Hope Azeda - Workshop

The imperative of Hope’s workshop was making time and space for everyone present; for everyone in this embryonic company of people working together for the next week to be acknowledged, heard, and welcomed. Hope’s was the first workshop of the week and she was open about the fact she hadn’t planned much before she arrived, rather that she read the ‘temperature’ of the room, and then reached into her director’s ‘toolbox’ for what she needed. Thus, here we have a collection of exercises that are familiar to many practitioners, but carefully curated and reframed to build a sense of ensemble and shared understanding. She leads the workshop with huge energy and generosity, but with sharp discrimination for best practice, and providing constant analysis about the purpose and process of the exercises.

The workshop is peppered with information about Hope’s practice, and her experiences in making theatre and encountering seemingly unreconcilable trauma in the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda. This is further expanded upon in her interview with Dr Kat Low recorded at the Mercury Theatre as part of the Festival LINK HERE. You may be able to discern from this video that Hope is keenly aware of the relocation of her work from fragile and contested contexts to a rehearsal room in the UK, but she still opens up her exercises in such a way that does not negate the experiences of those from other backgrounds, instead promoting her belief that theatre enables recovery through a shared sense of humanity.