University
of Exeter Drama Department
THE CHANGING
BODY:
The
bodymind in contemporary training and performance
Pre-symposium workshops Pre-symposium workshop booking form |
Pre-symposium
workshops There is a
choice of four workshops led by Niamh Dowling, Bella Merlin, Phillip
Zarrilli and David Zinder. Please choose ONE, but you can indicate
a second choice. You do not have to be attending the symposium itself to take part in one of these workshops.
Tuesday 3rd
January 2006: Wednesday 4th
January 2006: Thursday 5th
January 2006: Niamh Dowling
Moving into Change My interests are in the body and voice, the stories and tension they hold and how to release them and use them creatively. Central to my work is the way we use our bodies habitually and identifying the role that useful and non-useful tension plays in this. The work begins with the central principles of the Alexander Technique and develops them into movement, voice, transformation and text as required.
1. Starting with simple anatomical information which increases understanding
of how our bodies are structured Niamh Dowling is currently Head of School of Theatre at Manchester Metropolitan University. She trained with Monika Pagneux in Paris, and as a teacher of the Alexander Technique. Niamh has worked as Movement Director at Manchester’s Library theatre, Royal exchange and Contact theatre, Sheffield Crucible, Bolton Octagon and at West Yorkshire Playhouse. She regularly teaches workshops abroad including actors in Malta, Syria and Africa, psychotherapists and performers in Poland, refugees and nuns in Central America, dancers in Uruguay, performers in Argentina and an eighteen month movement training course for Blanc Space a theatre company in Singapore. Bella Merlin In this workshop, we will try and discover how a group of actors can create a psycho-physical space both within the individual and between the members of the ensemble. We will explore the changes in the body when that space is developed and how the minute messages conveyed between the actor’s body and imagination, and between one actor’s body and another become the core tools for developing a state of truthful listening on stage. Drawing upon the ideas of Stanislavsky, Michael Chekhov, Jerzy Grotowski and aspects of Butoh, we will combine physical technique with free improvisations. Bella Merlin is an actor, writer and lecturer in Drama, whose recent performances include David Hare’s The Permanent Way (Out of Joint/National Theatre) (theatre), Lucy Gough’s Mapping the Soul (BBC Radio 4) and Cathy Swale in BBC’s Casualty. Recent publications include With the Rogue’s Company: Henry IV at the National Theatre (Oberon Books, 2005) and co-editing with Russian scholar Andrei Kirillov of Michael Chekhov’s autobiographical The Path of the Actor (Routledge, 2005). Phillip Zarrilli
The workshop begins with pre-performative psychophysical training to prepare and awaken the bodymind through Asian martial/meditation arts--Chinese taiquiquan, Indian yoga, and the closely related martial art, kalarippayattu. Bodymind connections are practically elabored through the exercises as are a sense of activation through breath in movement, the development of focus/concentration, circulation of energy through the body and awakening the bodymind to partners, ensemble, and the performance environment. Over long-term practice, this work ideally enables participants’ bodies to ‘become all eyes’, i.e. to develop an intuitive awareness necessary for performance. We will concentrate on basic psychophysical training through repetition of exercises and introduction of underlying principles. We then begin to ‘apply’ a few of the principles-in-practice through structured improvisations. During the final part of the workshop, participants will begin to explore application of the principles and techniques of training to physicalization of action/image by applying those principles to a physical score. The point of departure in approaching any text is impulse and the subsequent physical action/task. In addition: Phillip Zarrilli is internationally known for training actors in psychophysical process through Asian martial/meditation arts, and as a director. He runs a private studio (Tyn-y-parc C.V.N. Kalari/Studio) in Wales, and conducts workshops throughout the world—including recent workshops or long-term residences at the Centre of Studies on Jerzy Grotowski (Poland), Seoul International Theatre Festival, International Workshop Festival (London), National Theatre of Greece, Theatre Training Initiative (London), Tainan-Jen Theatre Company (Taiwan), TTRP (Singapore), Gardzienice Theatre Association, and Passe Partout (Netherlands), among many others. His recent productions of Samuel Beckett’s plays in Los Angeles (2000), Austria (2001), and Ireland (2004) have won critical acclaim and awards for ‘best actress’ and ‘courageous production’ in Los