Festival

BERLIN INTERNATIONAL THEATRE WORKSHOP FESTIVAL 2010

Beintheworkfest (International Theatre Workshop Festival in Berlin) is a new theatre workshop event featuring unique and small group workshops (each workshop has a maximum of 12 participants) with internationally renowned theatre professionals, happening right in the heart of Berlin.
All the workshops are rooted in physicality and its fundamental role in creating the actors truth. Learn new skills, make new friends and see the world through different eyes and from different angles.This second edition of Beintheworkfest runs from 22 - 30 May 2010. This year we are hosting workshops by Marcello Magni, Mike Shepherd (Kneehigh), Frans Winther (Odin Teatret) & Jola Cynkutis & Khalid Tyabji. Come and learn from the best in the most creative city in Europe.

WWW.BEINTHEWORKFEST.COM

shamanism and performance workshops

COSmino runs regular workshops in shamanism and performance

FROM THE SHAMAN TO THE ACTOR
- a one day introductary workshop open to all

ACTOR AS CREATOR - MANIFESTING THE LIMINAL
- a two day intensive workshop for actors and students of performance

FROM THE SHAMAN TO THE ACTOR
workshop in London, UK
with Rachel Karafistan PhD & Professor Brian Bates
6 March 2010, London - SOLD OUT

Tribal shamans are the original inspiration for many aspects of artistic creativity. This workshop reconnects the timeless power and insights of the shaman with the demands of contemporary performance. Drawing from exercises from both eastern & western performance trainings, this workshop will relocate the tacit wisdom of the shaman in the work of the actor and, more generally, in our lives. The workshop will feature a shamanic journey and a talk by Brian Bates.
For both professional performers and interested public.

Venue: Jackson’s Lane, 269a Archway Road London N6 5AA
mapTime:Saturday 6 March 2010: 12.30 – 19.30
Bookings: Contact:
Cherie Karafistan
email: workshops@cosmino.org

 

COMING SOON

ACTOR AS CREATOR - MANIFESTING THE LIMINAL
TWO DAY WORKSHOP
LONDON, UK
with Rachel Karafistan PhD & Professor Brian Bates
People often talk about acting as an ‘interpretive art’, with the real creativity flowing from the writer and/or director, yet we all know that what often underpins fine performances is original insight from the actor – insight which is usually fed into the process of rehearsal, giving edge and depth to the final stage performance. This workshop focuses specifically on the Actor as Creator, and takes us back to the deepest levels of imagination which feed the actor’s performance. We invite you to draw on both the personal and collective imagination and transform this liminal, magical realm into something tangible, visceral and performative. Using techniques and story development templates from the world of the shaman – the original creator/actor, and using skills from the rich tradition of experimental theatre, we will develop ideas, impulses, themes and stories from the deep unconscious of the participants to create an exciting theatre of the imagination, culminating in performance work in groups. Actor as Creator is aimed at sending us back into the theatre with our strongest imagination resources re-charged!

Open to actors, dancers and other performers from all traditions of theatre.

RACHEL KARAFISTAN Rachel Karafistan:
Rachel is a performer, teacher and director based in Berlin. In 2001 she completed her PhD research into Shamanic dimensions within contemporary theatre practice and has published her work in New Theatre Quarterly. Rachel has been running workshops exploring the connections between the actor and the shaman in both the UK and abroad for the past 10 years. She trained extensively with a wide range of theatre practitioners and companies including Odin Teatret, Kathryn Hunter, Phillippe Gaulier and was an actor with internationally acclaimed Polish company, Teatr Biuro Podrozy from 2000-2003. Rachel has tyaught extentively throughout the UK, in particular at the University of Leeds where she was a Lecturer in Theatre and internationally in Europe, Brasil and the USA. She annually directs a site specific, outdoor performance for Greenwich Theatre, London and she is the co-director of Beintheworkfest (Berlin International Theatre Workshop Festival) which runs annually in May. At present, Rachel is a visiting professor at the University of Adam Mickiewicz in Poznan, Poland. Rachel’s company, COSmino are currently devising their sixth production.

BRIAN BATES www.wayofwyrd.com

Professor Brian Bates is a psychologist, novelist, playwright, theatre director and honorary shaman of the Worldwide Indigenous Network of tribal Elders. At the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art he pioneered shamanic acting training, and directed acclaimed productions including ‘The Body Project’ exploring the actor’s intimate life experiences of their body; Marlowe’s ‘Doctor Faustus’ using magical spells, symbols and movement to induce a spiritually-charged state of consciousness for actors and audience, and his own adaptation of Hermann Hesse’s classic novel Steppenwolf in which expressionistic theatre (and the most lighting changes ever at RADA!) took the audience into the nightmare and inspiration of the collective unconscious. Brian runs workshops exploring the ‘ancient wisdom for today’ of early medieval Europe, using ancient healing spells, fairy tales and myths as catalysts for personal inspiration and creating theatre. He has trained many notable actors for theatre and film including winners of BAFTA and Laurence Olivier awards, and Academy Award ‘Oscars’ winners Kenneth Branagh and Ralph Fiennes. He is also author of six international books, including ‘The Way of the Actor’, about the inner psychological life of the creative performer; ‘The Human Face’ (with John Cleese) about the power to transform us inherent in each of the 6 billion unique faces on the planet; and his bestselling novel ‘The Way of Wyrd’, now published in many languages around the world, which is based on a one-thousand years-old manuscript in the British Museum documenting the initiation into magic of a shaman from ancient England. Brian is currently Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Sussex, England, where he has supervised numerous PhD’s on the psychology of shamanism. Currently he is engaged on a worldwide project – ‘The Council of Elders’ – working closely with tribal elders and medicine people to protect and document their knowledge.