October 16th 2009
,
INTERNSHIP OPPORTUNITY
Project and Administration Assistant

The Centre for Performance Research seeks an intern to work closely with Administrative Director, Helen Gethin, on all aspects of the administration of current CPR activities, including: the marketing and management of an ACW-funded Directors’ Training Forum in April 2010; general office management, financial management, fundraising, running of the ‘Performance Books’ bookshop, membership administration.

This is a great opportunity to receive training in arts administration whilst working as part of the small, creative CPR team that generates and supports a range of activities, programmes and initiatives. You will also have access to the CPR Resource Centre, an internationally recognised reference library and archive of books, journals, CDs, DVDs and photographs focusing on theatre and performance from around the world.

Previous interns have mainly been theatre, performance, anthropology or similar graduates wishing to gain work experience and extend their international contacts, but being a theatre graduate is not a prerequisite - interest, curiosity, enthusiasm and a hunger to learn, take part and work hard are the qualifications that we seek. Good communication skills and computer literacy are also important.

Graduates of the intern scheme have used it as a springboard to become artists, administrators or producers in companies and theatres in the UK and beyond, or have established their own company. Examples of the places that previous interns are currently working are: Arts Admin (UK), Theatreworks (Singapore), Landesbuehne Theatre (Germany), Blaengar (Wales), Theatre Alberta (Canada). To read testimonials by previous interns, go to
http://www.thecpr.org.uk/workingwith/interns.php

Based in beautiful West Wales by the sea, the CPR is housed within, and is a partner organisation of, the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at Aberystwyth University.

This is an entirely voluntary position. Weekly working hours and the duration of the position are negotiable depending on availability but a minimum commitment of 2 days per week for 12 weeks is requested.

For an application form or further information please contact Helen Gethin at CPR:
Tel +44 (0) 1970 622150. Email heg@aber.ac.uk
Or see the website: www.thecpr.org.uk

email:cprwww@aber.ac.uk
weblink(s):http://www.thecpr.org.uk/workingwith/interns.php.,

September 23rd 2009
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JERZY GROTOWSKI: THEATRE AND BEYOND – AN EXHIBITION
WEDNESDAY 23RD SEPTEMBER – THURSDAY 1ST OCTOBER

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Don’t miss this rare opportunity to see the largest, most comprehensive collection of material on the work of Jerzy Grotowski ever shown in public.

This exhibition aims to recall the spirit which animated the performances of Jerzy Grotowski’s company from its beginning in the 1950s until the 1980s, covering the period of its productions and its subsequent development during the ‘Paratheatre’ phase (in the 1970s) and beyond, including a focus on the ‘Theatre of Sources’ and connections with Indian culture.

The exhibition includes a reconstruction of the set of The Constant Prince built from original materials, with original costumes and props, and original parts of the set and props from Akropolis. It includes further rare posters, drawings, designs and rare films and videos. A special section, commissioned for this exhibition, presents new pictures by photographer Francesco Galli of the places and protagonists of the Theatre of Sources.

For more information or to arrange a visit outside normal opening hours, please contact CPR:

Phone- (0)1970 622133 / email- cprwww@aber.ac.uk / web- www.thecpr.org.uk

Venue: Studio 1, Parry Williams Building, Penglais Campus, Aberystwyth SY23

Price: Free

Opening times
Wed 23rd – Fri 25th Sept - 12pm to 4pm
Sat 26th - 12pm to 3pm
Mon 28th - 12pm to 4pm
Tues 29th, Wed 30th - 10am to 4pm
Thurs 1st Oct - 10am to 6pm

email:cprwww@aber.ac.uk
weblink(s):http://www.thecpr.org.uk/projects/index.php,
More information (click on the filenames to download):
Grotowski_Poster_copy.jpg
Exhibitioninfo.pdf

June 30th 2009
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AS YOU LIKE IT! - À la Carte Experimance
Performance by Finnish actress Outi Condit

Tuesday 30th June and Wednesday 1st July, 2.30pm – 5.00pm

As you like it - À la Carte Experimance Work In Progress is an intimate experimental theatre piece that explores "performance" as services, demands, and trade between the performer and the audience. The set is reminiscent of a gentle parlour setting and the performance is broken into the elementary components of a menu, with each item playing with shifts of power, emotion, and attention, with twists on the standard actor-participant-audience triad. Services are requested by audience members, which may then be performed for the guest, for the whole audience, by the guest and/or with the whole audience. Sometimes the performer leads, but at other times, one guest may control the service, or the whole audience may be involved. Participation at all times is entirely voluntary and consensual, anyone can decline participation if they feel uncomfortable, and the performance is formed uniquely from the group that collects at the start (hence, no late arrivals - apologies). Due to the nature of the performance, only 8-12 guests are allowed, with an optimum of 10.

As you like it is more than a performance: it may be approached as a game, like a ultra-modern take on Victorian parlour games, a journey of self-development within the safety of a facilitated group, or as an open space that the participants mould to their likeness, depending on each guest's wish to participate and the contribution and experience they bring individually and collectively. The performance works best with a group from a variety of backgrounds, and thus the invitation to attend is extended to all staff and students at the Centre for Performance Research/Department of Theatre, Film and TV, and their associates.

The nature of the performance means that each performance is unique, hence the permanent subtitle Work in Progress. Limited VIP places will be offered by the actor – VIP guests will receive special service including refreshments, a larger variety of choices, and more opportunities to influence the performance. This reflects the structures of power seen everywhere in our society but here is approached as another element of the game. The structure of the performance is two parts, each about an hour long, with an interval, although the time within the space often seems to fly, unlike the passive watching of a play.

Outi Condit is a well known Finnish actress, described as "belonging to a generation of young and wild performers". Out of necessity and volition she moves back and forth between the supposedly sophisticated stages of state theatres to underground clubs and venues where she feels at home.

Feedback from numerous performances suggest that most people feel changed by the performance in positive ways, and it provides an opportunity for self-reflection afterwards as well as bonding between the guests within that time and space. Continued connection after the service is available via the internet.

As you like it À la Carte Experimance Work In Progress was created by Outi Condit through a series of experiments in the living rooms of friends. It has since been performed in the basement of Turku City Theatre, where it was elected “The cultural event of the year” 2008. In the spring 2009 it was performed in Berlin and during the summer it will tour different venues in the UK.

CAST in UK:
Concept and performance: Outi Condit
Assistant: Kelly Morris
Supported by: Turku City Theatre, Turun teatterikerho säätiö

The proposed menu consists of:
A PIECE OF ME
Blood
Sweat
Tears
Shame
Regression

ENTRÉE ADVENTURE
Challenge and Reward
Inner Journey

A TASTE OF TRUTH
Eye to Eye
Veritaserum
The Vital Lie
Naked Oracle Foretells your Death
Manifesto

FORBIDDEN FRUIT
Orgasm Simulator
Private Pleasures
Back to the Womb

SWEETENERS
Laughter
A small break
Egomassage

TAKE AWAY
A Lasting Impression

Items need not be selected from each category, unlike a standard menu. Each item may not be what it seems on first impression!

Parry Williams Building, Dept Theatre, Film & TV, Penglais Campus, Aberystwyth
(Meet in the Foyer 10 minutes before the start)

FREE but Places limited. To book contact CPR: 01970 622133, cprwww@aber.ac.uk

May 30th 2009
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I.Q. - IRA'S QUANTUM THEATRE WORKSHOP
IRA SEIDENSTEIN (AUSTRALIA)

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TWO DAY WORKSHOP
SATURDAY 30TH & SUNDAY 31ST MAY 2009
10am – 4pm
Price: £70 waged (£35 unwaged)

Aimed at performers, dancers, directors, musicians and teachers, this weekend workshop will inspire you to reinvigorate your own vision and performance practice.

Director, clown and actor, Ira Seidenstein will introduce the principles of Quantum Theatre known as i.Q. This unique and highly practical approach acknowledges the body-mind-spirit aspects of acting and performance and aims to explore universal principles for acting and theatre regardless of method, to assists the actor to locate the links between Stanislavsky, Suzuki, and Shakespeare via the anatomy. The workshop will focus on the body, text, improvisation, as well as principles of creation, editing and choreographing and will include i.Q’s ‘Core Mechanics’, the ‘Creative Twist’, and the ‘Theatre Ritual’.

Quantum Theatre: Slapstick to Shakespeare is an economical way to reinvigorate ones own theatre practice by using universal principles. Quantum Theatre is organic and logical. It incorporates a breadth of ideas, techniques and cultural inheritance that contemporary theatre possesses. The Quantum Theatre exercises leave space for an actor to use any of their previous trainings or experience.

Quantum Theatre uses only a few exercises and practice templates. These potent exercises carry essential practical ideas that are completely adaptable to the unique needs of individuals, theatre trainings, and theatre companies.

Ira Seidenstein's work has been actively combining creativity and healing for over thirty-years and his practical body-mind-spirit approach to acting Ira-Quantum i.e. Quantum Theatre: Slapstick to Shakespeare was established 1993 after 20-years practical research. Ira’s formal training and education is in both Visual & Performing Arts as well as Education; Ira’s extensive training includes the methods of Stanislavsky, Lecoq, and Suzuki and in various movement techniques such as acrobatics, ballet, yoga, chi gong, tai chi and contemporary dance, and Iyengar yoga.
Ira has worked in over 100 productions including with Cirque du Soleil, Australia's national Shakespeare company, San Diego Repertory Theatre and numerous independent companies. He has coached performers at the highest level including Olympic gymnasts, ballet dancers, circus artistes, and classical actors.

Ira Seidenstein is one of the treasures of our fringe theatre.
Sydney Morning Herald.

May 27th 2009
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JOSÉ TORRES-TAMA PERFORMANCE, WORKSHOP AND LECTURE DEMONSTRATION


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THE CONE OF UNCERTAINTY: NEW ORLEANS AFTER KATRINA
WEDNESDAY 27TH MAY, 7.30PM
Price: £7 (£5 Concessions)

Written & Performed by José Torres-Tama

Three days after Katrina hit, performance artist José Torres-Tama managed to escape the social chaos that submerged New Orleans on a stolen school bus, which was operating a rescue mission of Creole families. In “The Cone of Uncertainty,” he explores the criminal negligence of the federal government, and the apocalyptic abandonment of a people who were made to beg for help and water. He also comments on larger issues concerning race and class in the U.S., the historical context of the storm, and the displacement of thousands of Latinos, whose traumatic stories were ignored by the mainstream press. Performed with “a magical-realist Latino voodoo aesthetic,” he combines personal stories, storm film footage, and a variety of characters to offer a live art piece that is politically provocative, visually engaging, and profoundly moving.

Torres-Tama is both a versatile writer who can be lyrically evocative as well as bitingly humorous, and an impressive performer. -The Philadelphia Inquirer

José Torres-Tama will also be leading a one day workshop -

TECHNIQUES FOR PERFORMANCE ART /
THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARSENAL

ONE DAY WORKSHOP
THURSDAY 28TH MAY
12.15 – 4.45pm
Price: £15

José Torres-Tama will engage workshop participants in an interactive exchange exploring creative strategies such as movement, improvisation, visual rituals, conceptual activity, incantations and multiple voices used in performance practices. The “creative arsenal” of film, recorded narratives/music, and projections to develop multidisciplinary work will also be explored. Participants are encouraged to bring in monologues, poems, or their own conceptual ideas to develop in the workshop process.

This intensive workshop is aimed at performers, directors, dancers, teachers – anyone who is interested in creating multidisciplinary work.

José Torres-Tama is an interdisciplinary artist fusing multiple genres with fervour and craft. Working in spoken word poetry, sound art, installation, visual, and performance art, he explores the effects of media on race relations, the “American Dream” mythology, and the Latino immigrant experience. His performances thrive on a fusion of bilingual texts, movement and rituals, and exaggerated personae—creating spectacles that are visually dynamic and politically charged. He has worked in the New Orleans arts community for twenty years, and since 1995, he has toured nationally and internationally to present his solo performances, workshops, and academic lectures on performance art as a tool for social change.

As an arts educator, his “Youth Performance Projects” with marginalized Latino and African American teens employ performance art as a creative strategy to cultivate young voices. These projects have been profiled on National Public Radio, and praised as empowering examples of how community arts projects can transform young lives. He has also worked with men recovering from drug addiction and the stigma of incarceration in performance projects designed as tools for creative redemption and reinvention of the self.


Torres-Tama treads that dangerously vague turf of performance art gracefully...with dexterity and daring.-The Village Voice

At 6pm José Torres-Tama will follow the workshop with a Research Seminar on Performance Art as a Tool for Social Change. This “live art” experience / multimedia performed analysis will explore the role of the performance artist as a social provocateur. The artist discusses performance art practices as creative strategies that aspire to initiate dialogue concerning issues of race, gender, gentrification, homelessness, and the AIDS crisis. Torres-Tama cites the work of performance artists who have focused a creative eye on the difficult issues affecting our national communities, and audiences are encouraged to participate in a discussion of art that dares to cross into political territory as a tool for social change.

email:www.torrestama.com

May 12th 2009
,
OUT OF THE BOX AND DUSTED DOWN: FORAGING AND FINDINGS
A collective event to welcome Honorary TFTS Departmental Fellow Barbara Cavanagh and introduce the International Theatre Collection

On 12th May 2009 the Theatre, Film and Television Studies Department (TFTS) and the Centre for Performance Research (CPR) welcomed new Departmental Fellow Barbara Cavanagh.

John and Barbara Cavanagh amassed one of the world's largest private collections of theatre books and ephemera and deposited the International Theatre Collection (ITC) which consists of 22,000 books, monographs and journals as well as posters, prints and theatre ephemera, with CPR in 2007.

Barbara's intimate knowledge of the ITC will prove invaluable to our making it accessible to researchers and her comprehensive knowledge of the field (and other collections) will inform direction and development of the collections and the realisation of the ITC as an active resource.

