platform of workshops and debates
FOCUS ATELIER WHAT Focus Atelier is a platform consisting of a one month marathon of workshops and debates in different locations in Cluj-Napoca. Developed and organized by Reciproca Association, Focus Atelier questions today's issues through practice and dialogue. The attendance to all events is free. WHY Focus Atelier aims to facilitate the educational process, regardless of age or completion of standardized educational phases. We rely on the relevance of the topics we address and insist the events are open to anyone interested, regardless of their financial situation. HISTORY The first edition of Focus Atelier was held in March 2015, a year after Reciproca Association was established. The theme we focused on was the art-society dynamics, specifically the manner in which and the extent to which art can address today's issues. In this sense, we organised: • the "Social Video: Civic Involvement, Activism, Alternative Methods of Speech in Documentary" workshop (coordinated by Vlad Petri) and the debate titled "Citizen Journalism" • the "Presence on the Public Domain" workshop (coordinated by the artistic duo Monotremu) and the "Urban Intervention and Contemporary Urban Landscape" debate • the "Political Theatre’s Techniques and Methods" workshop (coordinated by David Schwartz) workshop and the "Political Art" debate • „The Alternative Actors Workshop Series” (Forum Theatre, the Deconstruction of Identity, and Sport Theatre - coordinated by George Wielgus, Kurt Murray and Iulia Benze) and the "Theatre of The Oppressed and the Impact of Theatrical Practices on the Community" debate • the interactive children show "Remember Dr. Bubbles", presented at La Terenuri Mănăștur • the launch of George F.’s book, "Total Shambles" Over 70 young people between 20 and 35 participated, for free, at the Focus Atelier meetings, more than 150 people took part in the debates organized at the end of each workshop, and more than 100 people attended the program related events.
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FOCUS ATELIER 2016 WHAT The 2nd edition of Focus Atelier will be held 1-31 March. The overall theme is education. We will approach pedagogical processes that explicitly contribute to artistic development and to one's positioning within society. This year’s format will include 4 sections: ❶ WORKSHOP ❷ DEBATE ❸ TROC ❹ EXCHANGE WHY We see that within the Romanian mainstream educational system - hardly adjusted to the real needs and issues of today - art's potential of being an educational tool is highly disregarded; memorization and execution are prioritized. We suggest two essential ingredients for a consistent education: dialogue and practice. We believe that the two are indispensably linked, that knowledge does not simply imply passive intake of information, but also expression and affirmation. To stimulate this type of mindset is, in our opinion, a step towards an active, mature society. FOR WHOM We address those interested in innovative pedagogical methods, trainers, teachers, university students, high school students who need a different way of learning, and, depending on each event’s theme, we address specific social categories. Though we insist that the real impact of our project is quantifiable more on a long term, the experience of the last year edition showed us that there are also immediate results, some of the former participants joining us in the process of organizing the current edition.
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❶ WORKSHOP: SERIES OF 5 WORKSHOPS ON INNOVATIVE PEDAGOGICAL APPROACHES THROUGH/ ABOUT THEATRE 1) THEATRE OF PARTICIPATORY COMMUNITIES with MIHAELA MICHAILOV & RADU APOSTOL
The theatre of participatory communities will address practitioners wanting to develop community-based projects, specifically involving children and adolescents. The workshop will have both a theoretical and a practical part. The coordinators will first take into account the participants' own projects (drafts, works in progress) and attempt to analyze them through the following filters: working with a community (how do we enter the community with which we want to work, how do we approach it, how do we build a community project), the artist-community relation (what is the rapport between the artist's interest and the community's interest, ethics vs. aesthetics). Coordinators Mihaela Michailov is a playwright, theatre critic, community artist; she has a wide experience in designing and coordinating workshops for children and teenagers. In 2013, together with director Radu Apostol she initiated the Copiii migrației project (Children of Migration), within which she wrote the play Familia Offline. The final piece included nine children and two professional actors. Michailov took part in a series of dramaturgy residencies and scholarships offered by Royal Court Theatre, Londra, Lark Theatre, New York and Récollets – International Centre for Artistic Residencies in Paris. Her plays are translated in English, French, German, Bulgarian, Hungarian. Since 2013 she has been coordinating Gazeta de Artă Politică (Political Art Gazette) along with Marius-Bogdan Tudor, David Schwartz and Ionuț Sociu. She is the co-founder founder of REPLIKA Center for Educational Theatre, together with Radu Apostol, Viorel Cojanu and Mihaela Rădescu. She is also a Ph.D Professor at the National University of Theatre