Coaching & Workshops

Workshop as part of the festival »stripped works«

The physical state of text.
»We learn how to move dynamically, so we can stand still dynamically.«

This workshop is based on the tradition of Physical Theatre in the Netherlands and especially on the Dynamic Training of Herman Verbeek, a former teacher of the Theatre School in Arnhem. The basic principles of this training are derived from Jacques le Cocq and Jerzy Grotowski. But also techniques from Japanese Butoh and Meyerhold’s Biomechanics found their way into the training. Even Goethe’s Theory of Colours and images and views on the body of Oskar Schlemmer are represented.

The Dynamic Training exists of several movement packages: Warming-Up, Waves, Reversed Figures, Animals and Counterforce Movements.
These individual elements and the way these should be executed are predefined rather strictly and must be executed as precise as possible. Within this restriction the actors must find physical and inner freedom, to achieve the greatest possible expression in words and images.

Jacques le Cocq described it as a »journey inward«. This uk-text-leads to a confrontation with your »inside-out life. This inner world consists of spaces, light, colours, materials and sounds, which we all carry inside of us. These elements of our individual experiences and perceptions – everything we have seen, touched, heard, smelled, tasted – are stored within us.«

In the first part of the workshop we will work with these packages of the Dynamic Training, to explore body and space.
In the second part we will examine theatre texts, poems or lyrics on their physical dynamics. We dissolve the text and make the words into physical images, like words in 3D or entities made of language, using playful associations with the classical elements fire, air, water and earth, or with colours and materials.