To celebrate Barbara's honorary appointment we organised a collective exploration. A number of colleagues foraged through the collection and used their subjective ‘findings’ to tell their own ‘archival’ stories. Rather than a dry introduction to this collection which ranges enormously across subjects, languages and forms, short presentations triggered by an encounter with a material object demonstrated both a flavour and the potential of the ITC.

Staff members from TFTS were invited to create a variety of presentations reflecting their research and practice-based interests; from one of the longest standing members of the Department to a recent recruit, from one of the youngest to one of the eldest, from a researcher exploring cutting-edge live art practices to a practitioner fascinated by British Pantomime, from a specialist in French theatre to a leading scholar in Welsh theatre. The presentations evoked the reach and range of the International Theatre Collection but left plenty to be discovered by future users—which we hope will include you.

We invited a range of colleagues from drama, theatre and performance studies disciplines and the discussions that emanated from these presentations, together with the specific, anecdotal and contextual information Barbara shared, made for an entertaining and illuminating evening.

April 18th 2009
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GIVING VOICE 11 – APRIL 2009, POLAND
International Festival of the Voice

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Harmonic Accord

Encounters through Song

18th – 26th April 2009, Wroclaw, Poland

Giving Voice 11: Harmonic Accord is a special edition of the festival hosted by the Grotowski Institute in Wroclaw, Poland, as part of its Year of Grotowski programme throughout 2009. The year 2009 marks several important anniversaries of the Polish theatre director, Jerzy Grotowski, as well as the tenth anniversary since his death.

The festival’s focus on the ‘inspiration’ of song springs from the mutual and long-held interests of CPR, the Grotowski Institute - and its associate theatre company, Teatr ZAR - in traditions of song as well as the expressive and connective potential of song and the act of singing as encounter. Encounter that is not only musical, but intrapersonal, intercultural and introspective, where the attentive act of singing and concomitant act of listening can help us shed the de-sensitised skins of everyday life, and vitally re-connect us to ourselves, to others, and to the present through connecting with the past; to re-source, re-sound, re-sonate
But above all Giving Voice 11: Harmonic Accord is simply about ethos, and encounter with others through song; the festival brings together many extraordinary voices from around the world. Festival guest artists include: Bragod (Wales), La Kaita (Spain), Cuncordu de Orosei (Sardinia), Chorea Theatre Association (Poland), Johnathan Hart Makwaia (USA), Hasmik Harutyunyan (Armenia), Erik Hillestad (Norway), Kitka and Maryana Sadovska (USA/Ukraine), N'Faly Kouyate (Guinea/Belgium), Lalish Theater Labor (Kurdistan/Austria), Kristin Linklater (USA), Mher Nayoyan (Armenia), Maisternia Pisni (Ukraine), Meredith Monk (USA), Pilpani Family (Georgia), Teatro delle Albe (Italy), Tempvs Fvgit… (Corsica), Svetlana Spajic (Serbia), Vahdat Ensemble (Iran), Teatr ZAR (Poland), Michael Ormiston (UK) and Tserendaava (Mongolia), Bente Kahan (Norway), Song of the Goat (Poland).

In addition to a feast of performances, concerts and presentations, there will be a wide array of workshops and work sessions, offering the opportunity to encounter practically the texture, harmonies, melodies and demands of particular forms of singing, as well as training or practical work on voice support and release.

Wroclaw

Lower Silesia's historic capital, Wroclaw is one of the oldest and most beautiful cities in Poland. Situated at the foot of the Sudety Moutains, upon the Odra River and cut through by its numerous tributaries and canals, it is an exceptional city of 12 islands and over one hundred bridges. The city has a vibrant cultural scene, its theatre tradition enjoying worldwide renown. Wroclaw is very well connected by road and rail. Several low cost airlines fly direct to Wroclaw from a host of international airports. Frequent bus services link the airport to the city centre which has an extensive bus and tram network.

This project is supported by Wales Arts International

Wroclaw, Poland

email:givingvoice@grotowski-institute.art.pl
weblink(s):www.thecpr.org.uk/index2.php, www.grotowskiyear.pl
More information (click on the filenames to download):
Giving_Voice_Brochure_PDF.pdf
Giving_Voice_Application_Form.doc

March 11th 2009
,
GIVING VOICE - CAMPAIGN FOR CHILDREN WITH AUTISM

Autism is one of the most significant but least researched developmental disorders, characterised by various symptoms: significantly impairments in social interaction and communication; about a third to a half of individuals with autism do not develop enough natural speech to meet their daily communication needs. Autism imposes a heavy financial and emotional burden on those affected and those who care for them, and many families become socially isolated.

Please support the GIVING VOICE CAMPAIGN FOR CHILDREN WITH AUTISM.

All donations received will be divided equally between the following charities:

Autism Cymru (Wales) – www.autismcymru.org – promotes the establishment and of high quality services for people with autism spectrum disorders in Wales

Autism Speaks (UK) – www.autismspeaks.org.uk – a leading autism research foundation investigating the causes and biological mechanisms of autism.

The Foundation for Children ‘Help on Time’ (Poland) – a nationwide programme of card for disabled children with the aim to rescue their lives, bring them back to health, support their education, improve their difficult economic situation.

Donations can be made in the following ways:

· post a cheque made payable to ‘CPR’ noting ‘autism charities’ on the back to CPR, The Foundry, Parry Williams, Penglais Campus, Aberystwyth SY23 3AJ

· send money via Paypal (www.paypal.com)to ‘cprwww@aber.ac.uk’ and note that it is destined for the autism charities

· contact us on 01970 622133 for other ways to donate by credit/debit card

Thank you.

email:cprwww@aber.ac.uk
weblink(s):www.autismspeaks.org.uk, www.autismcymru.org

November 15th 2008
,
LUCILIA CAESAR AUDITIONS/WORKSHOP - Jan/Feb 2008
January/February 2008

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As part of CPR's International Summer School in 2007 Ingrid von Wantoch Rekowski led the Voices in Arcadia workshop with Simon Thorne.

We are pleased to announce the latest news from Ingrid's company Lucilia Caesar:

Lucilia Caesar's team, directed by Ingrid von Wantoch Rekowski, widens its artistic research around the Wagnerian world, as seen in a nightmare. The aim being the creation of a production during season 2008-2009. Within this context, multidisciplinary auditions will be organized in January 2008 at Brussels, Berlin, Paris and London with a view to workshop/laboratory due to be held in February 2008 in Brussels.

The aim is to meet uncommon performers with diverse training (actors, dancers, singers) within a framework of broad inventiveness in order to develop the most promising main lines of a dramatic re-reading of the Ring. The work, the ideology, the aesthetics and the character of Wagner will be freely exploited as a material, even with transgression. Conventional opera will be avoided.

Interested candidates can send a CV, a recent photograph and a recording (video, DVD or CD) with one excerpt or more of their work. Any more significant documentation will be welcome (contact: Lucilia Caesar - Théâtre National, Boulevard Emile Jacqmain 111-115, 1000 Brussels –Belgium).

Deadline to send the application: November 30-2007. The applications will be answered, date and places of auditions (Brussels, Paris, Berlin, London) and of the workshop (Brussels) will be announced on December 10-2007.

For more information on the nature on the work of Lucilia Caesar please click on the link to their website below -

weblink(s):www.luciliacaesar.be,

May 1st 2008
,
CPR FUNDING APPEAL UPDATE

News of CPR Appeal in summary:

whilst the Panel acknowledged that ACW (Arts Council of Wales) recognises and values the quality of CPR’s work, the appeal was not upheld, essentially as ACW has insufficient funding to support all the organisations it wishes to support.

The formal Hearing for CPR’s Appeal was held last Thursday on 1st May in Hospitality Box No 46 at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff (from which we had a very good view of the ‘pitch’). The purpose of the Hearing - where representatives from CPR and ACW were each invited to present to an independent panel - was not to judge the merits or demerits of ACW’s decision to withdraw revenue funding from CPR but to consider whether the Arts Council had arrived at its decision in a procedurally correct and fair manner.

Whilst obviously a nerve-racking experience for us given so much rested on it, our spirits and courage were much enlivened by the recurrent broadcasts of the national anthem for stadium tour groups, and we were genuinely grateful for the Panel Chairman’s cordiality and humour to put us at ease in explaining that it had been agreed that we needn’t stand each time the anthem was played. It was difficult to be detached given our emotional involvement in the event, but we were nevertheless appreciative of the interesting dramaturgies playing both inside and ‘outside the box’.

We concluded CPR’s statement by saying:

“In respect of the focus on deficiency necessitated in formal appeal by the restrictions of ACW’s appeal procedure rules, we wish you to know that our preference would have been to appeal in more positive terms of proficiency; whereby the competences of both ACW and CPR are fully utilised to work together through these current difficulties to realise the aims of innovation, internationalism and excellence prioritised in ACW’s draft strategies.

As a mature and experienced organisation, CPR recognises that funding organisations need to review both their policies and client portfolios and develop new strategic frameworks. However, we consider it deeply regrettable that, having conducted the current budget-saving exercise through such process of attrition and disregard, ACW’s ‘misunderstanding’ of its client has now brought funder and ‘advocacy’ body (ACW) and its client (CPR) into the current formal state of opposition rather than ‘constructive or creative dialogue’; a ‘lose/lose’ stasis that benefits neither party - privately nor publicly… it is necessary to work now… in good faith and trust to ensure a ‘win/win’ outcome - whatever that may be - for both parties involved”.

CPR has now received notice of the Appeal Panel’s decision not to uphold the Appeal as in summary the Panel were satisfied that the process undertaken by the Arts Council of Wales was sufficiently robust to come to a reasonable judgement given the difficult financial circumstances it faced.

We note that the Panel concluded with the recommendation that - [as] ‘the Arts Council commends the quality of the work of CPR’ - the Arts Council initiate discussions with CPR with minimum delay to examine other sources of funding for CPR.

“Time is now running out. We trust the Arts Council will therefore without any delay initiate constructive and creative dialogue to ‘manage this process and secure CPR’s future’. We trust also that the Arts Council - who have during this process cited CPR’s ‘fantastic history’, praised the ‘richness’ and ‘fertility’ of the organisation, and constantly cited how ACW wishes the work to continue - will therefore consider extending the disinvestment period beyond the minimum, that is beyond July, so that there is actually a practicable possibility of securing other funding and retaining staff to secure it. We trust also that the Arts Council will not ignore or dismiss the views and groundswell of support for CPR from around Wales and from around the world.

And so - at this stage - we must trust and keep faith that if it is the case that CPR and the Arts Council are both victims of underfunding then there might be the possibility of putting the word ‘together’ appositely in this sentence. “

Judie Christie, Creative Producer of CPR

April 8th 2008
,
BALI UNMASKED - May 2008
AN INTENSIVE, PRACTICAL, INTRODUCTION TO BALINESE TOPENG MASKED DANCE-DRAMA.

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May 21-24 2008

An intensive and fun immersion into the techniques of Topeng masked drama, a unique and ancient theatre form which incorporates storytelling, mask work, dance and physical characterisation. The course will be led by Ida Bagus Alit, a lifelong performer of Topeng, who has skills, insights and innate knowledge of this extraordinary form of performance that few in the world possess.

The course is suitable for actors, dancers, storytellers, circus performers and students of performance with an interest in mask work and cross-cultural art forms. Participants will be immersed in a practical hands-on exploration of Topeng as well as contextual learning sessions with British based practitioners Margaret Coldiron and Tiffany Strawson. Participants will gain a deeper understanding of Topeng’s role in traditional and contemporary Balinese culture as well as its influence on current performance practice.

There will be a special Topeng performance event with Ida Bagus Alit on the evening of Saturday 24th May.

Sherman Cymru in association with Lunar productions and CPR

Sherman Cymru, Cardiff

Workshops: Wednesday 21st - Friday 23rd, 10-4pm, £150 full price / £95 concessionary rate

Topeng Performance: Saturday 24th May, 7.30pm, Venue 1 (on stage event) £3 (free for workshop participants

email:www.lunarproductions.org

March 15th 2008
,
VERBATIM THEATRE: A workshop by Tara McAllister-Viel (UK) - March 2008
Sat 15th and Sun 16th March, 9.30am - 6.00 pm

Verbatim theatre has attracted much attention recently because of the work done by the Tricycle Theatre and the success of plays like Robin Soan's Talking to Terrorists and David Hare's The Permanent Way. Such plays are created from the exact words of people who have been interviewed about a particular event or topic and at their best they have an authenticity and authority that it is more difficult for fictional writing to achieve.

Aimed at performers, dancers, directors, teachers, social workers - anyone who works with theatre in a social context - this workshop will explore techniques associated with Verbatim theatre in a practical way. Participants will be invited to research and record their own interview material in order to create monologues to be explored and developed through vocal and physical devising exercises.

Currently teaching voice at Central, Tara McAllister-Viel is a distinguished voice coach, actor and director who has worked in the USA and abroad for the last 18 years. Her Chicago-based company devised projects based on the Studs Terkel style interview/oral history tradition and she has led several verbatim theatre projects in Korea. Since moving to the U.K. five years ago, she has been exploring adapting U.K. verbatim theatre approaches to training actors' voices and devising with voice.

Workshop Fee: £70 waged (£35 unwaged)


Venue: Chapter Arts Centre, Market Road, Canton, Cardiff, CF5 1QE

For more information or to book, please call CPR at (0) 1970 622 133 or email cprwww@aber.ac.uk

March 2nd 2008
,
HOW TO BE FUNNY: A Workshop by David Woods, Ridiculusmus (UK/ Australia) - March 2008
Sun 2nd March, 11.00 am - 6.00 pm

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An intense and intensive exploration of finding funniness in life and making it into dramatic art. Using a unique system of structured improvisation, re-performance and development and helped along with incredibly complicated diagrams, the workshop will guide you towards the slippery slope of instinctive laughter provoking funniness.

