Seasonal Workshops 2014
February, March & October 2014
Physical Theatre (The Unexpected Body) - February 1st (French) & 2nd (English) - Centre de la francophonie: Gwaandak Theatre and Yukon Arts Centre present theatre workshops with artists from award-winning MT Space, Kitchener-Waterloo’s first and only multicultural theatre company, while they’re in Whitehorse performing their play Body 13. This workshop, led by Trevor Copp, will use unexpected movement models to provoke spontaneous acts of creative movement based on movement exercises from renowned Brazilian theatre artist Augusto Boal.
Trevor Copp founded Burlington’s Tottering Biped Theatre (TBT), a professional company emphasizing original, issue driven, and highly physical work. He completed Theatre Studies at Waterloo, a MA at Guelph, and Mime at the Marcel Marceau School in Paris He has been a professional actor, director, choreographer, educator and theatre devisor for over 12 years in pieces ranging from Classical to contemporary, performing in over 20 cities and numerous National Theatre Festivals. Trevor is also a regional American Style Latin and contact Improvisation practitioner. He has taught/coached physical Theatre for numerous professional companies and Universities.
Playful Acting - February 2nd - Centre de la francophonie: Gwaandak Theatre and Yukon Arts Centre present theatre workshops with artists from award-winning MT Space, Kitchener-Waterloo’s first and only multicultural theatre company, while they’re in Whitehorse performing their play Body 13. By living in the present moment, the actor comes alive on stage. Discover theatre acting techniques through playful games, exercises and mime at tis workshop led by Nada Humsi.
Nada Humsi was born in Damascus, Syria holds a B.A in English Literature from Damascus University. Nada is considered a pioneer in avant-garde and experimental theatre in the Arab world. She wrote and performed the first Verbal- Mime monodrama in Syria, The Option. She regularly performed internationally and conducted theatre and mime workshops for young and amateur actors. She came to Canada in 1999, establishing Salameh Theatre Troop in 2005 in Mississauga, where she trained young amateur actors from the Arab community. In 2008, she joined MT Space in Kitchener and has since participated in most of that company’s productions. Last summer Nada conducted a theatre and mime workshop in the Palestinian Circus School in Ramallah and, through her work at MT Space, helped a group of refugees establish the Arab Canadian Theatre.
Public Reading - Paradise - February 4th - Artists’ Studio, Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre: Gwaandak Theatre and Yukon Arts Centre present a public reading of Paradise by Patti Flather. Directed by Majdi Bou-Matar.
Paradise is about four linked characters living in different types of prisons: an unemployed logger with a war in his head, a family doctor searching for love, a young woman searching to score and a teenager imprisoned in the war on terror. This play is currently scheduled for production with Gwaandak Theatre in 2014-2015.
Playwrighting Workshop: Generating Dialogue - March 26th - Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre: With award-winning playwright Clem Martini, in this workshop-style class, participants will define what dialogue is, examine how it functions in the dramatic form, dissect examples of successfully realized spoken exchanges, and embark on exercises that may help to generate striking, distinct, effective dialogue. Bring writing materials, and be prepared to create!
Clem Martini is an award winning playwright, novelist, and screenwriter with over thirty plays, and nine books of fiction and nonfiction to his credit. His texts on playwriting, The Blunt Playwright, and The Greek Playwright, are employed in universities and colleges across the country. He is currently a professor in the School of Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Calgary.
WRITING HOME: Playwrighting Workshop - October 3rd - Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre: A weekend excursion into performative storytelling within a personal context -facilitated by Dora Award winning artists of ARTICLE 11, Tara Beagan and Andy Moro. Participants will mine their own life stories to find how personal experiences are reflective of the bigger picture of which they are a part. It will be an exploration of perspective – politicization of the personal – within a theatrical forum. The sessions will be framed by the facilitators’ belief that the work must have a vitality, a theatricality, and be of import. The basis of this is finding the core of a story that is important to the writer/creator. This workshop launches an existing idea on the right path – the writer can then work independently towards an end result that is performative, requiring space and physicality to be complete. In essence, we will take the initial steps to work towards truly theatrical scripts.