Kontenjan 25 kişi ile sınırlıdır
Atölye Dili: İngilizce
Atölye Süresi: 3 Saat
Atölye Tarihi: 5 Eylül Perşembe 13:00 16:00
Atölyeye Katılım İçin: https://www.utadconference.com/registration/
Katılım için başvuru zorunludur. Başvurular utadconference@gmail.com adresine mail olarak veya https://www.utadconference.com/registration/ sayfasındaki form üzerinden gönderilmelidir.
Atölye sonunda katılım belgesi verilecektir.
Description of the Workshop:
Focus: Existence of performance, storytelling, physical theatre research
Objectives: -Be able to recognize phases of creative research and devising a performance through attending to work-demonstration workshop.
-Be able to apply their knowledge on concept creation and concept map by creating their own based on a given story.
-Criteria: Professional experience on theatre-making or professional experience on youth theatre or familiarity with physical theatre performances
About:
A Bird’s Tale is a solo physical storytelling performance that targets an inter-generational audience: young people who are 9+ and adults. Intergenerational audience is formed by young people, and their elderly caregivers. The term is usually used in the process of making theatre together, where young people work with their elderly caregivers. Some shows also have an inter-generational audience target, where the show’s aim is to perform to these two groups in a way that these two groups can relate to the heartbeat of the story told in the stage (Jackson, A., Vine, C., 2013)
A Bird’s Tale tells a story of Kukkurukku: a half-human bird who falls on earth one day. She sees a very crowded frame, where people of different colors (yellow, black, white, green, purple, gray) are. With a strong desire to fit in this frame, Kukkurukku asks help to each color. Instead of helping her, each color takes Kukkurukku’s feathers, and she does not realize it until she becomes all featherless. In her journey to take her feathers all back, she finds herself in a cave, where she has the time to think more about each color, their circumstances and find a way to take her feathers back.
A Bird’s Tale tells my own story, but in a very symbolic way. It is a devised performance. Devising is a creative process that is vastly different than a traditional theatre production, because it excludes the presence of a text. Instead, devised theatre starts with a kernel idea and becomes a performance through the process of working through different exercises and techniques. The work involves exploring the ideas physically. (Graham, S., Hoggett, S., 2009)
To be able to come up with this show, I collaborated with a physical theatre specialist, Monika Gravagno who creative mentored my show. This devised work had 3 cycles:
- Inspiration: In this cycle, I read traditional stories and decided to write my own story based on the elements I was drawn into. These elements were; bird, cave, lovers, transformation and decisions. I wrote several stories through using these elements.
- Physical Work: In this cycle, with Monika Gravagno, I worked on several techniques to be able to devise my performance, in a studio in London.
First of all, we devised through building blocks. Building blocks is the process of working with smaller tasks in the devising process. Examples include a moment in a scene, a gesture of a character, find a quality of movement for a scene… These are simple tasks that performers work with in the process. These are a part of the whole, but are broken into small blocks (Graham, S., Hoggett, S., 2009). Towards to the end of the devising process, these blocks are usually connected to each other and the whole of a performance comes together with these blocks. We built blocks of a bird’s gesture, a moment of the bird walking, telling a line of the bird’s story, a basic movement of a character in the play and such.
The way we build the aforementioned blocks were through physical theatre techniques, which were usually Lecoq-based. Starting with silent improvisations that enables performer to see the motives and instincts that they are following; we moved to mask and counter mask work, which enables performers to see their characters in depth through embodying the opposite sides of their characters (Lecoq J, et al., 2002). We later moved with mime and analyzing the mime efforts: Mime is a technique where words are replaced by gestural movement and actors represent the object through their movement. We finished the process with movement analysis, where we delved into moving with a reason, and through using the principal of economy of movement.
- Concept Creation and Concept Mapping: In the last cycle, I composed the performance through my desired concept. Monika Gravagno has shown me a special way, called concept mapping. This is a map that outlines each choice given about a performance and how the choices aligns each other. It is a tool that I believe theatre-makers can benefit a lot, especially while giving decisions related to their shows.
In my workshop, I plan to share the 3 cycles I mentioned above. I plan to do a work demonstration with the participants and share the details of my process in these 3 cycles. In the first cycle I will share details about creative writing, in the second cycle I will share about the physical techniques I used. In the third cycle, I will share about concept map and concept creation.