The session will include a whistle-stop guide to the extant theory on humour, a mockery of formula books, a fair bit of tongue in cheek abuse and some tickling.

Participants are encouraged to bring material from life, 6 hours worth of concentration, pens and paper, costumes, props and the willingness to sacrifice themselves on the altar of audience mirth.

David Woods trained at The Poor School and at Ecole Phillippe Gaulier and is one half of the performance group Ridiculusmus (http://www.ridiculusmus.com/) whose acclaimed shows include The Importance of Being Earnest, Ideas Men; Yes, Yes, Yes; The Exhibitionists, The Third Policeman, Three men in a boat and Say Nothing. Ridiculusmus have won the Time Out Live award for theatre, a Herald Angel, Total Theatre Award and The Peter Brook Empty Space Award. Ridiculusmus' 15th anniversary is being celebrated in a special season at the Barbican in February and March 2008.

Workshop Fee: £20

Venue: Chapter Arts Centre, Market Road, Canton, Cardiff, CF5 1QE

For more information or to book, please call CPR at (0) 1970 622 133 or email cprwww@aber.ac.uk

February 23rd 2008
,
REACH FOR THE SNOOZE BUTTON: A Workshop by John Fox and Sue Gill, Dead Good Guides (UK) - February 2008
Sat 23rd (9.30a.m - 8.30p.m) and Sun 24th Feb (10a.m - 5p.m)

"If time is running out, what is the point of theatre?"

An intensive weekend workshop for performers, designers and directors led by John Fox and Sue Gill of Dead Good Guides, the company that has picked up where Welfare State International (WSI) left off.

Working between ritual and theatre, the workshop will look at notions of TIME and liminal space, devising and inventing across the disciplines of performance and installation.

The work will be practical, fast and direct using simple making techniques, voice, elemental materials, humour and personal stories. There will be an opportunity to work solo, in pairs and in groups.

Bring along a piece of broken crockery. Several if you can.

Ready or not there will be something provocative to show by the end.

Welfare State International (WSI) was a collective of radical artists and thinkers who explored ideas of celebratory art and spectacle for 38 years. Their seminal text book "Engineers of the Imagination" inspired generations of artists and makers. Described by the Guardian as "Britain's foremost performance and installation collective", WSI pioneered site-specific visual theatre, rites of passage, community celebration, lantern parades and new carnival excess under the Artistic Direction of co-founders John Fox and Sue Gill. WSI was archived on April Fools Day 2006.

Workshop Fee: £70 waged (£35 unwaged)

Venue: CPR, The Foundry Studio, Penglais Campus, Aberystwyth University

For more information or to book, please call CPR at (0) 1970 622 133 or email cprwww@aber.ac.uk

February 9th 2008
,
COOKING CHAOS : A workshop by Phelim McDermott, Improbable (UK) - February 2008
Sat 9th and Sun 10th Feb, 10am to 6pm

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Cooking Chaos is a two-day forum for theatre practitioners interested in new ways of exploring creativity. The Cooking Chaos forum will use process work techniques, combined with some of Improbable's ways of making theatre, to raise awareness of issues within the theatre community such as insider/outsider, time, responsibilities, creativity, isolation.

Playing with group myths, dreams and crazy wisdom as starting points for creativity, the workshop may be useful for exploring issues and themes for a theatrical piece, as well as using these methods in a more open-ended way to learn how to check in with the emotional and creative weather of any group. In a playful environment the workshop will "cook chaos" to discover new ways of creating work and community together.

Co-Artistic Director of Improbable, Phelim McDermott has created many award-winning productions including A Midsummer Night's Dream for the English Shakespeare Company and Shockheaded Peter with Julian Crouch, as well as his many Improbable productions, and is currently directing Philip Glass' Satyagraha in collaboration with the English National Opera. As part of his NESTA fellowship research into new ways of rehearsing and creating theatre using Improvisation and Process Oriented Conflict Facilitation Techniques, he recently facilitated the second Open Space Technology event called 'Devoted and Disgruntled: What are we going to do about theatre?' for the theatre community.

It is this willingness to leap into the unknown and create by the seat of their pants that has always characterised the work of Improbable...

Improbable shows are not just different from each other, they are different every single night...

...Improbable though it may seem, anything can happen and it probably will. Lyn Gardner


Workshop Fee: £70 waged (£35 unwaged)

Venue: CPR, The Foundry Studio, Penglais Campus, Aberystwyth

For more information or to book, please call CPR at (0) 1970 622 133 or email cprwww@aber.ac.uk

February 5th 2008
,
CPR FOUNDRY ARTIST IN RESIDENCE WINTER 2007


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To inaugurate our new home and ‘laboratory' - The Foundry - CPR, Vivien Mousdell will be joining CPR for an eight-week residency. Vivien has been invited to respond and engage with the new building and the activities and events of The Foundry's first programme as well as to respond and engage with the wealth of material in the CPR Resource Centre and Archive, that will culminate in a traveling ‘exhibition'.

In association with Safle (Formerly/yn gynt Public Arts Wales/Clef Gyhoeddus Cymru)

More information (click on the filenames to download):
Vivien_Mousdell.rtf

February 5th 2008
,
CPR – THE GOOD NEWS AND THE BAD NEWS...- Feb 2008


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CPR – THE GOOD NEWS AND THE BAD NEWS...

THE GOOD NEWS:

CPR is pleased and proud to announce the programme for its 10th International Giving Voice Festival, on the theme of Breath, Inspiration and the Voice.

This year’s festival brings to Wales renowned practitioners from all over the world, to share skills and methods and celebrate the art of the voice - in the company of the many practitioners who will gather for this event. Giving Voice is a key ingredient of CPR’s programmes of workshops, performances and events that provide a special resource for both the profession and audiences in Wales.

Further information on the Giving Voice programme is detailed in the projects section of this website and a full brochure is available for download as a PDF file if you scroll to the bottom of this article.

THE BAD NEWS:

It is, therefore, quite shattering at the very moment of launching this year’s Giving Voice to receive notification of the Arts Council of Wales’ decision to withdraw revenue funding from CPR with effect from July ’08.

Instead, the Arts Council of Wales (ACW) is offering CPR the opportunity to compete for project funding on an occasional basis without acknowledging that the lack of ACW revenue support could compromise CPR’s relationship and partnership funding with Aberystwyth University. It also inevitably limits the work that CPR can do, and jeopardises the infrastructure that allows CPR to develop and promote an exciting programme with the lead time that international work requires; in the field of labour relations, a proposal as unrealistic as this could be construed as ‘constructive dismissal’.

It is difficult to understand the logic of ACW’s decision in the context of its recently published plan to establish an English-language National Theatre for Wales on a federal basis, for which it desires innovation, an international perspective and a rigorous training policy. In terms of knowledge, experience and contacts developed over thirty years of work, CPR is extremely well-placed to foster international connections and provide research, development and training that utilises the skills of the best theatre practitioners available from across the world.

However, arguments of merit, artistic or otherwise, would appear to be disallowed as grounds for appeal within the formal terms of the ACW’s appeals procedure, wherein whether there is a case for appeal is, in the first instance, judged solely by ACW Chief Executive (currently Peter Tyndall), who was of course involved in the original decision-making process.

Despite this, in preparing for the appeal, at this extremely difficult and precarious moment for CPR, we would greatly welcome hearing from those wishing to write in support, encouragement and advocacy of the value and integrity of our work - past, present and future.

Letters of support may be addressed to Judie Christie and/ or Richard Gough by email to cprwww@aber.ac.uk or by post to: CPR, The Foundry, Penglais Campus, Aberystwyth, Wales, UK, SY23 3AJ

Giving Voice will proceed, and resound magnificently as will - we hope with your support - many other future CPR projects.

An illustrated chronology of CPR’s work can be downloaded as a PDF file at the bottom of this news article. Further information and comment is below.

1. CPR – ‘the Aberystwyth-based powerhouse of international theatre’ (The Guardian) - is one of the organisations in Wales from whom the Arts Council of Wales (ACW) intends to withdraw revenue funding status, stating that ‘unfortunately… faced with some very difficult decisions within the current financial climate … the main reason [for this decision] is that ACW is focusing funding on front-line activity’.

In a surprisingly brief and unfinished letter of notification, ACW goes on to say that ‘the current approach to programming by CPR is probably best funded on a project by project basis’. There is no indication that ACW does not value the work of CPR – on the contrary, a 2007 report on the company produced by ACW valued ‘CPR’s instinct for programming that expands horizons’ and concluded that:

‘CPR is a vital and prestigious player in the arts in Wales. It is at an important transitional stage with new possibilities opening out with occupancy of The Foundry. It’s history, experience, and present interests are important to mobilise into the challenges of new resources for drama theatre and performance, centring now in Wales on the development of a non-building based national theatre.’
(ACW Director of Arts, 2007)

2. Naturally, we are greatly dismayed about the decision particularly since ACW has used only the language of economy and affordability, of revenue-saving within the current budget. We are also extremely perplexed about its timing: a decision made prior to ACW’s launch of a seven-week consultative period inviting response to its own draft five-year art-form strategies published in the middle of December.

3. Since the language of ACW is about affordability it should be emphasised that a relatively small grant (currently £118,300) – certainly much less than sister organisations in Europe – has been significant, enabling the retention of a dedicated core team who year-on-year have trebled the ACW investment, and enabling the priming of important projects and programmes. CPR has declined several attractive invitations to develop its work elsewhere because of its commitment to Wales and the model of effective partnership between ACW, Aberystwyth University and public/ private investment; ACW withdrawal threatens this complex yet fragile ecology of funding and activity.

4. The Arts Council’s decision to switch the mechanism from revenue to project funding will at best allow their cherry-picking of projects without investment into the infrastructure that makes them possible, and at worst see CPR’s ideas, experience and know-how disappear along with the bathwater down the plughole of the diminishing project funding pots.

5. If we are to be bound, gagged – or shot down – by militaristic terminology such as ‘front-line activity’, we should like to record for posterity that, from its outward-facing ‘ex-centric’ position [on the wild western front], CPR’s ‘pioneering activity’ across less conspicuous ‘fronts’ over the years has been instrumental in raising the visibility of Wales worldwide. But who from ACW Command HQ would know as they do not venture west?

6. CPR supports the Arts Council’s aspiration to redress years of under-funding to the independent theatre sector, to revitalise it in order to face the challenges – and opportunities - ahead. Despite the richness and diversity of work and practice that has long been a strength of theatre in Wales, funding policy and decisions over the last decade, playing to safety through a concentration of resources privileging the mainstream, the ‘establishment’ and the highly-visible, have helped create a fragile and fragmented theatre ecology in Wales; CPR has no wish to propagate the climate of competition for limited resources that has existed for so long, and indeed welcomes the funding uplifts to fellow artists and companies that can allow for their future development and growth.

7. A revitalised theatre ecology emerges out of a confluence of different ideas and influences across disciplines and sectors. As a meeting place, for ideas, exchange and discovery, CPR has consistently pursued and promoted this idea of collaboration and confluence, of dialogue and engagement - across borders, between cultures and between disciplines.

CPR works to promote innovation, experimentation, and process, and offers access at all levels to innovative training programmes and approaches to making theatre alongside programmes of high quality presentations and performances from around the world that pursue ideals of accessibility without artistic compromise.

CPR’s desire is to help foster a vibrant and distinctive theatre ecology in Wales – an ecology distinguished by its vitality, creativity, imagination, vision, openness, enthusiasm, curiosity, and passion. This would appear to match the strategic and capacity-building aims of ACW and an outward-facing Wales, and so calls into question ACW’s decision.

In preparing for the appeal, at this extremely difficult and precarious moment for CPR, we would greatly welcome hearing from you. Please write in support, encouragement and advocacy of the value and integrity of our work - past, present and future.

Letters of support may be addressed to Judie Christie and/ or Richard Gough by email to cprwww@aber.ac.uk or by post to:

CPR, The Foundry, Penglais Campus, Aberystwyth, Wales, UK, SY23 3AJ
Tel: +44 (0) 1970 622133

Giving Voice will proceed, and resound magnificently as will - we hope with your support - many other future CPR projects.

More information (click on the filenames to download):
Chronology.pdf
Giving_Voice_Brochure_final.pdf

January 23rd 2008
,
GIVING VOICE 10: BREATH INSPIRATION VOICE
27th March – 1st April 2008

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INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF THE VOICE IN PERFORMANCE

GIVING VOICE 10: BREATH INSPIRATION VOICE

27th March – 1st April 2008
Aberystwyth, Wales!

WORKSHOPS - PERFORMANCES - PRESENTATIONS - DISCUSSION
GWEITHDAI - PERFFORMIADAU - CYFLWYNIADAU - TRAFODAETHAU

Giving Voice attracts some of the world’s finest performers and voice teachers in an innovative celebration of the voice in performance.

Join us for an uplifting compendium of voice workshops, performances talks, seminars and lecture-demonstrations reflecting voices from Asia, the Americas, the Middle East, Wales and Europe and meet with fellow voice enthusiasts and artists from around the world.

“For me, ‘Giving Voice’ sounds always a note of renewal of hope and expansion and springing ideas. I burn my candle both ends and in the middle and am re-ignited…That extraordinary dissolving of barriers and triggering of joy that distinguishes Giving Voice from any other workshop gathering that I know. The personal input that you all make, the personal investment, pays off one hundred percent in the humanity of the experience...You have a genius by now for finding the right people and bringing them together in the same place so that spontaneous combustion of ideas and creativity explode.”

Kristin Linklater, Author of Freeing the Natural Voice

Comments on Giving Voice 2006

“It is a challenge to put into words the joyous wonder of a week at Wales “giving voice”

“Giving Voice was enlightening, educational, inspirational, and very powerful. The work, the conversations, the camaraderie – all of it was of a calibre rarely to be found anywhere else. I feel honoured to have been a small part of this extraordinary event.”

