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Saturday, December 27, 2008
Calendar
ACTING TRAINING & REHEARSALS
Thur - 7 to 9 pm
Sund - 4 to 8 pm
PERFORMANCES
August 29 to 30
Saturday to Sunday
Mundo Theatre Ensemble Project
Mundo Theatre Ensemble is a group of artists dedicated to the expansion of theatrical experience for
KC’s theatergoers, offering them access to the oeuvre of international authors,
directors, choreographers and designers with a strong emphasis given to the high quality of the productions.
MTE is also a meeting point for artistic creation and discussion that will provide the group members and the audience with a cultural opportunity to access the best in classic, modern and contemporary dramaturgy produced around the world.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Acting Method 2 - Eugenio Barba
"At that time," he says now, "there was no idea that theatre could be something other than a building and a text." The young Odin company had neither. "We were exiles in a foreign country. We couldn't speak the language. We had to build a relationship with our spectators from something else: sound, actions, sensuality, proximity."
Necessity bred fascination. Barba has devoted his life to studying the principles of performance "Why, when I see two actors doing the same thing, am I fascinated by one and not the other?" and the theatre's social value.
On their extensive foreign travels, Odin have sought out local cultures and communities where their huge, ritualistic outdoor events can be paid for not in cash, but in kind, with plays, songs or dances by the people who comprise their audience. Barba calls this "barter"; Peter Brook has experimented with similar practices. "There is a value to the theatre," Barba insists, "which is not connected to its objective originality." He cites Latin American examples. "The greatest of companies may not make extraordinary art. But by the simple fact of existing, they represent islands of freedom in countries whose dictatorships have their hands on all means of expression."
To Barba, a company's value lies not in what theatre it makes, but in how it makes it. "Every performance imposes a certain view of the world," he argues. "Odin is built on certain values. Not anarchist, nor any of those stereotypes or prejudices. But values which make us live much as we lived at the beginning, like peasants, because we had nothing.
"If you are poor economically, you are rich in time you can waste all the time you wish to make a performance to the best of your abilities. What is very tragic is that even young theatre-makers who are in such situations are already contaminated by the industrial way of thinking of theatre. They want very quickly to produce productions and show them and be recognised."
In a world that fetishises the 15-minute, fresh-faced famous, and in a theatre culture that is sublimated to the processes of profit, subsidy and scheduling, that's fighting talk. But Barba is a romantic; he sees theatre not as a job, but a vocation. Of rootless Odin he says, "our country is this profession. We have a pride such as used to exist in artisanship and which now seems to have been lost."
Source: The Independent. Brian Logan: Eugenio Barba - A rebel heart that doesn't miss a beat.
Acting method 1 - Antunes Filho
A Pedra do Reino, directed by Antunes Filho
As a recent and educator of the theater, Filho arrived at his strong theoretical point of view through practical experimentation. His technique is complex in its attempt to reach a level of simplicity and truth. He fights against naturalism which he perceives is an extension of television acting, one where the actor "fakes at being natural but can never be that." Filho favors the actors who have developed their cultural sensibility over those who are adept at experiencing their emotions and projecting them on stage. His goals are to prevent all voids between the voice and the body; to propose a discussion through theater and to share that experience with the community.
The Brazilian stage director developed his acting method and keep teaching it in a free course in acting at Center for Theatre Research (CPT) in Sao Paulo.
The goals of the theater school went beyond the conventional Stanislavskian interpretation courses taught at any of Brazil's acting institutes. To this day Filho continues to emphasize the need to develop the actor's consciousness and their responsibility as social beings. In the training, he instructs the young actor to have "above all a philosophy and ideology as a man of the theater, a clear point of view in your approach to realities."
Filho's opposition to any display of narcissism on stage is twofold. On the one hand, it is a natural reflection of his artistic manifesto: that Art must not be viewed as a luxury item for the elite, but as an accessible tool that can guide Brazil to its national consciousness and empower people to think about their reality. On the other hand, it is a consequence of his rigorous technique classes where actors are instructed in the development of their instruments. The training incorporates exercises based on Zen principles and on the writing found in the "Letter Concerning Motionless Comprehension" by an anonymous Japanese author from the seventeenth century, as well as techniques developed by contemporary Japanese director Suzuki.
Being both a research and experiment group, the members of the company (sixteen of whom are permanent) work six days a week for an average of fourteen hours a day on exercises that include dancing, music, swimming, circus techniques, capoeira (Afro/Brazilian martial arts), tai chi chuan and theory classes.
Antunes Filho is to find oneself in the presence of a piercing, intense artist who prefers the search for "pre-mythical language" to the sound of "polished, empty talk." In 1988, Filho's artistic trajectory was recognized by the Association of Theatre Critics who honored him with the International Trophy for Revealing Brazilian Theatre to the World.
Source: Susana Tubert "Antunes Filho: in search of a national identity". Americas (English Edition).Susana Tubert is editor of the theater/dance section of Mas magazine in New York and a 1991/92 Theater Communications Group/National Endowment for the Arts director fellow.
References: Strong conceptual works produced out there.
You can google the subjects for informations in English.
1. Theatre du Soleil
www.theatre-du-soleil.fr
Over the past thirty years Theatre du Soleil has become one of the most celebrated theatre companies in Europe, and Ariane Mnouchkine one of its best-known directors. The performance troupe is renowned for its cutting edge theatrical production and its collectivist practices and ideals.
2. Beyond the floating islands, Eugenio Barba, 282 pages
www.odinteatret.dk
| A collection of Eugenio Barba's most important writings about theatre, theatre pedagogy and theatre anthropology. 3. CPT - Theatrical Research Center www.sescsp.org.br/cpt/areas.cfm?cod=14 The creative processes developed at CPT, comprising different aspects from scenic manifestation, provoke the demolishment of old codes and their later transformation into new codes. 4. Ex Machine www.robertlepage.com 5. Laurie Anderson - United States Live (box set) 1984 www.laurieanderson.com |
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