
Main Workshop
From the tribes of the world to our "tribe”
Kostas Gakis, actor, director, musician, Natasha Faii-Kosmidou , actress
Language Greek
Very often Kostas Gakis compares his workshops and his work in general with theater groups across the country and abroad as work with a different tribe each time within which we all learn from each other, we all open paths of reflection and emotion, we are all healed by each other.
This year, the theme of the workshop under the trees, will be the "tribe". Tribal stories of the world that keep secrets of empathy, love; secrets of organic and natural life that we, "the civilized" have lost.
An attempt towards an anthropological approach of theater, for the vanishing humanity. For the notion of the tribe that is vanishing. For everything natural and organic that retreats to give its place to something non-organic and unnatural. For every tribe that disappears and in its place, we can create a new tribe, with the vanishing “together” as our leading compass.
Required:
a. light and comfortable clothing, team spirit, need for human warmth, willingness to abandon seriousness.
b. stories collection: In this tribe which we will create this August, we will work through stories from tribes all over the world. Each member of the group has the mission to find - until August - four stories in total: two (minimum) stories from tribes of the world and two (minimum) stories from his own life or of his ancestors, which in some way are related to the central theme "tribe".
Kostas Gakis is a graduate of the Greek National Theatre drama school, History and Archaeology department of Athens University, as well as Athens Conservatoire graduate on classical guitar. For the last 15 years he has been directing, acting, scriptwriting theatre plays, teaching acting in drama schools, composing music for theatre performances, and exploring new teaching methods as a theatre facilitator. In 2006 he was awarded the ‘DimitrisChorn’ award (best young actor) for his performance in “The cockroach”. In 2007 he scripted and directed the play ‘Without music’ and turned Italo Calvino’s novel ‘The Cloven Viscount’ into theatre. These two performances were staged in Athens for three years. In 2008 he worked with a group of people with physical disabilities and created the performance ‘Siga to aygo’ (‘Not a big deal’), while at the same period he participated in the TV series ‘Ioanna tis kardias’ (‘Ioanna of the heart’). In 2011 he founded the collective “Thea” (“View”), which is a workshop for artistic experimentations. At the same year he directed the play ‘Love’s executioner’, an adaptation on Irvin Yalom’s tale with Minas Xatzisavvas and Xenia Kalogeropoulou in the leading parts. He is a member of the theatre group ‘Idea’ since 2012, along with Athena Moustaka and KostantinosBibes. Together they created ‘Romeo and Juliet for 2’, a play which has been staged in three different theaters in Athens and has travelled all over the country. The performance is also awarded abroad: National Awards of Cyprus, 2013 (two awards), 1st Shakespeare festival in Serbia 2014 (honorary invitation by Nikita Milivojevits to represent of Greece), Almagro Festival - Spain (1st award in international competition), Festival se TeatroClasico MX - Mexico (honorary invitation to represent Greece). ‘Idea’s latest work is ‘the last black cat’ by EvgeniosTrivizas which met great success in “Chorn Theatre” and “Alpha.Idea” theatre. He is an active member of Lincoln Center Theatre Directors Lab, based in New York, as he was twice selected for its fellowship. In 2014 he was selected by Goethe Institute Athene to represent Greece in the training program on documentary theatre “Theatre experts from Southeast Europe” in Berlin. In 2016 his play ‘Aristophanias’, based on an Alpha.Idea script was staged in a crowded Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens Festival. Since September 2016 he is the artistic director of theatre Alpha.Idea, along with Konstantinos Babes and Lefteris Plaskovitis. He founded the ‘Duet Yourself Festival’, a festival for theatre duets realized every spring in Alpha.Idea theatre. In 2017 he directed the plays “Tree of Oedipous’ (script by Alpha.Idea group) and ‘From Antigone to Medea’ (script by himself) and traveled to Korea, representing Greece in big festivals. He also created the performance ‘Lalies toy cosmoythaymastes’ (‘wonderful voices of the world’), based on stories brought by immigrants who live in Athens. During the same year he directed the performance ‘Ikaria; a theatre record’ based on local stories of the island Ikaria, which was performed in open spaces of the island. Both the above performances were the outcome of the homonymous year seminars of Alpha.Idea. In 2018 he directed Mistero Buffo at the Theatre Organization of Cyprus, and toured all around the country. On April 2019 he gave a workshop about his method in the American University, Washington DC. He is deeply grateful to his parents and his classical guitar teacher, Vassilis Kanaras. In his spare time he puts music to poetry or composes his own songs on guitar, piano, lute and tzouras.
Natasha Faii Kosmidou is a graduate of the ‘Athinaiki Skini’ Academy of Dramatic Arts. She has taken part in a wide array of theatrical performances, such as ‘Person with no attributes’ hosted at ‘Page 31’ Festival, ‘I will mourn alone forever... in hell’, directed by Alexandra Vountzouraki, the plays ‘Os ta trimata tou Adamantos - Exintavelonis’, ‘Return Diaries’ and ‘Christ the Sufferer’, directed by Maria Fraggi, as well as ‘6 dresses and a fairy tale’ narrated by Dimitris Proussalis. In 2015 she worked as Assistant Director of ‘Five past Nine’, which was directed by Pantelis Voulgaris at Diana Theatre. She is actively involved in children’s theatre and has performed in Aristophanes’ ‘Pluto’ directed by Michalis Kalampokis. She first became acquainted with Documentary Theatre in 2017, through the seminar of Kostas Gakis at Alpha-Idea Theatre. She took part in the ensuing performance titled ‘Let me tell you a tale by the name of Ikaria’, directed by Kostas Gakis and Akis Filios. That same year, she was Assistant Director but also part of the cast of the performance ‘Wonderful World Languages’ by Kostas Gakis. In 2017-2018 she attended the drama workshops on Documentary Theatre-Island of Samothraki (Kostas Gakis, Akis Filios) and ‘For a Theatre of Sound’ (Kostas Gakis, Georgina Vardoulaki) at Alpha-Idea Theatre, acting in the resulting performances ‘Samothraki’s Webs’ and ‘For a Theatre of Sound’, respectively. Over the past year, she and Kostas Gakis have been co-teaching the acting and improvisation seminars offered at ‘The Theatre of Changes’, as well as Kostas Gakis’ workshops at Alpha-Idea Theatre. With Kostas Gakis they have jointly authored, directed and performed in the children’s tale ‘Where does music go when you no longer hear it?’, at the 2019 First Festival of Songs for Preschoolers.
Organised by the Hellenic Theatre/Drama & Education Network (TENet-Gr)
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