“Each time I attend I am impressed with the quality of the presentations, workshops, and performances. This festival is by far one of the best offered internationally. The work that you do is cutting edge and draws some of the best practitioners and scholars from all over the world. I do not find at other conferences and festivals the same level of discourse and experimentation, the wide range of work and body of knowledge. Thank you!”

GIVING VOICE 10: BREATH INSPIRATION VOICE
WORKSHOPS

THREE DAY WORKSHOP
FRIDAY 28 – SUNDAY 30 MARCH
Christian Wolz (Germany)
BREATH – SOUND - NOISE
WORKSHOP FOR VOCAL-IMPROVISATION

FIVE DAY WORKSHOP
FRIDAY 28 – TUESDAY 1 APRIL
Kristin Linklater (USA)
THE PURPOSE OF BREATHING

FIVE DAY WORKSHOP
FRIDAY 28 – TUESDAY 1 APRIL
Roger Smart (USA/UK)
FITZMAURICE VOICEWORK®: AN INTRODUCTION AND EXPLORATION

THREE DAY WORKSHOP
FRIDAY 28 – SUNDAY 30 MARCH
Lin Snelling (Canada)
PERFORMING THE BODY

TWO DAY WORKSHOP
FRIDAY 28 – SATURDAY 29 MARCH
Michele George (Canada)
OCTAVE OF INSPIRATION:
Breathe Life into Art, Give it a Home in Your Heart
OCTAVE OF INSPIRATION: from Creation to Completion

ONE, TWO AND THREE DAY WORKSHOPS
Theatre Zar (Poland

THREE DAY WORKSHOP
FRIDAY 28 – SUNDAY 30 MARCH
Led by: Jarosław Fret (with the assistance of Nini Julia Bang, Andrei Biziorek, Tomasz Wierzbowski)
GIVING BREATH. FORMS OF LITURGICAL MUSIC OF CHRISTIAN EAST AND WEST

TWO DAY WORKSHOP
FRIDAY 28 – SATURDAY 29 MARCH
Led by: Ditte Berkeley (with the assistance of Tomasz Bojarski, Ewa Pasikowska)
COMING INTO THE SOUND

ONE DAY WORKSHOP
SUNDAY 30 MARCH
Led by: Ditte Berkeley and Jaroslaw Fret (together with other members of the company)
FLESH OF SOUND

TWO DAY WORKSHOP
MONDAY 31 MARCH – TUESDAY 1 APRIL
Ashish Sankrityayan (India)
A PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION TO DHRUPAD SINGING

TWO DAY WORKSHOP
MONDAY 31 MARCH – TUESDAY 1 APRIL
Frankie Armstong (UK) and Janet Rodgers (USA)
BREATH, VOICE, CHARACTER AND SONG

ONE DAY WORKSHOP
SUNDAY 30 MARCH
Evie Mark and Akinisie Sivuarapik (Canada)
INUIT THROAT SINGING

TWO DAY WORKSHOP
MONDAY 31 MARCH – TUESDAY 1 APRIL
Mahsa and Marjan Vadat (Iran)
A BLESSING OF SONG IN A PERSIAN GARDEN


For full workshop descriptions please see the workshop section of this website or contact CPR to request a brochure.

Phone: +44 (0) 1970 622 133
Email: cprwww@aber.ac.uk


GIVING VOICE 10: BREATH INSPIRATION VOICE
PERFORMANCES

THURSDAY 27 MARCH, 7.00 PM
Theatre Zar (Poland)
CAESAREAN SECTION. ESSAYS ON SUICIDE

THURSDAY 27 MARCH, 8.30 PM
Fatima Miranda (Spain)
Presented by Instituto Cervantes Manchester and Giving Voice
VOICES OF THE VOICE II: A CAPELLA CONCERT FOR SOLO VOICE

FRIDAY 28 MARCH, 7.00 PM
Concert / Work Presentation by Theatre ZAR(Poland)
THEATRE OUT OF THE SPIRIT OF MUSIC

FRIDAY 28 MARCH, 8.30 PM
Evie Mark and Akinisie Sivuarapik (Canada)
INUIT THROAT SINGING

SATURDAY 29 MARCH, 8.30 PM
The Vahdat Ensemble (Iran)
A BLESSING OF SONG FROM A PERSIAN GARDEN

SUNDAY 30 MARCH, 8.30 PM
Ashish Sankrityayan(India)
DHRUPAD SINGING

MONDAY 31 MARCH, 7.00 PM
Christian Wolz (Germany)
ATROPA BELLA DONNA

MONDAY 31 MARCH, 8.30 PM
Simon Thorne (Wales)
THE HOWL IN ARCADIA

FRIDAY 28 MARCH - TUESDAY 1st APRIL, DAILY, THROUGHOUT THE DAY
Yvon Bonenfant (UK)
SOIE SOYEUSE

For further performance details please see the performance section of this website or contact CPR to request a brochure.

Phone: +44 (0) 1970 622 133
Email: cprwww@aber.ac.uk

December 15th 2007
,
WAYS OF WORKING - (WITHOUT A DIRECTOR): A Workshop by Tg STAN (Belgium) - December 2007
Sat 15th December, 10.00 am - 6.00 pm

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"The essence of STAN is to be found in a definition of acting. They see acting as being present...a sort of dogged immediacy...STAN is practised in counter-readings. Rubbing a script up the wrong way. Looking for the development of an argument in a seemingly neutral fragment of material...

... that an actor can act independently in this respect. That while on stage he himself can choose how he will perform the script. Evening after evening. That theatre is not repetition, but action. That a script is an open score that allows a great many interpretations...That it is necessary to continue amazing and surprising each other and that one can take this a very long way. As long as you are free...

..One of the constants in the life of STAN is talking about acting. No one can define it, no one has any nameable method up their sleeve, but it is always about the same thing: how ought one to act?"

Luk van den Dries

Following Tg STAN's performance of "The Monkey Trial" the previous evening, this Belgian company offers a one day workshop exploring their philosophy and practice: Tg STAN's work is characterised by its emphasis on the independence of the actor from the authority of the director and writer.

Workshop Fee: £20

Venue: Chapter Arts Centre, Market Road, Canton, Cardiff, CF5 1QE

For more information or to book, please call CPR at (0) 1970 622 133 or email cprwww@aber.ac.uk

November 29th 2007
,
ON RUNNING: A Performances by CPR Associate Artists Louise Ritchie and Gareth Llyr - November 2007
Thurs 29th & Fri 30th Nov, 7.00 pm

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Two journeys. Two spaces. Two televisions.

One man. One woman.

Press play.

Tickets: £5 (£3.50 Concessions)


CPR Associate Artists

CPR's Associate Artist scheme supports young or emergent artists in a number of ways, providing: artistic and administrative advice and mentoring; office, internet and computer facilities; studio and rehearsal resources; performance and work in progress showcasing; marketing and profile; training on CPR workshops and participation in CPR events; creation and performance opportunities in CPR productions; and the research facilities of the CPR Resource Centre.

CPR current Associates are Louise Ritchie and Gareth Llŷr (Aberystwyth) and Anushiye Yarnell (Cardiff).

CPR, The Foundry Studio, Penglais Campus, Aberystwyth

weblink(s):www.on-running.co.uk,

November 26th 2007
,
ANIMAL LOVE PROJECT: A series of performances by CPR Associate Artist Anushiye Yarnell and artists Joelle Gruenberg, Yuko Kominani and Paul Hurley - November 2007
Monday 26th and Tuesday 27th November

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"Imagine an animal - perhaps one familiar, perhaps one you have never encountered before."

A new group work featuring four artists whose work has a strong relation to the question of animal and the anthropomorphic subject of love. The performance will consist of combinations of the four artists' works presented over two evenings.

Mon 26th Nov - Double Bill, 7.00 pm, Tickets £5.00

Linnunrata (Birds' Way): Yuko Kominani (Japan/Luxembourg)

A solo movement dance inspired from the Finnish word for milky way, which literally translates as "way of the birds" in Japanese.

Bear "the Wanderer": Anushiye Yarnell (Wales)."

A solo dance performance that recounts a journey that began with the end of a love affair and an oracle from the "I Ching" to travel to Peru. Anushiye Yarnell is one of Cardiff's most idiosyncratic and visionary dancers who creates performances that blend the everyday with extraordinary flights of invention.


Tues 27th Nov - Double Bill, 7.00 pm, Tickets £5.00

Becoming-Locust: Paul Hurley (Wales)

Endurance body art with high-heels, fresh vegetables and maybe some specialist sports equipment. Hurley will be making a "becoming-locust" action that aims to be as physically intense and beautiful as the experience of love that it tries to understand.

Is my Body a Hotel? : Joelle Gruenberg (Peru)

A solo performance art work investigating love memories and how such experiences accumulate in the body.

The Animal Love Project is supported by Arts Council of Wales, Wales Arts International and Tupac Association, Peru.



CPR Associate Artists

CPR's Associate Artist scheme supports young or emergent artists in a number of ways, providing: artistic and administrative advice and mentoring; office, internet and computer facilities; studio and rehearsal resources; performance and work in progress showcasing; marketing and profile; training on CPR workshops and participation in CPR events; creation and performance opportunities in CPR productions; and the research facilities of the CPR Resource Centre.

CPR current Associates are Louise Ritchie and Gareth Llŷr (Aberystwyth) and Anushiye Yarnell (Cardiff).

CPR, The Foundry Studio, Penglais Campus, Aberystwyth

November 17th 2007
,
ARTIST'S ENCOUNTERS AT THE FOUNDRY - November - December 2007

SPEAKING TO THE NATION?
THE ARTIST'S VISION

"A true vision for the future begins with
respect for the past and the commonality of human
experience." Peter Sellars

Wales

As a work in progress...

As a project of imagining and re-invention...

As a place of inclusion and integration...

Where notions of nationhood are determined through dynamic negotiation
and transaction...

Where the participants determine the outcome and a sense of ownership is
gained...

"Today it is difficult to imagine how any
national theatre can pretend to represent the spirit of the
nation" Dragan Klaic

No, Not The-National-Theatre debate, but taking that as a context and
spur, performers, directors, writers and artists of all disciplines are
invited to gather and share ideas, visions, passions, manifestos, hopes
and dreams for theatre: the here and now, the next and the what if?

In any debate about theatre and its future, the dominant voices are
often not those of the artists who are busy making and performing the
work. Speaking to the Nation? The Artist's Vision does not want to focus
on structures, funding or strategies for audience development but the
excitement and passion of the work that needs to be at the heart of any
venture. An antidote to 'devoted, disillusioned and disgruntled'
talkshops, Speaking to the Nation? The Artist's Vision seeks
inspiration, provocation, engagement and maybe even entertainment. To
mitigate too-many-words, the day will also include a series of
specially-created Short Cuts, in which individual artists from different
disciplines and generations respond to the question of what consumes
them now.

Please come and be generously present to share obsessions and celebrate
duality, mutuality, commonality and difference.

Sat 8th Dec, 10.00 am - 6.00pm, Admission is Free

For more information or to register your place, please call CPR at (0)
1970 622 133 or email cprwww@aber.ac.uk



WHAT'S WELSH FOR PERFORMANCE? / BETH YW 'PERFORMANCE' YN
GYMRAEG?

AN ORAL HISTORY OF PERFORMANCE ART IN WALES / HANES LLAFAR CELFYDDYD
PERFFORMIO YNG NGHYMRU

RICHARD GOUGH

A two-year series of public conversations by Heike Roms with key artists
who have shaped the development of performance art in Wales since 1968.
Richard Gough will be in conversation about alternative approaches to
teaching, archiving and publishing performance and on the role of
internationalism for performance art in Wales. Richard Gough is
Professor at Aberystwyth University, Artistic Director of the Centre for
Performance Research and General Editor of Performance Research.

Project Director/ Cyfarwyddwr y Prosiect: Dr Heike Roms,

Aberystwyth University/ Prifysgol Aberystwyth

http://www.performance-wales.org/

Thurs 22nd Nov, 6.00pm, Admission is Free

To reserve your place, please contact:
http://www.performance-wales.org/mail@performance-wales.org




RAT THEATRE

A one-day symposium on the working practices and productions of seminal
physical theatre company RAT Theatre with the support of the Society for
Theatre Research. Concentrating on the earliest years of the company's
work (1972-3), the programme will include screenings, presentations,
demonstrations, interviews and discussions. Presentations will address
not only the work of RAT but also British alternative theatre of the
early 1970s and the significance of the National Union of Students'
Drama Festival.

Sat 17th Nov, 10.00 am - 4.30pm, Admission is Free

For more information please contact: Louise Ritchie, Email:
llr@aber.ac.uk

Telephone: 07886-085947

November 17th 2007
,
CPR PRIZE DRAW WINNER ANNOUNCED!

We are pleased to announce that the winner of our prize draw is Matt Ball from The Camden People's Theatre. Matt will be receiving a £100 gift voucher to spend in the CPR Bookshop. Our two runners up are Michelle Cahill and Oskari Korenius, they have each won a years free subscription to the Performance Research Journal.

Many thanks to everyone who updated or added their contact details to our mailing list this Summer. Please continue to keep us up to date so that we can continue to keep in touch with information that matches your interests.

November 17th 2007
,
'THE VOICE OF THOSE WITHOUT A VOICE' - REPORTAGE THEATRE: Workshop by Annet Henneman, Teatro di Nascosto (Italy) - November 2007
Sat 17 and Sun 18 Nov, 9.30 am - 5:30 pm

Aimed at performers, dancers, directors, teachers, social workers - anyone who is interested in theatre work in a social context - this workshop will explore how to use theatre as a working tool in and for society. In particular it will examine techniques and experiences relating to theatre as a resource in war, inside prisons, and with immigrants and refugees.