Angeles. In 2002 he collaborated with UK-based award-winning playwright, Kaite O’Reilly and Theatre Asou (Austria) on a semi-devised performance, Speaking Stones, that opened in Austria in September, 2002, received its English premiere in Wroclaw, Poland on invitation of the Centre of Studies on Jerzy Grotowski in 2003, and was again performed in Aflenz, Austria in 2004. In 2004 he also directed Ota Shogo’s The Water Station for TTRP at The Esplinade Theatres on the Bay in Singapore. This year he is directing Genet’s The Maids in Austria. In addition to his professional work, Zarrilli teaches psychophysical process as part of BA and MA/MFA (Physical Performance Option) courses at the University of Exeter, U.K. His numerous books include (editor) Acting (Re)Considered (2nd edition, forthcoming), When the Body Becomes All Eyes (1998), Kathakali Dance-Drama: Where Gods and Demons Comes to Play (2000), and (editor) Martial Arts in Actor Training (1993). He is currently writing a new book with accompanying interactive DVD-Rom on his approach to training actors, The Psychophysical Actor at Work: acting ‘at the nerve ends’ (London: Routledge Press, forthcoming). David Zinder
The participants should choose one character from a well-known play (ancient, Shakespearean, or modern classics), and come prepared with a brief monologue. If possible, they should also try to find a Japanese haiku poem and learn it – all 17 syllables! – by heart. The work is intensely physical, so comfortable clothes are required and knee pads (soft ones, not the rollerblade type) are recommended. David Zinder: Born in Israel, worked as a professional actor in Israel for six years, of which two years were spent studying and performing with a professional improvisation theatre group. Received a BA from the Drama Dept. of Manchester University in England (class of '66), and a PhD. from the University of California at Berkeley (class of '76). Taught acting, directing and theory at the Theatre Arts Department of Tel Aviv University from 1976 to 2004, during which time I also directed over 60 productions both professionally and in theatre schools in Israel and abroad. A Master Teacher of the Michael Chekhov Technique and a founding member of the Michael Chekhov Association (MICHA) I have been giving workshops in ImageWork Training and the Michael Chekhov Technique all over the US, the UK, Europe (East and West) and in the Far East. For the past four years I have worked extensively in Romania, and my most recent productions there have been The Dybbuk and The Bacchae. In January I will be doing a production of Macbeth at the Tamasi Aron Theatre in Sfantu Gheorghe, Romania. My book on acting training: Body Voice Imagination: A Training for the Actor was published by Routledge, New York in 2002. |
Workshop Schedule
The workshops will start with the whole body and look at individual
patterns of use in everyday life and in performance. We will then continue
to break the time over the three days down into five parts, each of
which will be informed by Alexander s Directions. The components are
head and neck, spine, pelvis, arms and legs and finally coming back
to the whole body with the new information for each part applied to
the whole. There are three stages within each body section: 
Overview: This three day workshop introduces participants to a psychophysical
paradigm and approach to awakening the actor’s bodymind for performance.
It focuses on developing the contemporary actor’s interiority,
i.e., how the actor might discover, awaken, shape, understand, and
deploy ‘energy’, awareness, focus/concentration, and feeling
to the ‘matter’ of performance—the impulses, structure,
contours, and texture of the tasks or actions that constitute a specific
performance score shaped by particular dramaturgies.
Creativity
in the theatre involves the external expression in physical form
of the actor's imagination.
At the same time it is based on fundamental
techniques relating to the actor's instruments of expression: the
body and the voice in space. In order to turn all of these into art
radiated
out to the audience, technique is required – and that is the
starting point of the workshop. Both ImageWork and the Michael Chekhov
Technique are based on the understanding that there exists a profound
symbiosis in the performance space between the body and the imagination.
In the first two days we will be exploring techniques of physical awareness,
physical expression, developing the actor's imagination and understanding
the body/imagination connection. The infrastructure for all of this
will be Improvisation Technique. These two days will culminate in exploring
techniques for the use of images in workshop, rehearsal and performance.
On this basis we will spend the last day looking at four basic elements
of the Chekhov Technique: the Imaginary Body, Centers, the Psychological
Gesture and Archetypes.