NWPL Performance Ecology Workshops in Italy 2009
Performance Ecology is a field
of research conducted by Jairo Cuesta and James Slowiak that investigates the interdependence of a variety of stimuli available
to the actor. Cuesta and Slowiak have organized aspects of their respective research
into a flow of detailed exercises (individual and collective), songs, dances, texts, and creative work that serve to reclaim
the performer’s vital forces and capacity for contact.
Performance Ecology is an exploratory
structure that serves to develop the actor’s physical, emotional and imaginative resources. New World Performance Lab members lead participants through the intensive program (which usually lasts from three days
to ten days) in an attempt to rediscover the urge to act. As the participant
struggles to remember, to reveal, to accomplish, and to create, he/she fights for mastery of the body and voice, vitality
and purpose. Participants express themselves in patterns of voice and movement
whose tension, composition, and energy uncover a unique and untamed power and precision.
Performance Ecology seeks to liberate the dormant energy and creative impulses in the participant/performer—in
solitude or in company, with the space and with the partner.
The residential work sessions in Performance Ecology are designed around
the rudimentary performative elements concerning one's humanness and relationship with the physical world.
Performance Ecology involves
creative training in the basic elements of the actor's craft: physical exercises,
voice work, attention and perception, precision and flow, seeing, listening, meeting, and the montage of physical actions. The work with songs from the Shaker culture and other traditions, exercises in coordination,
individual actions, structured improvisation, dramaturgy, montage, and the acting tools often culminates in a Rendering that
provides the opportunity for each participant to engage in the dynamics of performance.
Performance Ecology is more than
a workshop; it is a performance event that encourages the task of creating culture--hands on.
Cuesta and Slowiak have fashioned a structural tool that builds community and compassion while exploring the participant's
individuality, creativity, and cultural dignity.
Workshops:
I. Performance Ecology XX: Personal
Technique and the Work of the Actor May 20-24. Laboratorium Teatro. Roma. For more information: www.laboratoriumteatro.it
II. Performance
Ecology: Time and Presence. The environment
as creative stimulus to the actor. Cenci Casa Laboratorio. (Residential). Umbria. May 29-June 2. For more information: www.cencicasalab.it
For more information visit www.nwplab.org or call 330-867-3299.