The workshop will be led by Annet Hennman, co-founder of Teatro di Nascasto (Hidden Theatre) in Volterra, Italy. For the last ten years the company has specialised in Reportage theatre, telling the stories of people who would otherwise not be heard. They have lived and worked with oppressed people in Kurdistan, the homeless in Rome and Calcutta and asylum seekers in Rome and Calcutta. Their most recent project, Refugees, took place in the European parliament in Brussels and involved 100 MPs and MEPs working on common European guidelines for refugees. This process will continue in Volterra in November.

Workshop Fee: £70 waged (£35 unwaged)

Venue: Chapter Arts Centre, Market Road, Canton, Cardiff, CF5 1QE

For more information or to book, please call CPR at (0) 1970 622 133 or email cprwww@aber.ac.uk

November 2nd 2007
,
WAYS OF WORKING: READY-MADE THEATRE - A Workshop by Quarantine (UK) - November 2007
Fri 2nd Nov, 10.00 am - 5.00 pm

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Quarantine have fast developed an international reputation as one of Britain's most distinctive creators of new theatre, creating a unique body of work that blends incredible invention with an intimate contact with reality

The whole thing might be the bastard offspring of the Wooster Group crossed with the Osbournes - radical reality theatre. Robert Dawson-Scott, The Times on Quarantine's Butterfly

Over the past 9 years, Quarantine have developed a unique reputation for their approach to creating theatre from ready-made sources - working with both trained and untrained performers ("experts in everyday life") to create work where there is the smallest of gaps between performer and material.

This one-day practical workshop will introduce Quarantine's methods of creating a dramaturgy of real, lived and relived experience, looking at performance strategies, techniques for making text and scenography. The workshop will make specific reference to SUSAN & DARREN, Quarantine's show at The Foundry (31 October - 2 November).


The workshop is open to all, though numbers are limited. Please note - as Quarantine's approach involves developing material from the performer's own history, each participant in the workshop will be expected to share their choice of personal experiences as a source of material.

For more information or to reserve your place, please call or email CPR

Workshop Fee: £20

Venue: CPR, The Foundry Studio, Penglais Campus, Aberystwyth

For more information or to book, please call CPR at (0) 1970 622 133 or email cprwww@aber.ac.uk

October 31st 2007
,
SUSAN & DARREN: A Performance By Quarantine and Company Fierce - October & November 2007
Originally co-produced with queerupnorth and Contact

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Wed 31st Oct, Thurs 1st and Fri 2nd Nov, 8.00pm

‘...one of the most original, intimate, warmly human and movingly open-hearted shows I've seen in a very long time...The banal and the beautiful, the tragic and the joyful, exist side by side, just as they do in life, in a marvellous show which is as full of surprises as it is of life-affirming love. Manchester Evening News

"There is no company in the UK working quite in the area of Quarantine, a truly wonderful company that uses the lives and experiences of real people as the starting point for all their shows and who put their subjects centre stage and let them speak for themselves... Everywhere Quarantine delves, it uncovers the extraordinary in the seemingly ordinary and banal." Lyn Gardner, The Guardian

Susan & Darren features 28-year old dancer/choreographer Darren Pritchard and his 52 year old mum, Susan Pritchard, who works as a cleaner. Darren lives at home in Manchester with Susan, in the house that he grew up in.

Quarantine and Company Fierce have re-created one of Susan and Darren's famous parties, where Susan will prepare a buffet, and there will be dancing. The audience are invited to sample the buffet and dance to Susan and Darren's favourite records and listen, as Susan and Darren tell stories from their extraordinary lives. Friends and neighbours might pop in. They're close, Darren and Susan. At night Darren sits on Susan's bed and they talk about everything. Everything. You could say they feed each other. Come and join the party.

"It's the best night out I can remember. I'm moved, almost to tears, by the honesty, directness and clarity in the performance, and have great fun at the party! This is poignancy unadorned. Extraordinary ordinary lives celebrating just being." Miriam King, Total Theatre

Quarantine have fast developed an international reputation as one of Britain's most distinctive creators of new theatre, creating a unique body of work that blends incredible invention with an intimate contact with reality. They won Arts Council England's art05 award for outstanding achievement. Company Fierce has established itself as an original and inventive Manchester-based urban dance company, and won Arts Council England's art06 award for its work with young people.

Darren Pritchard will lead a dance workshop before each performance of Susan & Darren that will alter the course of that night's show. All ages & levels of dance experience are welcome. It's free to ticket-holders for the performance, but booking is essential.

£9 (£7 Concessions)

For more information or to book a ticket, please call CPR at (0) 1970 622 133 or email cprwww@aber.ac.uk

October 14th 2007
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GEORGIAN SINGING WORKSHOP LED BY RENOWNED ETHNOMUSICOLOGIST JOSEPH JORDANIA
Sunday October 14th 2007, 10.30am - 4.30pm

In 1994 Edisher Garakanidze and Joseph Jordania came to the UK to teach 'the Cardiff Georgian Choir', a group of singers invited by the Centre for Performance Research to sing for a Georgian feast at the Performance, Food and Cookery project.

We are pleased to welcome Joseph Jordania back from Australia to lead a one day workshop in the inspirational folk harmonies of Georgia.

This workshop is suitable for both experienced singers and beginners.

Price: £20.00

To book contact CPR

email: cprwww@aber.ac.uk
phone: + 44 (0) 1970 622 133
Workshop location: The Foundry Studio, Penglais Campus, Aberystwyth, SY23 3AJ

September 30th 2007
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BREATH, INSPIRATION AND THE VOICE
GIVING VOICE: AN ANNOUNCEMENT AND A CALL!

Softly I shall speak to the air.
The ears of man have become deaf with the sound of explosions. The eyes of man have become blind with tears. …The air into which I pour my heart shall permeate the hearts of Man.

Pundit Acharya (1975)
Breath, Sleep, the Heart and Life

International Festival of the Voice in Performance
(The announcement)
Giving Voice 10: Breath Inspiration Voice
28th March – 2nd April 2008
Aberystwyth, Wales

Breath is fundamental to life but also to giving voice. As we take a new breath, as we inspire, we absorb the potential to express new thoughts, to give voice to feeling: to persuade, argue, seduce, analyse, lament, educate, sympathise… We can orate or berate, or wait - with bated breath - for the moment to exhale, the expressive breath. To express through the word or song, to sing with joy and warmth or from despair and terror: the song can be a narrative carried on the ever changing, yet rhythmic tides of the breath; the breath can fuel an outcry against the injustice of the world, the flames of fury fed by the heated lungs; a song of sorrow may be heard as the sobbing, broken intake of jagged air or as the extended wail of the bereft. In, out, and always an exchange, reciprocity, a flow, an exemplar of change.

For the actor and for the singer the breath is a life long focus of attention. There is always something new to learn. The process of life: environment, anxiety, change, aging, illness – all these can affect breathing as well as professional demands of character, vocal range, size of auditorium, and so on. In some cultures the breath is talked of in terms of ‘management’ and ‘control’ but in others breath is ‘spirit’, ‘energy’, or even God.

What can we learn from ancient practices and new understandings that emanate from neuroscience and biology? What can performers gain from considering philosophies that address the deeper relationship of breath to life? Might a cognisance of the latest scientific revelations gained through technological advance empower skill, technique and creativity?

Giving Voice invites exponents of voice from a wide variety of cultures and areas of expertise to explore the relationship, tangents and nuances, between breath and voice, and that vital component, inspiration, in all its meanings and resonances. Focusing on the voice in performance, practitioners and scholars come together in practical explorations in an inspirational programme of workshops, lecture demonstrations and performances.

(The Call)
The published programme for Giving Voice 2008 will be available later this autumn, please do register your interest by email with us, so we can keep you informed of updates. If the theme of Breath, Inspiration, and The Voice is of particular interest to you, we would still welcome, even at this stage, any ideas for workshops, talks, or performances on this theme. Please contact Judie Christie or Joan Mills at cprwww@aber.ac.uk.

July 20th 2007
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INTERNSHIP OPPORTUNITY...OPENING UP WORLDS OF PERFORMANCE

An opportunity has arisen to fill a vacant space on the volunteer internship scheme beginning in September 2007. As an integral part of the CPR team interns gain an insight into the workings of an international theatre organization as well as working alongside established practicing artists during projects. On offer is a good solid grounding in arts administration, production and research and practical experience on a variety of projects, from festivals to workshops, performances to publishing.

If you are interested in finding out more please contact Helen Gethin at heg@aber.ac.uk.

More information (click on the filenames to download):
index.bak.go
t.php

July 7th 2007
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THE SUMMER SHIFT 2007: 7 - 18 JULY

CPR INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL OF THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE

GUEST ARTISTS 2007: GERALDINE PILGRIM, MIKE PEARSON, SIMON THORNE WITH INGRID VON WANTOCH REKOWSKI, MARISA CARNESKY, RIC JERROM AND BRIAN POPAY

The Summer Shift is an intensive working retreat in beautiful surroundings for those wanting to explore new ways of working and experiment with different processes and approaches to making theatre and performance.

“CPR offers you a unique view on performance… you are confronted with your own work in an inspirational and playful way.”
Summer School Participant, 2002

With a range of high quality workshops and performance laboratories led by some of the world’s leading practitioners, The Summer Shift offers the opportunity to take time out and away from the usual pressures of everyday life to explore your creative practice amongst like-minded participants from around the world.

The Summer Shift is comprised of workshops, talks, discussions and evening events Participants can either enrol on individual workshops or choose their own ten-day pathway through a series of workshops exploring innovative processes of composition working with landscape, soundscape and visual scores, music-theatre, magic and burlesque, interactive theatre and physical training.

This year’s CPR Summer Shift is a very British affair, indeed. The UK’s theatre and performance ecology has long been distinguished as much for its diversity as for its innovation and experiment, as well as – perhaps - a certain peculiarly British idiosyncracy and sense of the absurd. Each of our guest artists this year have long been significant and formative players in the experimental theatre ecology here in the UK and have developed and sustained distinctive work over many years. The Summer Shift 2007 brings them together to share their compositional strategies, and aesthetic methods and practices through a process of investigation and experiment with Summer Shift participants. The work offers immersion in a range of disciplines and approaches and will take place both in and out of the studio, using sites and environments ranging from the great British seaside to the British Country House and Estate, from Victorian follies to disused quarries.

“I found the workshop enlightening, intense and empowering. CPR is a wonderful resource and the staff well-informed, friendly and accommodating.”
Summer Shift participant, 2006

On our doorstep we have some of the most extraordinary and beautiful landscapes in the UK – Cardigan Bay stretches from Aberystwyth both to the mountains of Snowdonia and to the Pembrokeshire coastal path. Indoors you may spend time in the CPR’s multi-cultural Resource Centre delving into performance archives of videos, books, CDs and DVDs or work in the studio, developing your own project in tandem, building on the workshop training.

July 7th 2007
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SUMMER SHIFT 2007: PROGRAMME AND REGISTRATION

PROGRAMME

You can sign up for the entire Summer SHIFT programme, 7 – 18 July – and choose your own pathway through 10 days of workshops. For example, you might wish to work 3 days with Mike Pearson, then 5 days with Geraldine Pilgrim, followed by 3 days with Marisa Carnesky, or you might wish to work with Geraldine Pilgrim for 7 days and conclude with 3 days with Simon Thorne and Ingrid von Wantoch Rekowski.

It may be that you are unable to attend for the full programme and wish to come for only one or two workshops, but if you have the time the accumulative experience of a full Summer Shift goes a long way and is excellent value for money.

REGISTRATION FEES

The full SUMMER SHIFT registration fee is £300 (£200 bursary rate)
For participants unable to attend the full Summer Shift, individual workshop registration fees are as indicated below.

OBJECTS AND ATMOSPHERES
Geraldine Pilgrim
2 day workshop (7-8 July) £75 (£55 Bursary Price)
5 day workshop (10 -14 July) £200 (£160 Bursary Price)
7 days (7 – 14 July) £245 (£175 Bursary Price)

RAT THEATRE
Mike Pearson
3 day workshop (7-9 July) £105 (£75 Bursary Price)

INTERACTIVE THEATRE
Ric Jerrom and Brian Popay
4 day workshop (10-14 July) £140 (£100 Bursary Price)

CARNIVALESQUE EXPERIMENTS
Marisa Carnesky
3 day workshop (16 –18 July) £105 (£75 Bursary Price)

VOICES IN ARCADIA
Simon Thorne & Ingrid von Wantoch Rekowski
3 day workshop (16 –18 July) £105 (£75 Bursary Price)

To book please contact CPR (phone: +44 (0)1970 622133 or email: cprwww@aber.ac.uk) or complete the booking form below and return it by post or email.

More information (click on the filenames to download):
SS2007_Booking_Form.doc

July 7th 2007
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SUMMER SHIFT 2007: MIKE PEARSON


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MIKE PEARSON
7-9 JULY
RAT THEATRE:

1973 – tank tops, flares, Player’s No. 6, Mackeson, Bowie…

A great year too for RAT Theatre: Hunchback, Blindfold – tours of Yugoslavia, Italy and France; performances at the World Theatre Festival in Nancy and The Mickery in Amsterdam. Outrageous, excessive, naïve, swaggering, committed to the moment.
In celebration of the work of one of the most physical theatre groups in the UK and in memory of recently deceased company members, Mike Pearson leads a three-day intensive workshop on RAT Theatre’s bio-mechanic exercises and processes of devising. The work will be physically arduous and emotionally demanding but also deeply rewarding; the intention is to create a short group performance for public showing.

Do these ‘old skool’ techniques still have currency?

Can their re-engagement evoke something of the spirit of the times, rekindling hopes for great happenings? Or are they from a period of theatre so distant now that it might as well be on another planet?

Come prepared to find out!

