WORKSHOPS

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.   

Frederique Lecomte - Workshop

There was a constant musical soundtrack to Frederique’s workshop, music for warm-ups, as underscoring for exercises, and in order to change the mood for devised scenes, subverting the existing mood, pulling the response away from easy empathy, and working as a ‘contrapuntal force’. This phrase offers elucidation of much of Frederique’s methodology and philosophy of practice, shaping content to rejoinder received wisdom, to dismantle sentimentality, and to encourage iconoclasm against easy binaries of victim and perpetrator. The second workshop in the week’s schedule, she controlled the room with pitch-perfect provocation and humour, sometimes so quiet that we would all have to lean-in to hear her instructions, and at other times, hollering at us to wail more, cry louder, suffer more than the person next to us…

Whilst playful and maverick, her work is deeply influenced by sociological and philosophical ideas, Frederique cited Roland Barthes frequently through this workshop, alighting on the ideas of ‘studium’ and ‘punctum’ to open apart scenes, and find ways to shape and reconfigure the scene around the ‘pricking point’. Frederique was dogged in her pursuit of good practice in the workshop, asking our students to repeat and repeat exercises in order to effect the change or shift she perceived possible, and in being resolute about the quality of the work she was able to articulate her drive for artistic integrity in all her professional theatre making, whether in a commercial theatre in Belgium, working  in community settings in Brussels, or in a soccer field in Bujumbura.

Iman - workshop

Iman had constructed her workshop around a particular agenda; to speak about the UK’s role in the partitioning of Palestine through the Balfour declaration in 1917, and to make young British people aware of the past century of upheaval for the region and the unresolved legacy of conflict. Iman has delivered theatre workshops and lectures around the world, often focussing on the use of ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’ methodology, and the insight that she has gained in developing Augusto Boal’s system for her own socio-political context. Iman and Yasmin took the group through nearly four hours of exercises that culminated in group work where ‘Image Theatre’ was extended into interlinked scenes, coaching the group through conversations and illustrations of daily life In Palestine to creatively imagine how it might be to exist under such conditions.

Iman was very aware that many in the room had not experienced such uncertainty, insecurity or fear in their daily life, but tried to use exercises that explored power and the victim/perpetrator symbiosis to create a bridge towards glimmerings of empathy and understanding. The student practitioners found this workshop inspiring and profoundly moving, drawing them towards a politics that had previously seemed distant and ‘other’, and energised by Iman’s persuasive leadership of the room, allowing them to feel secure and valued in the midst of challenging discussions.

Dijana Milosevic - Workshop

This workshop had a profound effect on everyone taking part. Dijana asked us all to remain silent for the duration of a two-hour walk, but the silence lasted long after we all had permission to speak once more. After an opening dialogue exercise where all the participants were asked to share with the group how they were feeling (how they were really feeling, and not just what they might feel was acceptable to share), Dijana asked us to trust her that ‘something magical’ would happen on this walk. We were instructed not to talk, not to mime, not to try to communicate things, but rather to let things happen to us, to notice, to be aware, to be in the moment. This workshop early on Thursday morning, saw participants tired and not a little overwhelmed by the pace and intensity of the residency, and a number of eyebrows were raised about the prospect of the ‘nothingness’ ahead of us. But under Dijana’s assured and empathetic guidance we set off as a peculiar silent army across the concrete of the campus and out on to the lakes and fields beyond.

The emotions expressed on that walk came thick and plentiful, and such oddities and curiosities emerged from the (familiar to some) physical landscapes, and in the dynamised emotional interactions between the company. On our return, Dijana asked the group to write an individual response to the walk and then began a story-telling circle where the writing was shared – we have included Dijana’s and Ivana’s pieces here, but many were too personal and emotionally reflective to include on this video.

Ruwanthie de Chickera - Workshop

In a week replete with exercises and practical work, Ruwanthie’s workshop was a welcome intellectual oasis, as well as being an opportunity for the vision and values of the Ariadne network to be revisited through discussion about the purpose and process of making art in fractured and challenged communities. Ruwanthie presented a lecture and discussion session alongside her recent collaborator, Professor David Cotterrell, Research Professor of Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University, and an installation artist working across varied media including video, audio, interactive media, artificial intelligence, device control and hybrid technology. 

At the workshop they presented a lecture on the subject of ‘Empathy and Risk’ arguing that an inflated and false sense of risk allows us to continue to perpetuate both militarism and militaristic thinking to resolve conflict, which benefits particular commercial super structures, whilst maintaining an impotent poor in a static victimhood. This led Ruwanthie and David to pose the question about where the artist is most effective in these stagnant situations, with Ruwanthie noting that her reluctance to draw near to power structures had changed over the past few years in Sri Lanka, relaying that she had greater impact in talking with decision-makers and influencers, and acknowledging that the theatre can sometimes function more as a political echo-chamber rather than the place of genuine encounter and transformation that we artists might wish.

You can see more of the lecture and conversation here under the discussion session, with the conversation about advocacy and efficacy continuing between the Ariadne members long after the filming had finished.