Acting Craft in Polish Theatre

The course, of a highly practical nature, aims at studying elementary skills of performer such as abilities to be open to dialogue, to integrate action and speech, and to react swiftly and adequately to impulses which come from various sources: partners, texts, images, music, space and inner environs of associations, imagination and memories. Part of the course is devoted to devising and performing a short scene based on a text fragment selected individually by a student.

The course is aimed not only and not primarily at those students who wish to study acting but above all at those who would like to deepen in practical way their understanding of human creativity and expression.

The course, of a highly practical nature, aims at studying elementary skills of performer such as abilities to be open to dialogue, to integrate action and speech, and to react swiftly and adequately to impulses which come from various sources: partners, texts, images, music, space and inner environs of associations, imagination and memories. Part of the course is devoted to devising and performing a short scene based on a text fragment selected individually by a student.

The course is aimed not only and not primarily at those students who wish to study acting but above all at those who would like to deepen in practical way their understanding of human creativity and expression.

Some of the work techniques employed during the course relate to or are inspired by influential contemporary Polish theatre directors who centered their work on performer: Jerzy Grotowski, Tadeusz Kantor and Włodzimierz Staniewski with his Gardzienice Theatre.

Week 1 Impulses and group’s integrity

Sending, receiving and passing different kinds of impulses in a group; work on the group’s integrity and freeing students’ expressive potentialities

Week 2 Interactions and theatre games

Various ways of interacting with the partners in the framework of theatre games

Week 3 Spatial awareness

Sharpening of students’ spatial awareness

Week 4 Action dialogues

Basic partnership techniques; dialogue in actions without speech based on ‘yes/no’ principle

Week 5 Oppositions

Study of oppositions in an individual work based on an ‘open/closed’ principle; integration of music into the work

Week 6 Contrasts

Study of contrasts as a base for comic expression; partnership work on different movement qualities (dimensions, tempos, intensities, dynamics, and directions)

Week 7 Score

Elaboration of individual choreographies taking inspiration from iconography; deepening the study of movement qualities in individual scores

Week 8 Score and music

Refining the work on the movement scores; integration of music into the score work; work to transform movements into actions with intentions

Week 9 Text work

Study of text fragments selected individually by students; focus on texts’ sound qualities and, later, on their meanings

Week 10 Score and speech

Further work on text fragments selected individually by students and their integration with the movement scores

Week 11 ‘Journey’ through the space

Study of different trajectories in the space; focus on clarity of movement directions, changes of tempos and dynamics; special attention to beginning and ending of the compositions

Week 12 Score and the ‘journey’

Integration of individual acting movement/text choreographies into the space

Week 13 Work on individual or partner acting scene 1

Elaboration of the draft of the scene on the base of earlier work on movement, text, space and music

Week 14 Work on individual or partner acting scene 2

Further elaboration of the scene and work on the scene’s milieu (space, light, sounds, music)

Week 15 Presentation of acting scenes

Work evaluation

Reading list:

1. Peter Brook, The Empty Space, London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1968.

2. Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre, edited by Eugenio Barba, Holstebro: Odin Teatrets Forlag, 1968.

3. Włodzimierz Staniewski and Alison Hodge, Hidden Territories: the Theatre of Gardzienice, London and New York: Routledge, 2003.

4. Acting (Re)Considered, ed. by Phillip B. Zarrilli, London and New York: Routledge, 2002.

5. Eugenio Barba and Nicola Savarese, A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology: the Secret Art of the Performer, London and New York: Routledge, 2006.

6. Peter Brook, With Grotowski: Theatre is Just a Form, edited by Georges Banu and Grzegorz Ziółkowski with Paul Allain, Wrocław: Grotowski Institute, 2009.

7. Twentieth Century Actor Training, ed. by Alison Hodge, London and New York: Routledge, 2010.

Upon completion of the course, the student will:

• recognize ethical behaviour in the artistic work and will follow ethical principles in this field;

• collaborate eagerly with other group members;

• use basic theatre voice, movement and improvisation techniques in individual and partner work as part of theatre creative process;

• select and analyze text materials, iconography and music as the basis for theatre creative process;

• choose lighting and props, and solve basic technical questions in relation to the environment of the student’s own theatre work;

• compose her/his work, repeat, refine and present it within the framework of an individual or partner theatrical scene.

Attendance is required. Students who miss more than two meetings (except for illness or other serious matters) will not be assessed. Students are assessed on the basis of an individual acting scene elaborated during the course.

non applicable