Upcoming Workshops: Suspense Festival of Adult Puppet Theatre Workshops (CSSD)

SUSPENSE - FESTIVAL OF ADULT PUPPET THEATRE WORKSHOPS

CENTRAL SCHOOL OF SPEECH AND DRAMA, LONDON

30 OCTOBER - 8 NOVEMBER 2009

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

The Central School of Speech and Drama’s Centre for Excellence in Training for Theatre and its Puppetry course are supporting three workshops on puppetry/object theatre as part of the new festival of adult puppet theatre Suspense between 30 October and 8 November 2009

Two-day workshops

1. Ephemeral Animation

This two-day workshop will be run by Nenagh Watson of Barking Dog Theatre and Creative Fellow at CSSD.

Ephemeral Animation is a term coined by Watson to encourage appreciation of animation, often momentary, of discarded objects animated via natural elements. The plastic bag blowing and dancing in the wind in the film American Beauty has become a cultural reference point. Void of the interruption of human ego, these fragmentary experiences have a lot to tell us about the art form of puppetry. This two-day workshop will encourage debate and exploration, stripping the art form to its raw essential state. We will examine Kantor's fascination with objects and 'puppetry without ego': how can we allow something to have its own intrinsic presence, its own immanence, provoking questions of what is authentic; and how can we engage audience in this appreciation?

The workshop will take place at The Central School of Speech and Drama

Friday and Saturday 30 and 31 October, 10.00 am - 5.00 pm.

Workshop fee: £50 for both days (student fee £25).

2. Objects and New Technologies

This two-day workshop will be run by Maria Dominguez Alba who is a painter and film-maker, and also Research Fellow at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain.

This two-day laboratory will explore and create a multi-disciplinary dialogue between theatres of objects and puppets and new technologies. The workshop will focus practically and theoretically on the relationship between the object and new technology. It will also provoke reflection about identity and the body; of the individual's projection in a collective environment, and vice versa; virtual reality, fiction, the idea of presence, the concept of real time, tele-presence, the fragility of the technological medium and interaction.

The workshop will take place at The Central School of Speech and Drama.

Friday and Saturday 30 and 31 October, 10.00 am - 5.00 pm.

Workshop fee: £50 for both days (student fee £25).

Four-day Masterclass with the Philippe Genty company

To be or not to be: a material

How to use emotional and sensorial memory for the creation of visual theatre

The Philippe Genty company is renowned for its visual theatre productions. The company leads many courses on manipulation of puppets and materials, object theatre, dance and movement and other elements of visual language. This four-day workshop will be led by Eric de Sarria (Drifting, Dedale, Zigmund Follies) and Simon Rann (Stowaways, Le Fin des Terres), long-standing members of the company. We aim to transmit knowledge of the manipulation of materials, puppets and objects, and to stimulate each student in their personal search for their own visual language. During these four days we will focus on two tools which are central to the artistic process of the company: the manipulation of materials nourished by personal memory.

The workshop will take place at The Central School of Speech and Drama.

Monday - Thursday 2 - 5 November, 9.00 am - 6.00 pm

Workshop fee: £120 (students £60).

Workshop participation is by application: please send your CV and a letter of application to cariad.astles@cssd.ac.uk by Tuesday 15 September 2009.

On Friday 6 November The Central School of Speech and Drama, jointly with the Little Angel Theatre, is hosting a one-day symposium entitled Objects in Performance, which will include talks and presentations by object theatre practitioners, researchers and performers at Suspense.

The symposium will take place at the Little Angel Theatre between 11.00 am and 3.00 pm.

Bookings for the symposium will be taken by the festival bookings office at the LAT.

Places for the symposium (including show) will be £30 (students £10).

Zombomodernism: the Ends of Practice-as-research (CSSD, London)

ZOMBOMODERNISM: THE ENDS OF PRACTICE-AS-RESEARCH

CENTRAL SCHOOL OF SPEECH AND DRAMA, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

26 SEPTEMBER 2009

CALL FOR PAPERS

DEADLINE EXTENDED: 6 JULY 2009

The figure of the zombie is the uncanny split par excellence: neither living nor dead, both familiar and unfamiliar. The zombie presents a unmeasurable proximal distance between the known and unknown. The zombie’s movements are human in resemblance (as is its physical form), and yet, in its single-minded determination, its constant pace, and its inability to manoeuvre around obstacles in its path, it is clearly inhuman.

Is not the condition of the zombie also the condition of the modern practice-as-research academic? That is, current PAR can be described as existing within a state of ‘Zombomodernity,’ that post-postmodern state in which the ideas are not dead, but nor are they truly alive. Practice-as-research features a similar uncanny split: is it research or is it art? And the spectacle of the modern practice-as-research academic is analogous to that of the zombie in many ways: we’re single-minded, move slowly and bang our heads against the wall over and over again.

Central School of Speech and Drama’s Research Degree students are pleased to announce a one-day interdisciplinary colloquium exploring practice-as-research from the perspective of its relationship to both professional practice and the institution, aimed at finding the antidote and liberating it from Zombomodernism or cutting its head off and putting it to rest forever. As an institution, CSSD is uniquely placed to explore these issues, being itself an uncanny hybrid of conservatoire and research institution, and this colloquium is part of the Festival of Emergent Art, a high-profile two week festival of new practice-as-research performances and presentations from PhD students, MA Performance Practices and Research students, staff and visiting artists.

We invite 20-minute papers and proposals for workshops that might interrogate the value of PAR and its contribution to new knowledge and professional practice.

What is the relationship between PaR and professional practice?

What is the relationship between PaR and the university?

Does PaR create new knowledge?

Is the university the best place to make experimental practice?

Can we imagine new ways of documenting experimental practice?

Can we imagine new ways of writing about practice?

Can we stop asking ourselves if it’s ok and just get on with it?

Submissions are invited from all researchers and postgraduate students working in theatre, drama, dance, film, puppetry and object-theatre, circus, installation, live art and visual culture. Interdisciplinary work is especially welcome, as well as submissions of experimental writing and documentation.

Please send a 250 word abstract (for papers) or proposal (for workshops)along with a brief biographical statement to colloquium organiser Broderick Chow at dick.chow@cssd.ac.uk by Monday, 6 July 2009. Please send large attachments tozombomodernism@googlemail.com Decisions will be made within three weeks. Any questions can also be directed to the colloquium organiser.