Mike Pearson is Professor of Performance Studies at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He was a founder member of RAT Theatre and later in the 1970s he was Artistic Director of Cardiff Laboratory Theatre, and latterly Director of Brith Gof Theatre Company. Pearson has been working with Mike Brookes since 1997 in the Pearson/Brookes Collective. He is co-author of ‘Theatre/Archaeology’ (Routledge 2004) and, most recently, author of ‘In Comes I’ (Exeter University Press 2006).

July 7th 2007
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SUMMER SHIFT 2007: RIC JERROM & BRIAN POPAY (NATURAL THEATRE)


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RIC JERROM AND BRIAN POPAY(NATURAL THEATRE)
10-14 JULY
(2.pm 10th July – 1.pm 14th July)
ALL THE WORLD’S A PLAYGROUND: INTERACTIVE THEATRE
AS PLAYFULNESS IN PUBLIC SPACE

Ric Jerrom is one of the leading performers and directors with the UK’s greatest interactive comedy theatre ensemble, Natural Theatre Company (www.naturaltheatre.co.uk/). Brian Popay is a founder member and now Senior Performer with the Company. NTC has been pushing at the boundaries of what is possible in public space for over 30 years, in the UK and all around the world; it is not fanciful to see them as original instigators of the modern, massively burgeoning, "Street Arts" movement. Central to their "Street Work" is the idea that public space is everybody's theatre: it follows that, in a strong sense, all this work is 'Site-Specific.

The workshop will be based on the unconventional performance style(s) of the Natural Theatre Company. After a short illustrated lecture participants will investigate turning ideas into Art, Art into actions, entertainment and engagement. As a group you will pursue the achievement of impact through diverse means. In particular, looking at the geography of performance in public spaces and how ‘place’ can call a piece of theatre into being. There will be an emphasis too, on such aspects of Interactive Theatre as gender; number; visual content; and character. Think “Happenings” and bring a sense of fun! We shall animate public space where “every rehearsal is a performance, every performance, a rehearsal” performing in a wide-range of non-traditional theatre locations – indoors and out.

Ric Jerrom is an actor, artist and writer; he is an associate of the Natural Theatre Company, for whom he has created, directed and performed Interactive, or “Street” Theatre worldwide, and conducted visionary workshops at the behests of the British Council, the Gulbenkian Foundation, the Soros Foundation, and sundry Universities – and, of course, with CPR! He is Artistic Director of “The Quest” – which marries visual and performative arts in delightful and communitarian ways.

Brian Popay trained as a fine artist. In addition to his work with NTC he has performed with other companies such as Forkbeard Fantasy. He directed Avanti Display's Mr Lucky’s Birthday Party and the Skyscape performance at the Millennium Dome. This year he founded the Fine Artistes performance/art company.

July 7th 2007
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SUMMER SHIFT 2007: GERALDINE PILGRIM


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GERALDINE PILGRIM
7-8 JULY
OBJECTS AND ATMOSPHERES – AN INTRODUCTION:

A two-day introductory workshop that explores creating atmospheres, working with objects and examining the use of space in site-specific performance.

10-14 JULY
OBJECTS AND ATMOSPHERES –DEVISING/SITE-SPECIFIC:

A five-day workshop that examines creating and devising site-specific performance.
Participants will work individually and collaboratively in both exterior and interior sites; exploring devising work through creating atmospheres and environments using objects and ways of developing narratives that are inspired by site.

The workshop is for emerging and experienced practitioners who are interested in exploring, developing and creating site-specific environments as well as creating narrative often non-verbally through working with objects and atmospheres. It is also a development for participants of the two day introductory workshop.

Geraldine Pilgrim is a designer, director and installation artist. She trained as a fine artist; co- founded and became Artistic Director of Hesitate and Demonstrate the influential visual theatre company which toured Britain and mainland Europe and has since been making installations, theatre based performance and large scale site-specific events. She is an Artsadmin Associate Artist and Artistic Director of Corridor, a performance company that she set up in 2000 to create site-specific events, often working with young people, older people and community groups. Recent projects include Deep End, in Marshall Street Baths, Soho; Sea View for NRLA, Glasgow and Spa at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital, Euston. She is currently developing Dreams of a Winter Night, an installation commissioned by English Heritage as part of Picture House at Belsay Hall, Northumberland in 2007.

July 7th 2007
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SUMMER SHIFT 2007: MARISA CARNESKY


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MARISA CARNESKY
16-18 JULY
CARNIVALESQUE EXPERIMENTS: BURLESQUE, MAGIC, CIRCUS AND PERFORMANCE IN PROTEST

Mixing practical and theatrical work, using rare and exciting performance footage and articles, specific props, objects, elements of costume, images and music, Marisa Carnesky will work with participants to enable them to build pieces of devised performance.

Since 2004 when Carnesky premiered her groundbreaking and critically acclaimed multimedia theatrical dark ride 'Carnesky’s Ghost Train' that toured the UK from Bangladeshi Brick Lane, to Glastonbury Festival, to Trafalgar Square, Marisa Carnesky has been much in demand for her thrilling genre defying performances. Drawing on Marisa’s fascination with Victorian melodrama, sideshow freakery and female erotica, creating a dark, fairy-tale atmosphere reminiscent of Angela Carter, Carnesky's Ghost Train was part art installation, part visual theatre and part fairground ride - a purpose-built train whisking audiences 20 at a time through a magical environment of optical illusions and performance vignettes.

'A touring blend of fairground attraction and conceptual art... It has a beauty and elegance we seldom see nowadays.'
The Times on Carnesky’s Ghost Train

'A mixture of tat and exotica with illusion and magic, [it] offers the audience hard truths about centuries of dispossession and displacement... The piece's ragged quirkiness is all part of its power, as is the way that Carnesky presents a startling body of evidence about Europe's invisible people. '
The Guardian on Carnesky’s Ghost Train

"I don't know what I call myself," says Carnesky. "I'm a live artist, I'm an experimental theatre practitioner, I'm a showman. I use myself and my body and work with live people to create images."

Marisa Carnesky originally trained as a dancer at the Laban Centre, London, and at the University of Brighton. She has received a number of awards – Olivier Award Best Entertainment 2004, Edinburgh Festival Herald Angel Award 2005 and Time Out Best Theatre Award 2004. In 2003 she launched the UCLA Live International Theatre Festival in Los Angeles and has also developed a decade-long collaboration with the collective Duckie She has been supported by the Arts Council England, Fierce, It’s Queer up North, Nesta and The European Cultural Foundation to name but a few.

July 7th 2007
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SUMMER SHIFT 2007: SIMON THORNE & INGRID VON WANTOCH REKOWSKI


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SIMON THORNE & INGRID VON WANTOCH REKOWSKI
16-18 JULY
VOICES IN ARCADIA

This workshop explores devising with sound, song, and music to create a kind of mind’s-eye-theatre for the ears that is resonant with the modern world and will also explore how engagement with a particular site location can be retrieved as approaches to soundscape composition. Taking the idea of Arcadia and the nostalgia of Paradise as our point of entry, we will be exploring ideas around the construction of Nature and the emergence of mythologies. What if we take these as raw materials? What stories and narratives can we generate? Taking time to explore the specific location of Hafod near Cwmystwyth, we will be exploring strategies for composing image, music and text that are extracted from site research. We will be exploring strategies for staging sonic performance using our ‘natural’ voices and found sound sources.

Joining Simon Thorne in leading this exploration will be French-German director Ingrid von Wantoch Rekowski, whose Belgian company, Lucilia Caeser, works with the theatricality of choir, polyglot language, and painting to give access to musical forms that in turn give life to archetypes, living pictures and transformational metamorphosis. The text develops beyond words, situations and characters to harmonies, images and choreographic structures instead. The outcome is a unique theatre for the ears – music for the eyes.

The workshop is aimed at theatre practitioners who are interested in exploring notions of sonic performance as well as musicians who are interested in exploring theatre as a compositional tool in relation to musical performance and multi-disciplinary artists who are interested in exploring sonic performance within the context of site related work. It should be stressed that no prior musical expertise is necessary to participate in the workshop.

Simon Thorne is a composer, musician and theatre maker. He was a founder director of Man Act, which, in its time was acknowledged across the globe for its highly charged physical theatre, and its groundbreaking exploration of masculinity. He is also one of the founder members of the Wales Jazz Composers Orchestra. He has recently received a prestigious Creative Wales Award from the Arts Council of Wales to explore new approaches to music-theatre.

Ingrid von Wantoch Rekowski creates living pictures. Through her company Lucilia Caesar, she has created a new drama working with harmonies, images, and structures; where the bodies of the performers merge into a collective monstrous being that is both frightening and erotic. The dynamics of her work borrow from musical forms, human solos, polyphonies, exposing human passion without the psychological connotations. Artistic conventions are twisted and become unclassifiable. The spectator can dream and imagine, freed of focusing on an outcome.

June 30th 2007
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WIN A £100 CPR BOOKSHOP VOUCHER OR A YEARS FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO THE PERFORMANCE RESEARCH JOURNAL!

We are in the process of updating our records and communications systems and would like to find the best way of keeping you in touch with information. We would be very grateful if you could update or add your details to our mailing list - by clicking on the join our mailing list link below - so we can send you information specific to your interests and profile by email, and occasionally by post.

As an added incentive, if you update your contact details before the 30th of September 2007 you will be entered into our prize draw and will have the chance to win our first prize of a £100 gift voucher to spend in the CPR Bookshop or one of 2 runners up prizes of one years free subscription to the Performance Research Journal*.

We should like to encourage everyone who wishes to keep in touch with us to complete the mailing list sign up form so that we are completely confident of the accuracy and currency of our records. Even if you feel that we have your most recent details please do still enter the draw by updating your records asap.

Your details will be kept confidential and will not be passed on to any third party. We are well aware of how easy it is to become inundated by emails so we will be efficacious with our communications, contacting you only with information that matches your interests.

Good Luck!

Join Our Mailing List!

June 16th 2007
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JUNE WORKSHOP - CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN DANCE WITH FRANCIS ANGOL


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CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN DANCE is a two-day workshop that introduces African dance from a contemporary perspective. It draws from the main African dance forms-Ghanaian, Ivorian, Nigerian, Senegalese and South African-as the basis of its movement and dance vocabulary-as well as Contemporary, Carribean and Jazz dance styles. Participants will learn a unique yet accessible articulation of African dance, one that is rooted in the traditional but informed by present forms.

FRANCIS ANGOL (UK) is an established choreographer, performer and tutor of Contemporary African Dance. He is currently the Artistic Director of Movement Angol and Director of Dance at Islington Arts Factory (North London). Francis has been guest artist in residence in many countries including Jamaica and Nigeria, and his choreographic work performed to packed audiences at the renowned Sadler's Wells in London.

For more information or to book, please call CPR at (0) 1970 622 133 or email cprwww@aber.ac.uk

June 9th 2007
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JUNE WORKSHOP - PRECISION CONTACT WITH JESS CURTIS & MARIA FRANCESCA SCARONI


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Contact Improvisation is an improvisational dance form utilizing physical principles such as touch, momentum, gravity, friction, resistance, counterbalance, lifting and falling. Primarily practiced as a duet form, it trains the senses and reflexes towards nuanced communication through touch, and the playful interaction of weight and momentum in space. The dancers work at the speed of reflex, tuned to the speed of falling.

PRESCISION CONTACT is a skills-based workshop for movers who want to increase the awareness and precision in their dance. Participants will address and practice 1) sustaining a clear point or points of contact, 2) the modulation of speed and pressure, 3) control during inversion, supporting and riding, 4) sensitivity to the floor, 5) integration of multiple foci, and 6) extending the variety of qualities in your dancing and your ability to move easily and intentionally between them.

‘The dancers work at the speed of reflex, tuned to the speed of falling.' Paraphrased from Steve Paxton.

JESS CURTIS (USA) is the choreographer and director of San Francisco based dance company Jess Curtis/Gravity. His work transcends interdisciplinary boundaries, integrating contemporary dance, performance, improvisation, aerial acrobatics, music and physically and culturally diverse collaborators.

MARIA FRANCESCA SCARONI (Italy) is a performer and teacher whose work with Manuela Bondavalli Danza (Italy) has rooted her dance practice in release-based contemporary techniques and Contact Improvisation. She joined Jess Curtis/Gravity in 2004.

For more information or to book, please call CPR at (0) 1970 622 133 or email cprwww@aber.ac.uk

The Foundry, CPR

11:00 am - 4:00 pm
£40/ £20

weblink(s):www.jesscurtisgravity.org,

June 1st 2007
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First Symposium on Archive, Memory and Performance
25th - 27th May 2007

Richard Gough, Judie Christie, Adrian Kear, Michal Kobialka, Mike Pearson, Heike Roms, Rebecca Schneider and Diana Taylor met at the first research and development meeting for a major project on Archive, Memory and Performance.

March 24th 2007
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Beijing Opera: Workshop
This one- day workshop consists of demonstrations and hands-on practical sessions that will introduce you to the building blocks of Beijing Opera.

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Beijing Opera is an extraordinary dramatic art form with an ancient tradition. Students of this disciplined and dynamic craft train full time from a young age to develop a broad range of skills including movement, dance, singing, martial arts, stage-fighting and acrobatic tumbling. To close their international tour Ghaffar Pourazar, Director of Beijing's Monkey King Troupe and performer Ms Chie Morimura will be joining us at CPR to bring you a rare opportunity to discover the techniques and principles behind this total theatre form.

The morning session will focus on a visual introduction to the male and female roles followed by physical preparation and training. The afternoon session will explore voice and rhythm in conjunction with movement and choreography and will examine the impact on the audience of gestures, positions and expressions. The workshop will finish with demonstrations of stage fighting and the elaborate methods of face painting.

This is a workshop for individuals of all levels of performance experience who would like an introduction to the colourful and captivating techniques of Beijing Opera and an insight into one of the world's great theatre forms.