and Film I.L Caragiale in Bucharest, where she teaches master courses on pedagogy, play-writing and dramaturgy. She held conferences and presentations about the Romanian contemporary scene in Avignon, Luxembourg, Lublin, Paris, Tokyo, Vienna. Radu Apostol is a theatre and film director. Since 2008 he works as an assistant professor at the National University of Theatre and Film I.L Caragiale in Bucharest. Between 2012 and 2013 he was the artistic coordinator of the Manifest Canin în sala de lectură project (Canine Manifesto in the Reading Room) initiated by Replika, Red Panda and the National Association of Librarians and Public Libraries. In 2012 he directed Familia Offline (Family Offline), a piece that is part of a larger project called Țară, țară vrem părinți (Country, Country I want Mummy). In 2010, together with Gianina Cărbunariu and Andreea Vălean, he worked as documentarist and co-director of the piece Roşia Montană, pe linie fizică şi pe linie politică (Rosia Montana, physically and politically), written by Peca Ștefan. He was awarded Best Director prize at the Festival for Romanian Dramaturgy, Timisoara, 2011, for Roşia Montana, pe linie fizică şi pe linie politică, best Director at the Theatre Festival in Piatra Neamț, 2008, for Pledez pentru tineri (I plead for the young) and The Award of the International Association of Theatre Critics for the making of the dramAcum project (dramaNow), 2003. 4
2) KNOWING YOUR RIGHTS & HERSTORY with MILENA NIKOLIC
Knowing Your Rights and Herstory is a 6 days program on gender mainstream, gender equality, women activism, situations of women violence/discrimination. The program comprises theoretical presentations, open discussions, interactive workshops and creative work. Workshops on gender equity are even more important now than before, because many are under the mistaken impression that the gender problem has been solved. While we have certainly made much progress, we have not eliminated gender inequities by far. The belief that we have done so is in itself an obstacle to needed further progress. One-shot workshop by itself is unlikely to do much except give the illusion of action. For a workshop to be effective, it must have 1) action steps built in and 2) follow-up. Follow-up means a multi-part workshop that takes place over time, and/or specific activities that occur as a result of the workshop. This program will enable participants to have enough information, knowledge, creative approaches, statistics, solutions, action plan created, etc gained through different work methodologies. CDs with the workshop materials will be given to participants for future use. Online FB page and follow-up/ mentoring will help participants to continue to be in active contact, to organize events and act within their local community. Coordinator Milena Nikolić has 13 years of experience in the field of activism, community art and festival organisation. She has been a member of Mimart Theatre Beograd, Opera Circus UK Company, Musicians without Borders International, YARD - Youth Ambassadors From Rural Areas, CURE Foundation and The Association of Parents of handicapped children and youth Leptir. Along the years, she has been involved organising: Balkan Summer Camp – music therapeutic camp for children with special needs and trauma, Cultural Pump UP – festival of alternative theater, PitchWise – festival of women's art and activism. Currently, she is part of the organisation team of The Complete Freedom of Truth (TCFT) - an international network that annually aims to bring together 250 artists and activists from 7 European countries.
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3) THE ART OF SPECTATORSHIP with MIRUNA RUNCAN
The aim of this workshop is to train the perceptive skills of the participants, by familiarizing them with the reception of theatre/cinema works from a critical perspective. Also, throughout the four days those interested have the opportunity to jointly analyze the complexity of the notion of spectator. The workshop is primarily designed for high school students interested in performing arts and cinema, but also for anyone in general, provided they don't have a background in theatre or cinema. The format aims to be diverse and practical (screenings, focus groups, games, exercises) so as to facilitate a complex understanding of the notions in discussion. The last day of the workshop is designed as a one-day analysis of the theatre pieces shown within the overall program of Focus Atelier, thus offering the participants the chance to exercise the skills they've acquired. Coordinator Miruna Runcan is a writer, theatre critic and Ph.D Professor at the Theatre and Television Faculty of the Babes Boyai University Cluj, Romania. General secretary of the Romanian section within IATC (International Association of Theatre Critics) and founder of The Everyday Life Drama Laboratory of Research and Creation, she was offered a three year National Grant for Research and a Gilder/Coigney International Theatre award (LPTW, League of Professional Theatre Women). A prolific writer, some of her works are: Theatre Criticism. Where to? (Cluj University Press, 2015), Signore Misterioso: An Anatomy of the Spectator (Bucharest, Unitext, 2011), The Sceptical’s Spectator’s Armchair (Bucharest, Unitext Publishing House, 2007), For a Semyothics of the Theatrical Performance (Cluj, Eikon Publishing House, 2005).
