THE LIVING ROOM - presentation of the creative process

Dec 16 (Friday) - 7.00 p.m.
Dec 17 (Saturday) - 5.00 p.m.
Dec 18 (Sunday) - 12.00

The Living Room, an opus directed by Thomas Richards in the domain of Art as vehicle, takes us home, to a place in which we welcome another. By starting from this fundamental action that can take place in a living room, we enter an investigation into how the potentialities of performance craft can both enrich and be enriched by daily inter-personal relations and realities. How can our room come alive? How can one be with another in such a way that the quotidian slides seamlessly into the non-quotidian?
Here the witness has the chance to shed his anonymity, being an individual, a guest. Within our meeting a performance event unfolds, structured and precise, a living stream of actions based on work with ancient songs of tradition, as well as texts exploring what it takes to awaken ourselves faced to ourselves, the other, and the world.

You are in a house. Repose here for a moment. Maybe it's your house, in the late afternoon. You sit and close your eyes. They open onto a dream in which sounds, objects and words emerge as if from the wallpaper. A man asks the question, "Is this my home?" The answer ripples throughout the room in waves and ruptures as in a dream. What will be left when we awake? Suspended remnants, quiet as the pieces of a puzzle, waiting.

"Thirty Years of the Workcenter. A Retrospective" – conference

Dec 18 (Sunday) - 4.30 p.m.

During Thirty Years of the Workcenter: A Retrospective, Richards will guide the public on a journey through the different phases of the performance research developed at the Workcenter. Over the course of its 30 year history, the Workcenter has documented many of its performance works at critical points in their development. In this Retrospective – that interweaves analysis, the screening of film fragments and discussion – the public will encounter the Workcenter praxis from its inception in the earliest years, dedicated to Art as Vehicle, through a period of extreme opening, to the Workcenter's contemporary performance opuses, which embody the research's ongoing inquiries, not only in relation to the deepening of an exploration of the human being in action, but also to widening the ways in which the essential aspects of the research can come in contact with individuals, cultures, and societies.

"Living Song: Action/Intention" – workshops

Dec 20 (Tuesday) - 5.00 p.m. to 8.30 p.m.
Dec 21 (Wednesday) - 5.00 p.m. to 8.30 p.m.

Workshop conducted by Thomas Richards assisted by members of The Focused Research Team in Art as Vehicle This encounter with Thomas Richards and members of his Workcenter team will strive to unearth the creative potentialities of each participants through work on song. Participants will enter in contact with a practical work based on songs from African and Afro-Caribbean traditions, an approach to voice, impulse, and action which has been at the heart of Workcenter research for close to thirty years. This approach to song explores the potential impact that the rhythmical and melodic qualities of a given song can have on the person who sings.

THE RETURN OF DIONYSUS – THE METHOD OF THEODOROS TERZOPOULOS

Dec 28 (Wednesday) - 10.00 a.m. – 3.00 p.m.
Dec 29 (Thursday) - 10.00 a.m. – 3.00 p.m.

The Workshop conducted by Theodoros Terzopoulos, Savvas Stroumpos and Przemysław Błaszczak
The process of rehearsal in Attis Theatre is not the performance of a dramatic concept; it is an adventure on a journey to the landscape of memory, a search for the lost keys of unity between body and speech, the word as a natural unity.
Heiner Müller, Berlin, 1987
The workshop is an introduction to the renowned and influential method of Theordoros Terzopoulos that is being taught in International Drama Academies, Drama Schools and Universities and has inspired actors all over the world. Terzopoulos' Method focuses on the emancipation of the trapped energy and voice and aims to reconstitute the lost unity between the word and the body.
This training paradigm through a sequence of dynamic physical and vocal exercises is created to cultivate the fundamental principles of the performer's craft: diaphragmatic breath control, in-body concentration, strengthening and activation of the corporal axles in connection to the body center, liberation of the sound sources and resonators of the body. The participants will investigate the elements of the training to a rhythmic interpretation of a text (ancient Greek tragedy and classic texts).

Meeting with Theodoros Terzopoulos and presentation of the firlm "Theatre Ecomium"

Dec 28 (Wednesday) - 6.00 p.m.

THEATRE ECOMIUM
87', interviews by Giorgos Voudiklaris and Dimistris Trikas, production: Dimistra Dernikou, direction of photography: Yiannis Spiliopoulos, Kostas Tsekouras, script and direction: Dimitris Trikas
A documentary from Dimitris Trikas on the work of Theodoros Terzopoulos. The director talks about the history of Attis Theatre, the essence of theatrical research, his fascination with classical tragedy, the dramas of Bertolt Brecht and Heiner Müller, and the role of training and theatre education. He discusses three important strands in the work of the Attis Theatre: ontological, political and erotic. All are evident in the group's performances, including Euripides' Bacchae, Müller's Mauser, Ajax the Madness and Strindberg's Mademoiselle Julie, excerpts of which are interwoven in the film.

PROMOTION OF THE BOOK "THE RETURN OF DIONYSUS – THE METHOD OF THEODOROS TERZOPOULOS"

Dec 29 (Thursday) - 6.00 p.m.

Meeting with Theodoros Terzopoulos, Savvas Stroumpos and Przemysław Błaszczak.
Moderator: Monika Blige.

The performer from antiquity is the definition of the Body, is synonymous to the Body. The theater today should restore and cultivate with ethos, anew, the idea of the universal body. The performer must be at the center of the theatrical action, with self-awareness, knowledge and militancy. The cultivation of the body, the temple of situations, instincts and senses, is an agonizing call in our times, which are constantly threatened by barbarism.
The world has changed and the performer must cultivate a fruitful criticism toward things, constantly expressing his agony: theater is something else than what we thought till today and somewhere else has to go. We need to reconsider theater through the art of the performer. I believe that this is the way of the theater in the 21st century, a century of many redefinitions. Dionysus is missing, he is in exile, the idea of the confrontational man is lost and the road towards measure, harmony, Ithaca has disappeared. Will it be found? Will Dionysus return?
The internationally acclaimed theatre director Theodoros Terzopoulos is one of the most significant European directors, having staged more than 2000 performances throughout the world (from Beijing and Taiwan to New York and Colombia). His Method is published in many European languages under the title The Return of Dionysus, and is broadly used as a means of actors' training, enriching thereby a lively European tradition. Terzopoulos' Method is neither culture-specific nor culture-restrictive. It is an anthropological method founded on the basic laws of both the omission and the dilation of the daily body in order for a new acting self to be created. Not surprisingly, Dionysus, the God of Destruction and Rebirth, was always a great inspiration for the director, proving the fact that the Dionysian is both an artistic impulse and a form-creating force.
The meeting, for which the starting point is the Polish edition of the Theodoros Terzopoulos' book The Return of Dionysus (Polish edition by The Grotowski Institute, Wrocław 2016), will be participated by Theodoros Terzopoulos and his actors Savvas Stroumpos and Przemysław Błaszczak, as well as Monika Blige, the Grotowski Institute's Deputy Director for Programming and co-ordinator the activities of the Publishing Section.