The work sessions are considered as moments of research to reveal the range of possibilities and richness contained in each individual, actor, performer, artist. They are marked by the attention paid to the creative process. They encourage the discovery and expansion of each person’s original creation.

 

Each session is placed under the sign of a theme driven by a conflict, which concerns both the individual and society. One of the challenges consists of translating these conflict zones into effective languages. Texts of a dramatic, philosophical or poetic nature, interested in particular in finding keys to global understanding of the human being, serve as an impetus and a source of inspiration for the work. These materials are considered as places where we await, possibilities to express hidden truths that we carry within us and which long to be heard. The ultimate goal is to achieve a form of expression where, through the alchemy of the act, the conflict is transformed into an art, carrying beauty and truth.

 

Content

“It must be given to the actor, one day, in his life, to feel, to hear what he has in his heart, what life is when it is in the presence of others.”

 

The workshops are envisaged as times of meeting and intense creation. The work takes place in the form of intensive sessions dedicated to the research and practice of the actor and/or performer. by means of presence, body and speech. One of the objectives is to position oneself as a creative artist, around the key notions of necessity, action, speaking out, and authenticity. The work aims to explore in various forms the art of authentic presence, dramatic and performative action, living action and speech.

 

the work is based on a practice combining structured improvisations (inspired by the Russian method widely used in Eastern countries (tradition inherited from Stanislavski), the actor's play of action or study analysis) and given tasks ( inspired by a current rather relating to the evolution of stage art and its encounter with performative arts) aiming to develop a language combining authentic presence, living speech, body and the creation of living visual images. The work aims in particular to understand how to use improvisation to find in play and presence, an authentic inner movement. It aims to learn to generate and direct action, within the framework of a monologue, a solo, a dialogue and also to create a scenic or performative composition in the perspective of an overall creation where the movement belongs as much to the individuality as to the collective.

 

Action analysis 

“When we say action, which also means movement, we are talking about the invisible”

 

The work is based in particular on a variant of the Russian acting method calledstudy Oraction analysis, transmitted by several generations of renowned directors and teachers in Russia and Eastern Europe (directors such as Anatoli Vassiliev or Kristian Lupa in particular have based their entire practice around this method).

 

“The objective of the study consists of freeing the actor (from the text and the audience), commented Anatoli Vassiliev on this subject, to make the theater alive, the action immediate (…) The text acts in a paradoxical way” ;: he continues the theater. It diverts theater from its true purpose: to function as a means of immediate communication between men (…).”

 

The study is a method of rehearsal based on a principle of rigorous improvisation. Improvisation is considered as a tool and a step allowing the invisible material contained both in a source textual material to be revealed, as well as in the inner life of the creative artist or performer who draws inspiration from it for his own creation. It allows us to reveal the text of behavior, sensations, emotions. It is a process entirely dedicated to the internal process. It is based on the discovery and listening to the inner movement. He analyzes the action.

 

Life on stage, a real commitment from the person

The improvisation in this process leads the artist on stage to approach the creative work as a written score of his own life, between personal experience, imagination and creative aspiration. He tastes the mystery of joining a double who, in real life, remains buried in fantasy, impossibility, frustration, desire or dream. He can thus free himself from constraints and conquer his creative freedom, transgress limits, indulge in life.

 

The creative personality

The creative personality is a key notion in the Russian and Polish theater tradition. It refers to the creative potential of each individual, evokes the hidden and poetic language that their nature contains and that the work aims to reveal. All aspects of the work center around this notion that the practice seeks to open and develop. 

 

“I want to enter the room and discover an unusual personality. I expect a discovery from this personality.”

 

“  It is to the extent that unfaithful to one's own law one does not rise to personality that one has missed the meaning of life[3]. 

 

Protagonist /Figure

In terms of presence and action we will base ourselves around the notion of Figure. Amorous figure wrote Barthes in his Fragments of a lover's discourse, each of them bursts and vibrates alone, Unruly Protagonist wrote Augusto Boal taking Thespis, first artist playwright, as a model,

 

“Thespis was a multi-faceted artist. He wrote poems and, joining the choir, sang and performed in harmony with it, the movements that he himself had designed. He was a true artist, he was always true to himself. One day, Solon, the lawgiver came to see his play. (…) Halfway through the poem, Thespis felt strange and began to shout “Someone, hold me back!” ". As no one stopped him, he then broke away from the choir and, delirious like a bacchante, let escape from his mouth everything that came to his mind. He talked about the city and people, politics and laws. What at first seemed like an irresponsible actor's joke, ended up looking like a joke. gradually to  a structured speech. (…) What was happening, how strange was it? How could a man, Thespis or another, dare to deviate from a well-ordered structure, and oppose a protesting 'No' to the commonly accepted 'Yes'? (…) After the show Solon went to speak to Thespis. 'Aren't you ashamed of lying like this in front of so many people, and what's more in the middle of such a beautiful, harmonious choir?' 'I said what seemed true to me,' Thespis protested.' Without realize this Thespis had created the Protagonist, the Proto, the First, the one who advances alone, rebel, rebellious, the one who thinks and acts for himself – without imitating anyone, outside of any mimesis or mimicry . Revealing himself to  himself and opening up to new possibilities, Thespis had screamed at the unknown.

 

Double acting creator.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1]. C.G Jung, The soul and life

 

[2]. Anatoli Vassiliev, in Seven or eight theater lessons

 

[3]. Carl Jung, The Becoming of the Personality