In the second half of the workshop, I will hand a traditional Turkish story to participants. I will divide participants in groups and ask groups to create their concept and concept map. Each group will share their concept and their concept map.
Below, I have added the plan to the workshop.
- Introduction (5 minutes): I will inform participants about the workshop and set up expectations.
- Ice-breaker (10 minute): Each participant will share their names, what they work on and one interesting fact about them.
- Work Demonstration (35 minutes): I will share the 3 cycles that I followed while working on my play. I will share the techniques I used, the materials I used, the source materials I searched on and my concept play.
- Break (10 minutes)
- Task Introduction (15 minutes): I will share the task and distribute the stories. I will divide groups accordingly to either the participant’s work areas (such as children or youth/ professional theatre or schools) or to their requests.
- Group Work/ Creating Concept & Concept Map (30 minutes): Each group will create their concept on the play and their concept map.
- Presentation (25 Minutes): Each group will present their concept, concept map and the details related to these.
- Wrap-up (5 minutes): I will wrap the presentation up, and the reason why I emphasized the concept and concept map creation and its importance in theatre-making.
Notes on the Facilitation of the Workshop:
-A studio that also has a projector is the idea physical space for this workshop.
-For plan B- I can also adjust myself to a traditional classroom, however there must be a 2-2 meters empty space for me to perform my work demonstration. This class must have a projector as well.
-No requirement for the participants.
-As I am also writing this proposal in English, I do prefer my medium for this workshop to be English.
My Bio:
Derya Agaoglu earned her bachelor’s degree in Guidance and Psychological Counseling from TED University in 2018 and master’s degree on Fine Arts Education from Ankara University in 2020. She worked at Tatbikat Akademi Sahnesi, as a teaching artist and educational program developer. In 2020, she started to University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s MFA (Masters of Fine Arts) program in Theatre for Youth. She graduated in 2022 and worked at the Lexington Children’s Theatre as a summer teaching artist. In 2023, she formed her own theatre company. Since 2023, she has been serving as an adjunct lecturer at TED University, instructing courses in Art.
Türkçe Özet:
” Bir Kuş Hikayesi”, 9 yaş ve üzeri gençler ile yetişkinleri hedefleyen tek kişilik bir fiziksel hikaye anlatımı performansıdır. Kukkurukku, yarı insan yarı kuş olan bir karakterin dünyada yer edinmeye çalışırken renklerini kaybetmesini ve onları geri kazanma sürecini anlatır. Bu performans, benim kişisel hikayemi sembolik bir şekilde yansıtır ve metinsiz yaratıcı tiyatro yöntemiyle (devised theatre) oluşturulmuştur.
Performansı oluşturma sürecim üç aşamadan oluşmuştur:
- İlham: Geleneksel hikayelerden esinlenerek kendi hikayemi yazdım.
- Fiziksel Çalışma: Fiziksel tiyatro tekniklerini kullanarak karakter ve sahne hareketleri üzerinde çalıştım.
- Konsept Yaratımı: Konsept haritalama yöntemiyle performansın konseptini oluşturdum.
Atölyemde, bu üç aşamayı katılımcılarla paylaşacağım (work-demonstration ile). Sonrasında, onlara geleneksel Türk hikayeleri vereceğim. Bu hikayeleri, eğer bir performansa dönüştürselerdi, ne gibi bir konsept ve konsept haritalarıyla yaratacaklarını sorup, onlardan kendi konsept ve konsept haritalarını gruplar halinde oluşturmalarını isteyeceğim. Katılımcılar, gruplar halinde çalışarak kendi konsept ve konsept haritalarını oluşturacak ve sunacaklar.
Bu atölyedeki amacım, katılımcıların, work demonstration atölyesine katılarak yaratıcı araştırma ve performans oluşturma aşamalarını tanıyabilmeleri ve verilen bir hikaye temelinde kendi konseptlerini ve konsept haritalarını oluşturarak, konsept yaratma ve konsept haritalama becerilerini uygulayabilmeleridir.
References
Jackson, A., & Vine, C. (2013). Learning through theatre: The changing face of theatre in education. Taylor and Francis.
Graham, S., & Hoggett, S. (2009). The Frantic Assembly: Book of Devising Theatre. Routledge.
Lecoq, J., Carasso, J.-G., Lallias, J.-C., McBurney, S., & Bradby, D. (2002). The moving body: Teaching creative theatre. Routledge.