Space and Touch in Digital Presence
An exploration of agency and intimacy when digital technology (mediatized acting) is introduced on stage
The participants while “building” a hybrid space (meaning bringing together digital and analogue presence and also bringing together virtual space and the actual stage), they creatively explore the multidimensional, temporal, and social phenomenon related to these types of space/performance. Moreover they consider to what extend digital devices permit the performer (or theatre maker) to be an active agent in constructing a sense of togetherness, or to deal with the lack of it. The students will examine the hybrid space and its temporal peculiarities in relation to artistic activities. Through this examination they will forge their own tools to test hybrid spaces and pursue further artistic aims in problematizing embodied interaction and togetherness.
Research question of the workshop:
1)To what extend digital technologies affect the corporality of the performer. (is it the same or is changed?)
2)To what extend digital technologies affect the position of the spectators (the relationship between actor and spectator). (is it the same or is changed?)
3)To what extend digital technology takes away or reinforces theatricality? (is it the same or is changed?)
4)To what extend digital technologies affect agency of the performer?
5)How does technology perform itself?
Commedia dell’arte tradition and nowadays
Davide Giovazana has a 20 tears experience with this theatre style, as an actor and then as director. Having worked with Carlo Boso, Giovanni Fusetti, Jean-Claude Penchenat and Mario Gonzales he has a strong experience with the Italian tradition of the commedia dell’arte and with the French contemporary reinterpretation of this style. Since 2008 he started his own research and reinterpretation of commedia dell’Arte which led him to develop a new approach to this style focusing on the notions of political and grotesque comedy and on the notion of exploring the dark side of the human heart.
He has been teaching commedia dell’arte in USA, Switzerland, Russia, Greece, Romania, Latvia and in several theatre institutions and theatre groups.
Through the exploration of the basic structure of commedia dell’arte, such as acting with masks, improvising, building masks, writing monologues and scenarios, the participants will not only learn the fundamental acting technique of this explosive style, which deeply influenced Western theatre, but will as well come across the concept of total performer (or actor-creator), able to act, dance, sing, write, direct and comment on the reality in which they live in.
Deconstructing physical theatre: a study of space, relationship and imagination
Having been trained in the Lecoq pedagoy, having worked with Zygmund Molik, having studied Meyerhold biomechanics, Schechner’s Rasaboxes and the Japanese dance Butoh, Davide GIOVANZANA started to fuse all these techniques and developed an alternative approach to physical theatre. Instead of focusing on the actions of the body, as it is the traditional teaching, he proposes to develop a special consciousness of the space, of relationship and imagination. The conjunction of these elements (space, relationships and imaignation) affects, transforms and makes the body expressive. In his experience as a teacher, he noticed that most of the problems that students face in learning acting, is that they become worried about what they need to do. In this workshop, the direction will be reversed and the “problems” will be transformed into something productive. This will also teach the students that problems instead of conceiving them as destructive elements, as a blocking fear, they can be seen as potential for development, for inquiry.
The tragic chorus
What is the sense of the sacrifice?
What is destiny?
What is a community?
The tragic chorus is perhaps most haunting figure in the Western theatre. It embodies the voice of the audience, it witnesses the dreadful actions of the heroes and yet, it is a barrier preserving the sacred space of the representation. It is a unique body made out of many individuals. The workshop will explore physically and philosophically this figure. It will also examine the contemporary translations of this chorus, which in post dramatic theatre became again a dominant feature.
The tragic chorus, in this work, is considered not only the representation of human beings (a community) but it contains all the phenomenon of nature (a panvision of the world).
The exercise is focused on the close observation of reality (animate and inanimate objects, animals, plants, weather, human beings) and on the study of tensions, forces and rhythms inside each phenomenon. The actors embody the tensions, forces and rhythms that the phenomenon carries within itself, thus miming the dynamic of the phenomenon. The tragic chorus becomes also MoCap course trailer lightan exploration of what lies beneath reality. The actors, through a purely physical process, seeks to convey the forces within the phenomenon, not just its appearance.