For more information please visit call CPR on 01970 622133 or email cprwww@aber.ac.uk.

The Centre for Performance Research
The Foundry/ Y Ffowndri
Parry Williams Building,
Penglais Campus,
Aberystwyth,

Tickets are available now at £20.
Saturday 24th March 2007, 10am - 5pm

email:cprwww@aber.ac.uk

February 7th 2007
Antony Pickthall, CPR
Lone Twin Workshop
Video and Performance

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Lone Twin Workshop: Video & Performance

Throughout Lone Twin’s career, performances have been made which attempt to review, reframe and renegotiate previous works via the use of video documentation. This process began as many of the company’s works elude an audience’s ability to witness the ‘whole’ piece due to their extended length and location. These performances using video material of prior works function as a clear moment of review but also as an original work in their own right. The company’s new piece Nine Years uses this process to create a narrative that moves through Lone Twin’s entire journey to date.

This workshop will introduce methods and processes by which we might begin working with performance documentation as material for new live works; how might we revisit, reframe and renegotiate prior events to open out new potentials and possibilities?

All participants are asked to bring at least 20 mins of DV video footage - on MiniDV tape - to use in the workshop. The footage can take any form, it may be something old you have lying around or it maybe something you shoot especially to use in the workshop. It doesn’t necessarily need to be performance documentation, although that may be the participant’s preference.

To book the workshop please contact CPR 01970 622133 or cprwww@aber.ac.uk

Please note places are limited.

The Foundry, CPR

Tuesday 20 February, 11am - 4pm
£40 (£25 Concessions)

email:aop@aber.ac.uk
weblink(s):www.lonetwin.com,

December 15th 2006
Antony Pickthall, Lone Twin
Lone Twin to Perform NINE YEARS
Acclaimed duo Lone Twin to present NINE YEARS as the inauguaral public presentation at The Foundry

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A new performance by the internationally acclaimed duo, Lone Twin, attempts, for the first time, to bring together their entire body of work in one ninety-minute show. The heart-shaped topography of Brussels, the shores of Lake Lucerne, downtown Philadelphia, the North
Sea, the Arctic Circle, the blue skies of Lisbon’s July and most of Switzerland will be
revisited in a final attempt to make some sense of the world around us.

In 2006 Lone Twin will be nine years old (not quite ten/no longer eight) and we’re
planning a birthday celebration, and, in what will be our last duo performance piece, a
farewell to the last nine years.


Since forming in 1997 the company has become one of the United Kingdom’s leading
performance makers, showing regularly across the world to popular and critical
acclaim.

Formed by Gregg Whelan and Gary Winters, originally to work with performance on ideas of place, context and travel, Lone Twin have created an internationally celebrated body of work. Performances often involve great physical
attempts on playfully heroic journeys, concentrating on contextual concerns the work
has often engaged with local environments and conditions. For some years a series of
walks across cities, villages, towns and shorelines created performances built of
meetings with local residents, workers, tourists. A long series of works beginning in
1999 and continuing through to the current SledgeHammer Songs took the weather as
context and saw the performance literally producing clouds.

NINE YEARS will be performed on 19th February 2007.

The Foundry, Penglais Campus, Aberystwyth

19th February 2007
7.30pm
£7 (£5 concs.)

email:aop@aber.ac.uk
weblink(s):www.lonetwin.com,

September 21st 2006
Antony Pickthall, CPR
A Performance Cosmology Publication Date
From Wales: A Traveller’s Guide to the Performance Cosmos

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A PERFORMANCE COSMOLOGY:
Testimony from the Future, Evidence of the Past
(editors: Judie Christie; Richard Gough, Daniel Watt)

A speculation on the future of performance and an evocation of the history of the Centre for Performance Research (CPR).

CPR concludes its recent celebration of 30 years of work with the publication of the book, A PERFORMANCE COSMOLOGY: Testimony from the Future, Evidence of the Past.

CPR began as an experimental theatre company (Cardiff Laboratory Theatre, founded by Mike Pearson in 1974) before evolving into the Centre for Performance Research (founded by Richard Gough and Judie Christie in 1988), a multi-faceted theatre organization located and rooted in Wales, working nationally and internationally. Thriving on a broad curiosity in theatre and performance, the organization has achieved an influence far beyond Wales, with programmes combining cultural co-operation, collaboration and exchange, practical training, education and research, performance, production and promotion, documentation and publishing, information and resource.

With a mission to develop and improve the knowledge, understanding and practice of theatre, CPR and Cardiff Laboratory Theatre has pioneered in Wales and the UK the presentation and exposition of a wide range of acclaimed companies and artists from around the world such as: Jerzy Grotowski and his Laboratorium and Gardzienice Theatre Association from Poland; Eugenio Barba’s Odin Teatret from Denmark; Beijing and Kunju Opera from China; Enrique Vargas’ Taller Imagen Theatre from Columbia, Victoria young peoples’ theatre from Belgium; Augusto Boal’s political theatre forms from Brazil, to name but a few, as well as developing a diverse range of training opportunities for artists in Wales and the UK.

In A Performance Cosmology CPR’s exploratory past and vigorous present is charted through an illustrated chronology of thirty years’ contribution to the field of theatre and performance studies. At its heart, the book also explores the future challenges of performance and theatre through a diverse and fascinating series of interviews, testimonies and perspectives from leading international practitioners and academics. Contributors include: Philip Auslander; Rustom Bharucha; Tim Etchells; Jane Goodall; Susan Melrose; Alphonso Lingis; Mike Pearson; Richard Schechner; and Edward Scheer. A Performance Cosmology is structured as a travelogue through a matrix of strategic, imaginary, interdisciplinary fieldstations. This innovative framework enables non-linear readings and offer different forms of thematic engagement, opening new vistas and speculation on the old, new, and as yet unimagined, worlds of performance.

The book is edited by CPR’s Artistic Director, Professor Richard Gough, Executive Producer Judie Christie and former Research and Publications Assistant Dr. Daniel Watt. A Performance Cosmology is published by leading academic publishers Routledge, part of the Taylor and Francis group and is designed printed and bound in Wales.

A Performance Cosmology is published as a large-format highly illustrated 336 page book, and is the result of an innovative arrangement with the publisher, Routledge, Taylor and Francis, enabling CPR to control the design and visual content working with the Cardiff-based designer, Steve Allison (of Design Stage). The production of A Performance Cosmology has been enabled by a grant from the Welsh Books Council.

Title: A Performance Cosmology: Testimony from the Future, Evidence of the Past
List Price: £29.99
ISBN: 0415372585
Publisher: Routledge

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON THIS RELEASE, TO SEE AN ADVANCE COPY OR TO ARRANGE INTERVIEWS WITH RICHARD GOUGH & JUDIE CHRISTIE PLEASE CONTACT: ANTONY PICKTHALL ON 01970 622133 OR EMAIL: aop@aber.ac.uk

Available 30 September 2006

Title: A Performance Cosmology: Testimony from the Future, Evidence of the Past
List Price: £29.99
ISBN: 0415372585
Publisher: Routledge

email:aop@aber.ac.uk
weblink(s):www.thecpr.org.uk, www.tandf.co.uk
More information (click on the filenames to download):
Press_Release_Performance_Cosmology_FINAL.doc

June 6th 2006
Antony Pickthall, CPR
Workshop with Guillermo Gómez-Peña & Roberto Sifuentes
Currently full, check for late availability

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Please note that the workshop with Guillermo Gómez-Peña & Roberto Sifuentes is currently full. There is a waiting list and anyone interested in being added to that should contact the CPR Office on +44 (0)1970 622133.

Alternatively, please check out the JULY SHIFT programme, where workshops with a range of UK and international guest artists are also avialable.

Performers might be particularly interested in the work of Ping Chong, who is giving a workshop with CPR, 7-11 July.


With thanks to Live Art Development Agency for their great help and co-operation in respect of La Pocha Nostra's visit to Wales.

email:aop@aber.ac.uk
weblink(s):www.pochanostra.com, www.thisisliveart.co.uk

May 24th 2006
Shamsher Virk,
THE SUMMER SHIFT 2006
CPR International Programme of Performance Workshops 21 June – 23 July

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Want to make a SHIFT?

Using PERFORMANCE and your own CREATIVTY?

in Beautiful West WALES?

JUNE SHIFT & JULY SHIFT


• Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Roberto Sifuentes (La Pocha Nostra) (Mexico/USA)
• Frank Theatre (Australia)
• Ping Chong (USA)
• Richard Gough (Wales)
• Joan Mills (Wales)
• Chris Crickmay and Miranda Tufnell (UK)
• Marie Nerland / Laure Ottmann / Jacob Wren / PME (Canada)
• Ric Jerrom and Jaqui Popay (Natural Theatre Company) (UK)


“CPR offers you a unique view on performance… you are confronted with your own work in an inspirational and playful way.”
Summer School Participant, 2002

“I thought the whole experience excellent…and the quality and standard of the workshops was challenging, yet sensitive to all of the participants’ needs and experiences.”
Summer school Participant, 2003

“I gained a real insight into different performance traditions and was able to connect elements from this to my own performance work”
Summer school Participant, 2004


Whether you are a performer, designer, writer, director, choreographer, artist or teacher CPR’s Summer Shift offers the perfect opportunity to explore your own creative practice and meet like-minded participants from around the world.

The Summer Shift programme is aimed at revitalising bodies and minds with an energizing blend of practical training and creative inspiration. Starting in late June and continuing throughout most of July, Aberystwyth will become home to the work of some of the most talented and inspiring theatre and performance artists working in the world today.


• Experience and learn new training methods
• Devise work that embraces the voice, physical and visual theatre
• Explore your creativity and your imagination
• Enjoy the beauty of the landscape in West Wales

ABERYSTWYTH, WALES, UK

email:aop@aber.ac.uk

More information (click on the filenames to download):
SS2006_Booking_Form.doc

May 9th 2006
Antony Pickthall, CPR,
CPR's Performance Laboratory with Guillermo Gómez-Peña & Roberto Sifuentes (La Pocha Nostra) 21 - 24 June 2006, Aberystwyth


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Over the last ten years, an ongoing creatively-sparring collaborative relationship has been developed between the Centre for Performance Research and La Pocha Nostra from San Francisco through a shared interest in interactive performance installation and based on cultural synergies between La Pocha’s work and Wales; exploring notions of cultural hybridism and tensions between language and culture. This has resulted in specific collaborative projects: notably The Museum of Fetishized Identities (1999) and Club Raw (2003), and CPR is delighted to be welcoming Guillermo and Roberto back to Wales for an intensive laboratory project.

Guillermo and Roberto will lead a four-day workshop building on their creative work around issues of art, activism and human rights. Exploring the processes and ideas behind La Pocha Nostra’s extraordinary body of work, participants will share methods and strategies and work towards a public event on the final evening, which will be framed in collaboration with Guillermo, Roberto, CPR’s Richard Gough and the workshop participants.

The laboratory is aimed at artists who have previously undertaken workshops with Guillermo Gómez-Peña , Roberto Sifuentes and La Pocha Nostra and for practitioners with performance experience, but who may not have worked with this particular aesthetic or explicit political purpose before and who wish to be creatively challenged in new directions.


Guillermo Gómez-Peña

Born and raised in Mexico City, Gómez-Peña moved to the USA in 1978. His work, which includes performance art, video, audio, installations, poetry, journalism, and cultural theory, explores cross-cultural issues, immigration, the politics of language, "extreme culture" and new technologies to the national radio news magazine all things considered, a writer for newspapers and magazines in the US and Mexico, and a contributing editor to the drama review (MIT). He has been described as "among the most significant of late-twentieth-century performance artists" (Village Voice) and "a peacemaker in the world's culture clash" (Vanity Fair).


Roberto Sifuentes

Roberto Sifuentes is an interdisciplinary artist whose work fuses charged cultural and political issues with a cutting edge pop culture aesthetic, often combining live performance with interactive technologies and video as a presentation medium. A founding member of La Pocha Nostra, Sifuentes has collaborated and performed with Guillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha throughout the United States, Europe and Latin America. Since 2001, Sifuentes has also been Artistic Director and Lecturer of The Trinity/La MaMa Performing Arts Program in New York.


La Pocha Nostra

Founded in 1993 by Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Roberto Sifuentes and Nola Mariano, La Pocha Nostra is an ever morphing trans-disciplinary arts organization based in San Francisco with branches and factions in many other cities and countries. With an international performance history that spans more than 500 events, La Pocha Nostra seeks to provide both a support network and forum for artists of various disciplines and ethnic backgrounds. La Pocha Nostra is neither an ensemble, nor a troupe, but more of a conceptual laboratory; a loose association of rebel artists thinking together, exchanging ideas, fears and aspirations and jumping into the abyss together.


“We provide a base for a loose network and forum of rebel artists from various disciplines, generations and ethnic backgrounds. If there is a common denominator, it is our desire to cross and erase dangerous borders including those between art and politics, art practice and theory, artist and spectator - ultimately to dissolve borders and myths of purity whether they be specific to culture, ethnicity, gender, language or metier”.

Places on the laboratory are limited and early booking is advised.

Workshop Fee: £120 (waged) / £80 unwaged

email:aop@aber.ac.uk
weblink(s):www.pochanostra.com,

April 10th 2006
Antony Pickthall, CPR
Giving Voice 2006 - Postscript
Thanks to Contributors, Participants and Volunteers

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It was a great festival for everyone involved. We were all extremely pleased to have well-attended workshops, performances, talks and lecture-demonstrations.

A big thank you to everyone who attended, taught, lectured and helped.

Joan Mills commented,

"The project is built around offering international voice training of the highest standard, as well as an opportunity to hear from some remarkable teachers, performers and scholars, but fundamentally it works trough the energies and enthusiasms of those who come to take part, who come with a desire to refresh their work, expand their horizons, take a risk, have fun, and give voice.

