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TAPS PERSPECTIVES
ABOUT TAPS PERSPECTIVES TaPS Perspectives gives IB DP Theatre students the unique opportunity to work intensively with a series of theatre professionals, specialising in: Collaboratively creating original theatre Staging play texts Exploring world theatre traditions Performing theatre theory IB DP Theatre ISTA TaPS Perspectives provides students with an understanding of how the IB DP Theatre course syllabus is applied to current theatre practice. It's a launchpad for students’ explorations of theatre. Working with DP Theatre students from different schools broadens perspectives, forges friendships and enhances all learning.
ISTA specialises in global learning through theatre. We are a UK based charity, founded in 1978 providing transformative learning experiences for educators and young people worldwide. We create communities of learning, working closely with over 240 member schools around the world and we are the International Bacclaureate’s exclusive global provider of teacher training for Diploma Theatre. We believe in the unique power of theatre and the arts to connect, develop, transform and empower people to become active members and changemakers in their own communities and the world. We use the ISTA Ensemble method, a collaborative approach to learning and community building and story based inquiry, using story as a way to understand the world and as a tool for change.
LONDON 1 TAPS PERSPECTIVES Emily Jane Grant - ISTA Rep I am a bilingual theatre director, practitioner, and performer. I trained as an actress at ENSATT, Lyon in France and hold a BA (Hons) in Drama and Theatre Arts from Middlesex University in London. I work as a freelance ISTA Artist and also as an Event Manager. I’m really excited to be kicking off this TaPS season at he Lyric.
MASKS IN REHEARSAL AND PERFORMANCE Collaboratively creating original theatre & Teacher/chaperone specialist workshop Workshop leader: Russell Dean Strangeface Strangeface has produced mask and puppet productions for over 17 years touring nationally and internationally. Shows include The Last Resort adaptations of The Rake's Progress and A Christmas Carol and Shooting the Moon (The Dreams of Georges Méliès). Most recently it has focused on puppetry, producing family shows Beached and Spaced alongside a powerful adult show The Hit, a Wellcome Trust funded show exploring cognitive dissonance through the eyes of a hitman. The latter was brought to life with members of the War Horse creative team including Mervyn Millar, the show’s puppet director. Its most recent show Eli and the Golem about the journey of a Jewish refugee from Prague to the safety of Britain was created to accompany the arrival of Good Chance Theatre’s The Walk in the United Kingdom, featuring Little Amal, a 12 foot puppet of a Syrian refugee girl.
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LONDON 1 TAPS PERSPECTIVES Biography Russell Dean is artistic director of Strangeface theatre company. He also runs Strangeface Masks, creating mask sets (Commedia dell’Arte, larval, character) and commissions for schools, colleges and companies around the world. He has made masks and puppets for Red Ladder, Scottish Opera, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Steven Daldry’s Billy Elliot, Trestle, Vamos Theatre company, Geese, ITV and Channel 4. Alongside creating Strangeface shows he has run a wide variety of performance and making workshops and residencies, nationally and internationally. These have not only taken place in school and colleges but also have also involved groups centred around SEND, autism and bereavement. He has also delivered a TEDx talk entitled ‘Puppets and Perception’. He is currently collaborating with world renowned puppet company Blind Summit on their new show. Workshop overview IIn this workshop we will be exploring the use of full and half mask for rehearsal and performance. In a fun, practical session participants will be introduced to principles of mask practice. Finding the mask and the counter-mask Physicality and centres of energy Finding a voice to fit the mask Entrances and exits Clocking Internal monologue The session will conclude with some simple devising exercises.
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LONDON 1 TAPS PERSPECTIVES IB DIPLOMA PERSPECTIVES Workshop leader: Fenella Kelly
Biography Fenella Kelly is a master Drama teacher, theatre principal examiner, educational consultant, dancer, musician and respected teacher trainer of Drama and Theatre (MYP, GCSE, A Level and IB Diploma) with over 30 years of experience in International Schools. She started out as a primary teacher, but the majority of her experience has been with MS/HS and DP students. She is an experienced director, devisor, choreographer, dance/theatre company member and events coordinator. She performs and teaches Kathakali dance theatre, which she has been studying since 2004. She has extensive experience of contemporary & Latin dances and plays the flute and saxophone.
Workshop overview This session will assist participants in framing their TaPS Perspectives experience so it relates to their DP Theatre course, their development as artists and as learners. Participants will Reflect on their workshop experiences in relation to the IB DP theatre course Make connections between workshops and the IB DP theatre course Contextualise their workshop experiences in relation to the IB DP theatre course Consider their development as artists and learners to inform their learning in the IB DP theatre course
LONDON 1 TAPS PERSPECTIVES WHY IS THAT SO FUNNY? Performing Theatre Theory Workshop leader: John Wright
About the company - The Wright School The Wright School is a Virtual Reality school, it can exist anywhere. You can come to it or it can come to you! We hold various courses throughout the year, details of which will be emailed to the mailing list. Courses can also be tailor-made for your company.
Biography John Wright is an award winning international teacher and theatre maker. He co-founded Trestle Theatre Company in 1980 and Told by an Idiot in 1993. He has worked on a string of productions and projects extending over three decades in Europe, Scandinavia, Asia and the United Kingdom where his work has been seen at the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Court, the Almeida and the Royal Opera House.
Workshop overview This is a course in comic timing and physical comedy. What is physical comedy, how does it work and how can you make it? We’ll explore comic play and traditional devices like: Takes, double takes, slights and reversals and apply them to dramatic situations.
