Paris↗2018–2019
The Actor’s Atelier is a 3-year project of the Grotowski Institute divided into three yearly series of work sessions that will be held at different partner venues in 2018–2021. Each year, at each of the venues, a group of 14 participants will take part in a course of 4–5 work sessions. Please note the sessions will be led in English.
The programme of the Actor’s Atelier in Paris consisted of five sessions held in Paris and one session held in Wrocław, Poland. The Paris sessions took place at La Guillotine, 24 rue Robespierre, 93100 Montreuil. Each session consisted of several-day training in the lines of practice represented by the leaders who hold regular work sessions at the Grotowski Institute in Wrocław.
Schedule
30 November – 4 December 2018
Leaders: Jarosław Fret, Aleksandra Kotecka and Tomasz Wierzbowski, Jakub Gontarski, Jorge Parente
4–8 January 2019
Leaders: Aleksandra Kotecka and Tomasz Wierzbowski, Jakub Gontarski, Jarosław Fret, Jorge Parente
1–5 March 2019
Leaders: Aram and Virginia Kerovpyan (guests), Przemysław Błaszczak, Jakub Gontarski
26–30 April 2019
Leaders: Ditte Berkeley, Vivien Wood (guest), Przemysław Błaszczak, Jarosław Fret
31 May – 4 June 2019
Leaders: Przemysław Błaszczak, Vivien Wood (guest)
8–28 July 2019
Leaders: Aleksandra Kotecka and Tomasz Wierzbowski, Przemysław Błaszczak, Jarosław Fret, Jakub Gontarski
The lines of practice
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The Field of Play – the Stage of Battle
In this series of sessions which incorporate aikido, we will focus on three main aspects of training: individual, partner-related and group-related. Employing techniques derived from martial arts, we will redefine ourselves in practice in relation to our own bodies, our partners and our group.
Individual training: we will explore ourselves using internal martial arts. The starting point will be to face up to yourself and your limitations, both physical and mental. Individual training will also include teaching aikido falls, rolls and other movement techniques.
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The String of the Body
This training is the outcome of many years of practice of Jakub Gontarski and his collaborators in the fields of martial arts, sport, dance, theatre and body therapy. The training tools support mobility, motor control, speed, body stability, spatial awareness, motor intelligence, and help keep the body in good psychophysical shape. The work aims at arriving at a conscious body that is agile, flexible, resilient, unblocked, sensitive, instinctive, present and in-the-flow; a body ready to enter into physical dialogue, in a state of conscious breathing, rhythm and agitated senses.
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Four Centres
Comprehensive sessions dedicated to the actor’s dramaturgy. The Change (meaning a situation that got disturbed), and the ability to recognise it, is the main and fundamental aspect of every drama. How an actor, a performer can work for readability of her/his own line of actions? How, by making a live stream of permanent movements, structurise them within their inner microdramaturgical potentiality?
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Voice and Body: The Sung and Spoken Voice
We invite participants to discover and experiment with their vocal identity through an exploration of their body and voice. The work sessions are based on the physical actions developed by Zygmunt Molik (1930–2010), co-founder and actor of Jerzy Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre, where he played a crucial role in developing voice training.
In the sessions, participants will learn the essential principles of the Voice and Body vocal training:
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Into the Sound
Work sessions dedicated to different polyphonic traditions: Georgian, Corsican, Svan and Sardinian. The chosen source-material becomes a starting point for coordinating song and breath progression and for harmonic improvisation based on different scales and modes. Participants explore different sound textures using source techniques drawn from traditions from which Teatr ZAR takes its inspiration.
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The Art of Invisibility
The work sessions introduce three-part polyphony, basing on the various musical scales of Georgian music, both folk and religious, and making use of basic musical formulas. Through a selected set of exercises developed over ten years of both teaching and learning experience of the leaders, it will aim at developing what can be called a sense of polyphony.
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The Voice: An Axis of Presence
The work will oscillate between two opposing ideas: the Metre of a text and the Bios of the text. The point of departure for the session will be the premise that every text (as a structure) is ‘an Alien present in us’ and we need to allow it to get rooted in our body as if it was an entity with its autonomous motivations and desires.
Partners
