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Carnal, issue 0 of Parterre de Rois
A new magazine in Milandate: 18-07-2013
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Interview with Nicola Toffolini
A worlds inventordate: 24-04-2011
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Donne senza uomini.
Installazione multimediale di Shirin Neshatdate: 01-03-2011
A city full of workshops on theatre and writing
Pièces, talks, lectures and resident companies between Giardini and Arsenale
Many surprising assets in the calendar of the first only College Theatre Biennial (dedicated to learning and workshops, signed by Alex Rigola for Foundation La Biennale, Venice) that will end on August 10. We discovered all during a crowded ceremony and cocktail where the Golden Lion 2014 for the carrier in theatre has been awarded to Jan Lauwers (Needcompany, for his Wagnerian “Gesamtkunstwerk”, total art). And the Silver Lion to the young “promise” of the theatre, the Belgian director and actor Fabrice Murgia (who, touched, read either an English and a French text where recommended the theatre press to do not write having on their minds a sort of precooked set of categories). All the festival is centred on meeting with the directors who are the workshop leaders (open to the public on free entrance) and with replicas (with low entrance fee, from 3 to 5 euro) of pièces arising from 6 of the 8 workshops attended by 164 actors and other theatre professionals coming from any part of the world (and in ages from 21 to 35) selected among 1370 application.
There will not be any pièce of the companies of the awarded directors: the stage will be colonized only by the young students’ performances after the workshops. And by some “resident” companies Rigola invited to perform in the Corderie (Arsenale), the “obliged” pathway made of stages inside the Monditalia section where Koolhas redesigned the Dance, Theatre and Music Biennales formulas (was the purpose to increase the visitors number? Maybe, given the bad weather of this summer, we did not see anyone queuing so much to pop in). The Catalan company La Zaranda, Gabriela Carrizo (Peeping Tom) and Ricci/Forte will be on stage from now to August 7 (from 4 pm until the Architecture Biennale closing time, on Fridays until 8 pm).
Of the eight workshops, six will “debut” on two blocks. The first is the Lauwers’ Just for Venice (August 9, Teatro alle Tese, Arsenale, h. 8 pm). On Sunday August 10 (either at 6 pm and at 7 pm), the rest of the five in an on-going formula, where audience will wander around – as happened on 2012 – the different venues, this time all located between Giardini and Arsenale: the stunning biblioteca ASAC, then the Tese dei Soppalchi, the Teatro alle Tese, the Sale d’Armi, the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale. The performances, around 15 minutes each, will be from the workshops of Antonio Latella (Touché), of Oskaras Koršunovas (The Seagull, Cechov), of Fabrice Murgia (Backstage Memories), of Lluís Pasqual (Federico García Lorca), of Falk Richter (Heritage, Gender and Identity).
This is the calendar of the talks of the directors (free entrance, Teatro Piccolo Arsenale, from 6.30 pm): on August 6th, the Lions Lauwers and Murgia; on 7th Pasqual and Latella; on the 8th Korsunovas and Ravenhill; on 9th Falk Richter and Pappelbaum.
We already followed the workshops of another College (for the Music Biennial) by interviewing some of the composers attending, in that case chosen only among the Italians. We’d already noting how this formula of education (in a country poor of possibilities) has been useful and successful. And so we picked up some impressions, the first after the kick-start of the sessions of all the workshops, by the participants, all gathered on the finally sunny Ca’ Giustinian terrace for the opening cocktail of the Theatre (College) Biennial 2014 (it would be the last one of the Baratta’s era, because the president is supposed to leave on 2015).
Aglaia, Lorenzo, Luca (respectively Sicilian living in Rome, Cremona born, Neapolitan) are all happy to be in the Latella’s workshop (Lorenzo is a screen-player and so is a listening participant, but already got the occasion to meet Latella at the Hystrio Award). The relation mother/son is the core of the chosen texts (sent to the 20 actors and listening participants before the start of the sessions): Shakespeare and Kòltes, among the others.
Tom is an actor (with few experiences also as director and set designer, lighting and props): he comes back in Venice, very enthusiast, again to attend a workshop with Needcompany (he was one of the “dancing poets” on an incredible table in the previous Lauwers’ workshop where the scene was made of pure energy, see the picture attached to this post). The Golden Lion 2014 is not alone to master the workshop: this time he brought one of his dancers and three other members of his company, among them also one of his preferred musicians. Not similarly to what proposed in the 2012 workshop (maybe the best of that year: a linear, pure immersion in a great master, Shakespeare), this time the scene arises from three texts written by Lauwers himself.
Miklos, a young video-editor coming from East Europe but living in Berlin at the moment, is at his first experience of Biennale College Theatre and is very interested to the strong relation with the art of writing for the scene.
At Murgia’s workshop, the first move in the class has been made by the participants called to talk of themselves via images and small flashes of their past experiences: from this body of suggestions Murgia, without a pre-fixed plot, will start to create the pièce: the sense of a biography.
The most original workshops seemed to us the ones dedicated to writing: Mark Ravenhill, from August 6 to 10, will work on Ibsen and on smiling of him. The play writers and directors Marco Calvani (I), Neil LaBute (USA) and Nathalie Fillion (F), will master Author directing Author where the 20 attending will be forced to write in short time and to go to the effort of editing. Neil LaBute told us about his previous experiences of similar sessions (among the last ones, in Germany and Spain) where he was used to have a theme (from sin to shame, for instance). In this case (the sole workshop in which the leaders were choosing to do not select participants that have been shortlisted by the Biennale staff) they will ask them to work on texts born by a previous experience of Calvani and LaBute in Umbria (Spoleto), where they worked on the family topic.
Also this Biennial of Theatre will have its daily and is, again, a workshop: Theatre Community is about theatre critic curated by Andrea Porcheddu and Ana Pérez Pagès, journalist. A new homonymous blog will arise.