LONDON 1 TAPS PERSPECTIVES WHAT IS A CLASSIC? Staging Play Texts Workshop leader: Atri Banerjee Photo: Marc Brenner
Biography Atri is a theatre director and translator based in London. He recently directed Julius Caesar for the RSC. Other recent credits include The Glass Menagerie for the Royal Exchange Theatre; Britannicus for the Lyric Hammersmith; Kes for the Bolton Octagon and Theatre by the Lake; and Harm for the Bush Theatre, which he also directed as a film for BBC Four. Atri was the winner of the 2019 The Stage Debut Award for his production of Hobson’s Choice at the Royal Exchange, and in 2022 was named as one of The Stage 25 ‘theatre-makers to watch out for over the next quarter-century’. He is one of two recipients of the 2022-24 Peter Hall Bursary at the National Theatre. He has also worked extensively as a drama facilitator and teacher, having led courses across acting, directing and design at schools including LAMDA, Guildhall, Central, BOVTS and Birkbeck.
Workshop overview In this workshop, we will explore what makes a ‘classic’ play and why we still put on productions of old plays today. Atri will draw on personal experience to explain ways in which classic plays are still relevant and how staging them can help us explore both the world and ourselves. This will be a practical session as well as a discursive one: Participants will be introduced to the idea of a ‘classic’ play. Atri will talk through examples from his own work. There will be an emphasis on encouraging participants to find resonances in their own life/ experience/ social and cultural contexts when considering these old plays today. This will offer springboards and provocations towards eventually imagining their own productions and communicating their interpretations to an audience.
LONDON 1 TAPS PERSPECTIVES PERFORMING COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE Exploring world theatre traditions Workshop leader: Cheryl Stapleton
About the company - Learning Through Theatre Learning Through TheatreTM is an education theatre company, producing shows and delivering workshops worldwide. We specialise in Commedia dell’Arte and physical theatre, delivering workshops in mask, mime, comedy, devising, puppetry and storytelling. Our child company. Punch’s ProgressTM is our Commedia dell’Arte performance troupe through which we have devised three shows. Our workshops provide an enriching and memorable learning experience supporting all levels of ability, challenging students to stretch themselves and become more confident as physically expressive performers. Through work with Commedia dell’Arte, students will acquire a high level of transferable performance skills for body, face, voice, breath, movement; performance discipline, stage awareness, physical awareness and control, strength and stamina and develop confidence to fully embody characters.
Biography Cheryl Stapleton is an experienced performer, director and qualified theatre teacher, specialising in physical comedy and Commedia dell’Arte. Cheryl has been working with commedia for more than 30 years, first discovering her passion for the form at university, going on to train at Centre Sèlavy with leading writer and mask practitioner John Rudlin. Cheryl is a trained dancer, holds a BA degree in Drama from Brunel University, trained in Physical Theatre at École Philippe Gaulier and further trained in commedia at Scuola Internazionale dell’Attore Comico with Antonio Fava. Cheryl worked alongside mask maker Michael Chase to learn the craft of mask making and to further hone her mask performance skills. In 2013, Cheryl founded Learning Through TheatreTM, a performance-education company sought internationally to deliver workshops and performances. Cheryl has taught at RADA, Fourth Monkey, Circomedia, UCL, UCA, University of Gloucestershire and over 300 schools internationally.
LONDON 1 TAPS PERSPECTIVES Workshop overview This is a fast-paced workshop that takes you through a practical exploration of the physicality of the stock characters of the Commedia dell’Arte who are central to this form. You will gain insight into this exaggerated comic style, the conventions of the form and learn a range of transferable performance skills that will enhance your understanding of stage dynamics and the role of the performer-creator within an ensemble. You will learn key skills and conventions for performing with masks and gain an understanding of the rich history of Commedia dell’Arte. You will discover the origins and historical context of the genre through an entirely practical method using specific exaggerated movement, voice and mannerisms, the breath, grammelot (gibberish) and interactions. You will explore key conventions of the form that will include lazzi (comic physical business), slapstick and working with a canovaccio (outline scenario).
LONDON 1 TAPS PERSPECTIVES
THEATRE PYGMALION THE OLD VIC
‘I’ve a right to be here if I like. Same as you’ Eliza Doolittle aspires to more than selling flowers on the streets of Covent Garden. After a chance meeting with Professor Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering, she finds herself the subject of a rash bet to pass her off as a lady amongst the great and the good of London society. Olivier Award-winner Richard Jones (Endgame, The Hairy Ape) directs the Olivier Award-winning duo of Bertie Carvel (The 47th, The Crown) and Patsy Ferran (Camp Siegfried, A Streetcar Named Desire) in George Bernard Shaw’s explosively funny, biting and subversive satire on class, as the ruthless linguist Higgins attempts to transform the brilliantly irrepressible Eliza – who breaks the mould he creates for her.
THE EMPRESS ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY It is 1887, the year Queen Victoria celebrates her Golden Jubilee. Sixteen year old Rani Das, ayah (nursemaid) to an English family arrives at Tilbury docks after a long voyage from India, to start a new life in Britain. On the boat, Rani befriends a lascar (sailor), an Indian politician and a royal servant destined to serve the Queen. Full of hopes and dreams of what lies ahead, they each embark on an extraordinary journey. Will their expectations come true or will they have to forge a different path in their new country? Spanning 13 years over the ‘Golden Era’ of Empire, this story blends the experiences of Indian ayahs and lascars who worked on the ships carrying trade goods, alongside the first Indian politician to be elected as a Member of Parliament. This epic story reveals how socially diverse the Asian presence was in nineteenth century Britain. Transferring directly from the Swan Theatre in Stratfordupon-Avon and directed by Pooja Ghai, Artistic Director of Tamasha, this new production of The Empress will take you from the rugged gangways of Tilbury docks to the grandeur of Queen Victoria’s Palace, whilst unveiling the long and embedded culture of British Asian history.