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4) THE FEEDBACK METHOD with SONJA JOKINIEMI
Impressions, questions, criticism, suggestions, tips & tricks: all that is included under the notion of feedback. And all that is one of the most central tools used in art practice: between directors and actors, dramaturges and critics, students and advisors, artists and their audience. For artists, getting feedback is one of the most important ways for testing how your work is received. Art professionals in general are by nature professionals in giving feedback, but it is hard to really do that in a productive way. Were there no moderator or format for a collective or one-on-one feedback, there’s a chance the discussion gets messy and unstructured: there’s one’s opinion on the concept, one’s opinion about the lighting, one’s comment about the acting style. Whereas a useful feedback should go beyond superficial judgments such as ‘I like’ or ‘I don’t like’ and lead to the development of the maker’s work. It was this need that led DasArts, Master of Theatre Amsterdam to develop a new informative and productive method of providing feedback, together with DasArts students and philosopher Karim Benammar. A feedback session is clearly structured upon a diversity of formats: Affirmative Feedback, Open Questions, Point Reflection, Gossip Rounds, Alternative Perspectives and others. Coordinator DasArts alumna and certified feedback method moderator Sonja Jokiniemi is a performance artist and choreographer currently based in Helsinki, Finland. Her educational background is in contemporary dance, choreography and performance. She graduated in 2013 from DasArts Master of Theatre program in Amsterdam. Prior to DasArts she completed her BA degree in contemporary dance and choreography at Laban Centre, London in 2006 and been part of a year long artist residency program Daghdha Mentoring program in Limerick, Ireland 2008-2009. She makes solo performances, community-based art projects, illustrations and notations. Her latest solo works are Hmm (2015) and OH NO(2013) together with a book called Disastrous events. Since 2014 she has worked with autistic young adults exploring subjective language systems under a project named Without an alphabet. From this process I published a book called PA A and composed a duet performance work with participant Veera Kivelä. 2014-2015 she worked at Helsinki City Council as one of eight artists working with community based artistic projects and practices.
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5) FORUM THEATRE & INVISIBLE THEATRE with GEORGE WIELGUS
Theatre of the Oppressed uses a range of techniques and games embodied which enable the participants to detach themselves from the way they behave in society, by re-enacting and analysing the consequences of their actions; it therefore engages people in critical reflection, and dialogue upon the degree of freedom/ conditioning of their behaviour. The workshop focuses mainly on two techniques, namely Forum Theatre and Invisible Theatre. Invisible Theatre is a way of making theatre in places we would not normally expect to watch theatre, transforming the public space into stage, creating theatrical situations in public spaces with the performers disguising themselves and hiding the fact that it is a performance from those who observe or those who choose to participate. Its purpose is to make a point publicly promoting the awareness of everyday oppressions through spontaeous performances that are well-planned, getting the public to question issues in a public space. The Brazilian director Augusto Boal and Panagiotis Assimakopoulos developed the Invisible Theatre form in the 1960s, in Argentina. Forum Theatre is a performance technique that aims to transform the spectator (one who watches) into spect-actor (one who watches and takes action), with the actors presenting an oppressing situation on stage, hereby urging and encouraging the spectators to stop the play and take the stage to suggest different actions in order to change the outcome of the situation. Therefore, the theatrical act is experienced as a conscious intervention and a collective analysis of certain problems. Coordinator George Wielgus is a performer, writer and trainer within the theoretical framework of the Theatre of the Opressed. He has a vast experience ranging from TESOL education to drama therapy and rehabilitation of drug consumers. Some of his experience was earned during his two years stay in Malaysia where he worked along with the Malaysia HIV Council, with a group of drug consumers who were in an rehabilitation program, performing Interactive Theatre with non-actors for an audience of 6000 people. He was the artistic director of „The Fallen Leaves Theatre Company� and lived in the same house with the artists, hereby facilitating hundreds of hours of workshops, labs and rehearsals. He is a certified Joker Trainer and a certified practitioner of the Rainbow of Desire therapeutic theatre technique developed by Augusto Boal. Since 2010 he is creative director within Reboot The Roots organisation, facilitating Theatre of the Oppresed workshops for NGOs and other groups of refugees from Kuala Lumpur, for emerging poets in Singapore, survivors of Khmer Rouge and former military men of the Pol Pot regime. He won the Slam Poetry Glastonbury in 2010.
