foto. Ilaria Costanzo
Enrolment to the workshops: paula@kana.art.pl
Costs: 100 PLN ZOT/ATA - individual settlements
From December 16 to 21 and from December 28 to 29 we would like to invite the audience for two meetings within the frames of this year's edition of the project OKNO - ZBLIŻENIA. The project is dedicated to presentation of various currents of creative pursuits in contemporary theatre, as well as to exchange of practices and informal artistic and cultural education. The project's intention is to familiarize the participants with the broadest possible spectrum of activities of the invited artists and with their experiences. The unifying motif of the OKNO 2016 events is the theme of BODY / VOICE.
After the workshop sessions conducted by Ditte Berkeley and Przemysław Błaszczak (ZAR Theatre) this time we will have the unique opportunity to participate in a comprehensive meetings with two prominent Practitioners of Theatre - the people who have spent decades searching and exploring methods of work with actor and transgressing the limits of art: finding the essence in work with body, voice and motion. One of them is Thomas Richards, the longtime disciple, collaborator, heir and continuator of Jerzy Grotowski, one of the most important figures of Polish and European theatre. The other is Thedoros Terzopoulos - the director and founder of the Attis Theatre, the revolutionary reformer of classical Greek theatre, the author of the method taught at dozens of theatre academies and universities all over the world.
As part of Szczecin's meeting, Thomas Richards with the Workcenter team will conduct theatre workshops titled "Living Song: Action / Intention". The audience will also have the opportunity to witness the presentation of the creative process within the theatre work "The Living Room". The conference "Thirty years of Workcenter" will takes the audience on a journey through the different phases of research of performing arts developed at the Workcenter.
The OKNO - ZBLIŻENIA 2016, "BODY / VOICE" project was financially supported by the Ministry of Culture, the program: Cultural Education.
Editorial cooperation: RMF Classic
INFORMATION ABOUT EVENTS AND ARTISTS
WORKCENTER OF JERZY GROTOWSKI AND THOMAS RICHARDS
Events:
THE LIVING ROOM
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 WORKCENTER: A RETROSPECTIVE
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
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 Artists:
Thomas Richards (B.A. Yale University, M.A. the University of Bologna, Ph.D. University of Paris VIII) is Artistic Director of the research of Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards. He began his apprenticeship with Grotowski in 1985, and their work together developed until Grotowski's passing away in 1999.
Thomas Richards arrived in Italy in 1986 with Jerzy Grotowski from the University of California, Irvine, where he had participated in Grotowski's "Focused Research Program in Objective Drama". In Italy, at first Mr. Richards worked as Grotowski's assistant, but soon he became the leader of one of the work teams, and then Grotowski's "essential collaborator". Eventually, Mr. Richards became Director of the Research Program on Performing Arts at the Workcenter. Richards was a fundamental driving force in the research developed at the Workcenter that has come to be known as "Art as Vehicle". In 1996, Grotowski decided to change the name of the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski to Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, because, as he specified, the direction of the practical work already concentrated itself in the hands of Thomas Richards.
Concerning Richards, Grotowski stated, "The nature of my work with Thomas Richards has the character of 'transmission'; to transmit to him that to which I have arrived in my life: the inner aspect of the work." Richards was the main creator and doer of the performative opus within the Workcenter research Art as Vehicle entitled Downstairs Action (filmed by Mercedes Gregory in 1989); he was the creator and main doer of Action, and the creator and a doer of The Letter (formerly: An Action in creation), the initial stage of which was called The Twin: an Action in creation. He co-directed One breath left, One breath left - Dies Ira, Dies Ira and Dies Ira: The Preposterous Theatrum Interioris Show; performative opuses created at the Workcenter inside Project The Bridge: Developing Theatre Arts.
Mr. Richards was the Artistic Director of the Workcenter's project Tracing Roads Across (April 2003 to April 2006), supported by the "Culture 2000" Programme of the European Union. He was also the Artistic Director of Horizons (2007-2009 -Wroclaw), a Workcenter project which culminated in the Zero Budget Festival (2009), organized under Richard's direction.
Since 2008, Thomas Richards has been leading a new team at the Workcenter, the Focused Research Team in Art as Vehicle. With his team he directs and conducts work on the opuses: The Living Room (premiered in 2009), L'heure fugitive (premiered in 2015), and The Underground: A Response to Dostoevsky (premiered in 2016). He is the author of At Work with Grotowski on Physical Actions, The Edge-Point of Performance and Heart of Practice: Within the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards.
The Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski (named since 1996 the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards) was founded in 1986 in Pontedera, Italy, at the initiative of Jerzy Grotowski, the Centro per la Sperimentazione e la Ricerca Teatrale (now Fondazione Pontedera Teatro) and the University of California, Irvine, in collaboration with Peter Brook (Centre International de Créations Théatrales), as a creative institute of permanent education for adult artists. At the Workcenter throughout the last 13 years of his life, Grotowski developed a line of performance research known as Art as Vehicle, in which, as in certain old traditions, the focus on art goes together with an approach that emphasizes the interiority of the human being, a research which he continued until his death in 1999. Within this creative investigation, he worked very closely with Thomas Richards whom he called his 'essential collaborator'. During these thirteen years of intense practical work, Grotowski transmitted to Richards the fruit of his lifetime research, what he referred to as 'the inner aspect of the work'.
Grotowski entrusted Richards and Mario Biagini, a key member of the Workcenter team since its beginnings, as the sole legatees of his estate, which includes his entire body of written work. Since 1999, acting as the Workcenter's Artistic Director and Associate Director, respectively, Richards and Biagini continue to develop the Workcenter's line of performance research.
Since 2007/2008 the Workcenter has hosted two teams: the Focused Research Team in Art as Vehicle, directed by Thomas Richards, and Open Program, directed by Mario Biagini. Twenty artists from ten different nationalities are engaged in the activities of the Workcenter, which articulate in a systematic research on performing arts. The Workcenter dedicates itself to the professional growth of its artists, and concentrated efforts are made in order that the team members uncover and develop their unique creative potentialities. Grotowski never wished to make of his research a dogmatized practice, rather he emphasized the need for development. At the Workcenter new discoveries arise from continuous practice, and the investigation is enriched by a living link between generations, which is sustained by growth and distillation of practical knowledge. Today, the Workcenter operates within the National Theatre - Fondazione Teatro della Toscana.
More information:
The Focused Research Team in Art as Vehicle, which commenced at the Workcenter in February 2008 under the direction of Thomas Richards, continues research in the domain of Art as Vehicle, a praxis that from the Workcenter's beginning has been based on the creation of lines of actions structured with and around ancient traditional songs. The basis of Art as Vehicle is the investigation into the way in which the performing arts can be a tool for the transformation of the artist's perception and presence, a means of awakening subtle aspects of experience through work on structured streams of action and song. It is a long-term research that requires of each person involved a disciplined and devoted work, with the intention of coming in contact with one's innermost sources, to move with them towards what Grotowski and Richards have called a 'transformation of energy'. Art as Vehicle is therefore a field in which the performing artist works on the rich potential of experiencing what the present moment contains. The Focused Research Team in Art as Vehicle is currently exploring how the potentialities invoked in this realm of art can exist within and in relation to daily life, and how such performing acts can serve as a bridge toward an opening of perception not only in the frame of the act itself, but also in our daily experiences and interactions.
