Theatre and Performance Studies News

PhD Student Eleanor Chadwick was awarded a grant from ArtUniverse to attend the IUGTE Arts Oasis International Residency for Performers at Monastero Santa Croce in Italy last May.

Led by theatre and dance practitioner Sergei Ostrenko, the residency involved working in a group of 17 international participants for 6 days on a retreat at Monastero Santa Croce in Tuscany, Italy. The course involved a mixture of traditional and contemporary techniques and ideas, including Thai Chi (Chuan Chen style), the physical action of Konstantin Stanislavsky, Vsevolod Meyerhold’s Biomechanics, and Contact and Structural Improvisation. There were also influences, links, or overlap with Mak Yong, Butoh, Qi Gong, Alexander technique, Pilates, Suzuki, Kinetic Environment, Viewpoints, and the work of practitioners Eugenio Barba, Jerzy Grotowski and Rudolf von Laban.

The annual residency brings together performers from all over the world: actors, dancers, teachers, and circus performers of various ages and nationalities. The IUGTE residencies foster intercultural collaborations and connections across the globe, and focus on exploring the coming together of traditional and contemporary approaches.

A key part of Ostrenko’s process was the idea of gaining new knowledge and understanding through the body, by using physical exercises with minimal verbal communication or text. It explored the way in which, in theatrical work, there is a kind of understanding that cannot be readily achieved through intellectual processes but is accessed more directly through the body. John J. Schranz speaks of the ‘unique “knowing”, which we call “embodiment”’:[1] a type of understanding of action that cannot be cognised or put into words, but which is known somatically. The Arts Oasis residency gives space to explore this kind of ‘knowing’: the emphasis is upon physical and tactile exploration, experimentation and understanding.

Eleanor is planning to attend the annual IUGTE International Conference at Retzhof Castle, Styria, Austria in December. The multidisciplinary conference is titled ‘Theatre Between Tradition and Contemporaneity’ and focuses on the bridge between tradition and contemporaneity in performing arts around the world.

For further info see: http://www.iugte.com/projects/theatretradition

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[1] John J. Schranz, ‘A Rope Over an Abyss’, in Clelia Falletti, Gabriele Sofia and Victor Jacono (ed.), Theatre and Cognitive Neuroscience (London, Bloomsbury Methuen Publishing, 2016), pp.117-130 (p.118).