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❷ DEBATES: SERIES OF 4 DEBATES WITH PROFESSIONALS IN PEDAGOGY, COMMUNITY THEATRE AND SOCIAL INCLUSION
1) THEATRE PEDAGOGY. THE THEATRE OF CHILDREN AND TEENS – we will invite the artistic team of REPLIKA Educational Theatre Center, a Bucharest based organization with a significant role in educating teens through theatre; we will address the lack of theatre repertoires that tackle childhood and adolescence issues. 2) GENDER EQUALITY. WHERE DO WE STAND? – debate held on 8th of March (International Women’s Day); we will identify to what extent can we wire the discourse on gender equality to the reality of the Romanian culture, without treating it as an imported cultural product; the debate will focus on topics such as sexism, lookism and machismo. 3) PEDAGOGY AND SOCIAL EQUALITY – a debate that addresses the role pedagogy can have in moulding social dynamics; we will discuss how different pedagogical initiatives or lack of them can perpetuate social imbalance or can be key to solving it. 4) EDUCATIONAL URGENCIES AND ALTERNATIVES – ending the marathon month, this debate is designed as an attempt to retrace and question the motivation, necessity and sustainability of Focus Atelier on the whole.
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❸ TROC: NETWORK OF EDUCATIONAL THEATRE WHAT TROC (Romanian for Barter) is a project that aims to strengthen the collaboration between specialized NGOs and public institutions, brought together by their common interest for theatre pedagogy and issues specific to young audiences. The three entities joined together under the name TROC within Focus Atelier 2016 are Reciproca Association (Cluj), REPLIKA Educational Theatre Center (Bucharest) and Gong Theatre (Sibiu). Their attempt is to make possible the circulation of 5 educational theatre pieces (see below) along Cluj, Bucharest and Sibiu, to produce an invisible theatre piece as a result of George Wielgus’ workshop, and to organize three workshops focused on the exploration of innovative methodologies in performing arts. WHY The primary goal of TROC is to create a network of theatres for young audiences. The initiative signals the importance that educational theatre and education through theatre has on social balance and inclusion. TROC encourages cultural mobility, extends the theatrical repertoires of partners involved, and develops new categories of audience: children and teenagers who will have the possibility to see a type of theatre in which their problems are addressed in a contemporary language. THEATRE PIECES 1) FAȚĂ DE DREPTURI (IN FRONT OF RIGHTS) – a REPLIKA production What if one day children are no longer graded or judged? What if one day adults and children decide together? Față de drepturi is an educational and participatory theatre show that starts from a few fundamental rights stated by the Convention on the Rights of the Child. 2) COPII RĂI (BAD KIDS) - a REPLIKA production The piece deals with violence, submission and the confinement of imagination. It's about the excessive rules within the Romanian educational system, about the forms of violence that transform an apparently trivial punishment into a collective threat, about power relations between children, teachers and parents. 3) AMINTIRI DIN EPOCA DE ŞCOALĂ (MEMORIES OF THE SCHOOL AGE) - an A.D.O. Association & Comedy Theatre co-production If our national ballads were not always about flocks of sheep, if history were not always written by those in power, if we somehow understood why we are supposed to learn about hypotenuses, catheti, national heroes, mountains, rivers Dacians and Romans and all other fabricated ancestors – maybe then school would start being about each and one of us. 4) DISPARIȚIA (THE MISSING) - a Reactor and Reciproca co-production The disappearance of a high school student reveals the hidden dynamics of a group of five peer teenagers brought together by a tragic circumstance and not by affinities. Although different, they share the same view on authority figures, on the educational system that shapes them by the same patterns, and on the massmedia offering them absurd shows in search of ratings. 5) NU CRED C-O SĂ-MI TRECĂ VREODATĂ (I GUESS I'LL NEVER GET OVER IT)- a Reactor production Three parties organized by three teenagers begin at the same time and overlap as they unfold while the stage becomes a space of confessions. The personal experiences of the three performers are fictionalized, gradually forming together a dramaturgy of fragility.
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â?š EXCHANGE: SKILL TRADE AND MEETINGS
WHAT The EXCHANGE platform is a one-week event within Focus where people get a chance to share their knowhow with others. In order for this to happen, we will make a call for those who wish to be trainers on a topic/ skill of their own choice. We will then interview the ones that have answered our call, in order to select five trainers. These will enjoy our full support in having the physical conditions for their workshops to take place, over a period of one week, 2 days/ trainer. Outside these, we plan a 3DD workshop (3 Days Design) offered by the Cluj Makers engineers, specifically addressed to students of technical high schools of Cluj. Also, we intend to organize a meeting with as many local cultural associations and collectives as possible, so as to exchange ideas on self-organisation and sustainability. WHY Through EXCHANGE , we plan to make visible the local creative individuals, communities and spaces that exist in our city and accommodate their get-together.
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Cluj Napoca, str. Henri Barbusse 59-61 Email: asociatia.reciproca@gmail.com Lorand Maxim: +40746562775 Leta Popescu: +40748751778