We find that this project embodies an unusual dynamic: people come to receive yet the project is paradoxically about giving. Perhaps that is why we attract such interesting and generous spirited participants, which indeed, we seem to."

If you came to the event and did not complete a feedback form then you can download one (English or Welsh) here and after completing it forward it on to us.

More information (click on the filenames to download):
cpr_giving_voice_2006_questionnaire.doc
cpr_giving_voice_2004_questionnaire_welsh_version.doc

April 5th 2006
Antony Pickthall, CPR
Extra Show for After the Birds at Giving Voice Festival
Saturday, 7pm in the Parry Williams Building (Theatre, Film & TV) Penglais Campus

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Due to highdemand the performance of AFTER THE BIRDS by Chorea/Earthfall on Friday 7 April, 8.30pm is now SOLD OUT.

A second performance on Saturday at 7pm has been added. The performance lasts 1 hour 10mins and will still leave time to see Ken Campbell's performance at 8.30pm.

"...it was the pure theatricality that engaged the sell-out audience at Chapter and from the opening minutes there is an electricity that suggests that we are witnesses to something very, very special." - Western Mail

A fusion of elements from Aristophanes’ comedy, The Birds, this is the story of a group of rebels who attempt to create a new, pure, uncorrupted society halfway between humans and the gods. In this vision of a comedic non-conformist utopia in a politically unified but still divided Europe, the departure from one jaded and corrupt society leads to the formation of a new but equally jaded and corrupt society inevitably involved in imposing heavy limitations and conditions.

“…undeniably enjoyable, polished and fast moving…this collaboration manages to be both thrilling and warm.” - Planet Magazine

Theatre Association Chorea brings together some of the founding members and most prominent practitioners of the seminal company Gardzienice with young and emergent artists.

“…a very now mix of choreography, politics and music that in an hour can set your hair on end, thrill you and drain you.” - Western Mail


Friday 7 April - SOLD OUT

Saturday 8 April
Aberystwyth Arts Centre
After The Birds, Full Show
Time: Friday @ 8.30pm, Saturday @ 7pm
Ticket info: (01970) 623232

Parry Williams Building
Penglais Campus
Aberystwyth

Saturday 8 April, 7pm
£7/£5

email:aop@aber.ac.uk
weblink(s):www.earthfall.org.uk,

February 16th 2006
Antony Pickthall, CPR
Giving Voice Festival Brochure
Download the pdf version of the brochure or request a print version now!

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If you are on the CPR mailing list and have asked to receive information about Giving Voice or voice related projects you will soon be receiving your print version.

If you want to, you can download a pdf version of this brochure now. Please be aware that it is a large file and you will need to have downloaded your own version of Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you don't have this, just visit www.adobe.com

You can also download word documents of the booking form and the accommodation pack.

If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.

Aberystwyth, Wales, UK

email:aop@aber.ac.uk

More information (click on the filenames to download):
Giving_voice_2006_final.pdf
giving_voice_booking_form_2006.doc
Giving_Voice_Accomodation_Pack_2006.doc

December 20th 2005
Antony Pickthall,
Giving Voice Workshops 2006
Email now to secure your place.

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The ninth edition of Giving Voice; Wales’ International Festival of the Voice: a compendium of inspiring workshops, stirring performances, talks and presentations, with artists from Senegal, Poland, the United States, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Wales and the UK, Giving Voice is a glorious feast of song, music and performance from around the world.

Proposed by CPR collaborator, Enrique Pardo of Pantheatre, the theme of Giving Voice 2006 is Myths of the Voice and the festival will trace the important transformations of notions of the voice, exploring notions of the ‘true’ and ‘original’ concept of voice, teasing out sources, roots and myths – from pagan oracles to protestant singing, from ventriloquism to contemporary myths of the soul…the power of myths and archetypes in vocal development, therapy, and practice; the role of the voice within the great myths of the world; myths and truths in voice practices and understandings; the somatic voice; the listening voice; the storyteller, the shaman and soul-singer; singing as personal transformation.

THE PROGRAMME OF WORKSHOPS includes:
Debra Hale (USA) 5 April - An accredited Linklater voice teacher, Debra will work on the body and voice and breath, using Yoga, and the philosophies of Chinese medicine.

A Spell in Time (UK and Bulgaria) 5 April - A Spell in Time Theatre Company’s performances bring together a spell-binding mix of Bulgarian song, myth and ritual, and this one day workshop  will introduce participants to unique and special Bulgarian vocal techniques, harmonies and mythological songs.

Enrique Pardo (France) 5 – 7 April - Co-Artistic Director of Pantheatre and Director of the International Myth and Theatre Festival, Enrique will work with participants to build up improvisation structures with voice and text, with a strong emphasis on disassociation tactics.

Phil Minton (UK) 5 – 7 April - Take a vocal leap – Phil will lead participants on a voyage of discovery through the instinctive and unusual vocal sounds produced by the human body to create his ‘feral choir’.

Theatre Zar (Poland) 5 – 7 April - Wroclaw-based Theatre Zar brings together stirring harmonies and dissonance in powerful music theatre, and will share their methods and songs with participants.

Natalka Polovynka (Ukraine) 5 – 7 April - Formerly lead actress with acclaimed theatre Les Kurbas, Natalka returns to Wales with members of her group Maisternia Pisna to share the songs of her native Ukraine with an emphasis on sound and song, the voice in performance.

Leigh Smiley (USA) 6 April - Using Linklater based vocal exploration, creative movement and writing, this is an exploration of the Breath and Resonance of Archetype – an opportunity to delve deeper into the ‘archetype’ from which you usually speak and stretch the vocal boundaries of the archetypes which dwell in the shadow of the psyche.

Bragod (Wales) 6 April - A wonderful workshop weaving a magical mix of breath, Trinidadian Carnival, Welsh myth and song led by singer Mary-Anne Roberts and musician Robert Evans.

James D’Angelo (UK) 7 April - A leading authority on sound healing therapies and author of the book The Healing Power of the Human Voice James shows how working holistically with the voice is a form of sound Yoga and offers true sound health.

Kristin Linklater (USA) 7 – 9 April - The celebrated author of Freeing the Natural Voice returns to Giving Voice to offer actors and singers her unique method of voice training and discovery.

Rosanna Raymond 8 April - Storytelling workshop, using Maori/Samoan influences. (TBC)

Mahdia Daulne (UK/Belgium/Zaire) 8 – 9 April - One of the dynamic duo behind the incredible success of Zap Mama! leads a workshop using polyphonic songs based on the singing traditions of different tribes in Central Africa - Pygmy, Budu, Bororo.

Francesca della Monica (Italy) 8 & 9 April - One of the most original vocal performers in Italy as well as a leading voice teacher Francesca works across a spectrum of genres and technique.

Liza Mayer & Haim Isaacs (France/Israel) 8 – 9 April - A member of Pantheatre, Liza’s work offers an understanding of the physiology of the sung and spoken voice, building a confidence grounded in knowledge, practice, and the pleasure of it all. She is accompanied by Haim, a long-standing musical collaborator with the Roy Hart Theatre and Pantheatre, who specialises in the interpretation of songs.

Cusan Tan (Wales) 8 April - The singing of Ann Morgan Jones and Sue Jones-Davies lies at the heart of Welsh group Cusan Tan and this workshop will explore not only Welsh songs but the fruits of their recent Norwegian collaborations.

Michael Ormiston (UK) 9 April - A multi-instrumentalist specialising in Mongolian khöömi (overtone singing), Michael leads workshops in khöömi, Western overtone singing and Tibetan Singing Bowl Meditations throughout the world.

Ken Campbell 9 April - An introduction to the art of ventriloquism by actor and accomplished improviser Ken.

EMAIL CPR NOW TO RESERVE YOUR WORKSHOP PLACES.
By indicating your workshop choices to us now we will ensure priority booking for you in January.
Festival Tickets

Full Festival Ticket includes all events, and is valid from the evening of Tuesday 4 April to 4pm on Sunday 9 April. 4 Day, 3 Day 2 Day and 1 Day Tickets include access to your workshop and the performance the day before and the talk or lecture-demonstration either the day before or following on from the workshop - you choose.

The full programme will be available later in January with full details of all workshops, events and performances – provisional programme includes: the Senegalese singer, Nuru Kane; comedian/ventriloquist Ken Campbell; French storyteller Abbi Patrix; Polish theatre company Chorea; welsh duo, Bragod, singer, Natalka Polovynka from the Ukraine and Mongolian throat singer Michael Ormiston.

Download a booking form (Word Doc) below.

Aberystwyth

FESTIVAL TICKETS INCLUDE ACCESS TO THE WORKSHOPS OF YOUR CHOICE AS WELL AS ALL TALKS, PRESENTATIONS AND PERFORMANCES
1 DAY £65 (£45 unwaged)
2 DAYS £125 (£85 unwaged)
3 DAYS £185 (£125 unwaged)
4

More information (click on the filenames to download):
giving_voice_booking_form_2006.doc
press_release_giving_voice_2006.doc

December 19th 2005
Antony Pickthall,
Giving Voice Festival Workshops Confirmed
Book your places now

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THE GIVING VOICE FESTIVAL 2006
‘MYTHS OF THE VOICE’
Aberystwyth, 4 - 9 April

The ninth edition to be held in Aberystwyth in April 2006 is conceived in collaboration with Enrique Pardo and Pantheatre, Paris and will focus on the theme: Myths of the Voice.

The UK’s only festival of the voice in performance is back. Take part in life-affirming workshops, experience stirring theatre and vocal performances and feel the rich power of the storyteller. With artists from Senegal, Poland, the United States, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Wales and the UK, Giving Voice is a glorious feast of music and performance from around the world.

Giving Voice 2006 will trace the important transformations of notions of the voice and explore notions of the ‘true’ and ‘original’ concept of voice, teasing out sources, roots and myths, following wayward paths, and visiting along the way: the vanishing voices of Central Europe; Protestant Ecstatic Practice; Celtic Shamanism; Sacred Theatre; Soul Music, and their figurations in different mythologies. The festival will also focus on contemporary theatre and musical performances whose images and aspirations seek mythological dimensions.

Workshop teachers are now confirmed and include:

Kristin Linklater 7 – 9 April
The celebrated author of Freeing the Natural Voice returns to Wales to offer actors and singers her unique method of voice training and discovery.

Debra Hale 5 April
Working with Yoga, the theories behind Chinese medicine and drawing on Shakespeare, Debra will explore how to work with breath to create sound that enhances movement.

Enrique Pardo 5 – 7 April
Co-Artistic Director of Pantheatre, Enrique will offer actors and singers an opportunity to engage with physicalizing the voice.

Phil Minton 5 – 7 April
Take a vocal leap – Phil Minton will be taking performers on a voyage of discovery through the instinctive and unusual vocal sounds produced by he human body to create his ‘feral choir’.

Leigh Smiley 6 April
Using Linklater based vocal exploration, creative movement and writing, this is an exploration of the Breath and Resonance of Archetype – an opportunity to delve deeper into the ‘archetype’ from which you usually speak and stretch the vocal boundaries of the archetypes which dwell in the shadow of the psyche.

Rosanna Raymond 8 April
Storytelling workshop using Maori/Samoan influences. (TBC)

Theatre Zar (Poland) 5 – 7 April
Taking the work of Grotowski and Gardzienice further, this exciting young company from Warsaw will offer a challenging workshop on using voice and body to maximum effect.

Francesca della Monica (Italy) 5 – 7 April
One of one of the most original vocal performer of Italian experimental music, Francesca will draw on her experience of working with songs by composers such as John Cage and the work of leading Italian theatre companies.

Natalka Polovynka 5 – 7 April
Having trained with Grotowski and performed with companies such as Les Kurbas, Natalka will be exploring the songs of her native Ukraine with an emphasis on sound and song, the voice in performance.

Spell in Time 5 April
Working with the myths and song of Bulgaria, Spell in Time present a primal blend of storytelling, ritual and music combined with Bulgarian singing.

Bragod 6 April
Bragod are leading exponents of medieval Welsh songs composed on the crwth – a welsh harp – and the lyre. Singer Mary-Anne Roberts and musician Robert Evans will help participants explore the myths of Wales through some of its oldest songs.

James D’Angelo 7 April
A leading authority on sound healing therapies and author of the book The Healing Power of the Human Voice James shows how working holistically with the voice is a form of sound Yoga and offers true sound health.

Mahdia Daulne (Belgium/Zaire) 8 – 9 April
The woman behind the incredible success of Zap Mama! leads a workshop using polyphonic songs based on the singing traditions of different tribes in Central Africa - Pygmy, Budu, Bororo - to explore real harmony.

Liza Mayer & Haim Isaacs 8 – 9 April
A director of Pantheatre, Liza’s work offers an understanding of the physiology of the sung and spoken voice - how it all works - with a view to enjoying the confidence grounded in knowledge, practice, and the pleasure of it all and Haim is a singer specialises in the interpretation of songs.

Michael Ormiston (UK) 9 April
An energising workshop with the UK’s leading khöömi (Mongolian throat singing) exponent. Learn this amazing style of overtone singing with the highly acclaimed teacher and musician.

Cusan Tan 8 April
The singing of Ann Morgan Jones and Sue Jones-Davies lies at the heart of Welsh group Cusan Tan.

Ken Campbell 9 April
Ken Campbell’s introduction to the art of ventriloquism.

Workshop places can be reserved now:

Parry Williams Building,Penglais Campus; Castle Theatre, Aberystwyth

Festival Tickets

1 DAY FESTIVAL TICKET £65 (£45 unwaged); 2 DAYS £125 (£85 unwaged); 3 DAYS £185 (£125 unwaged); 4 DAYS £245 (£165 unwaged).
FULL FESTIVAL TICKETS: £305 (£205 unwaged)

More information (click on the filenames to download):
giving_voice_booking_form_2006.doc
press_release_giving_voice_2006.doc