It’s All About Games: A Labyrintheme Handbook for Trainees

IT’S ALL ABOUT GAMES

A Handbook for Trainees published by

LABYRINTHEME consortium, 2012 Authors: Adrian Ciglenean, Lucian Branea (Romania), Yavor Kostov (Bulgaria) Editor: Lucian Branea (Romania) Publisher: BIVEDA NGO ISBN: 978-619-90033-2-9

The LABYRINTHEME project (510431-LLP-1-2010-1-RO-GRUNDTVIG-GMP) has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

The LABYRINTHEME project (510431-LLP-1-2010-1-RO-GRUNDTVIG-GMP) was developed in 2011-2012 by BIVEDA (Sofia, Bulgaria), University of Bucharest, Epsilon III Association (Bucharest, Romania), The Manchester Museum (Manchester, UK), University of Balikesir (Balikesir, Turkey) and ONAGEB.SPAIN S.L. (Zaragoza, Spain). The LABYRINTHEME partnership was supported by a consistent number of associate partners, notably from Bulgaria, Romania, Germany, Italy, Portugal, France, Iceland, and still counting.

For a continuously updatable list of the work done and institutions involved, please check the Labyrintheme web page at http://labyrintheme.org and its Facebook page at https://www.facebook. com/Labyrintheme. The authors would like to thank Iwan Brioc for unconditional support and continuous inspiration in the practice and theoretical aspects of sensory labyrinth theatre.

Foreword

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Dear Reader, Welcome to Labyrintheme’s handbook for trainees and practitioners of sensory labyrinth theatre! The Labyrintheme project has brought together theatre makers, museum staff and enthusiasts, teachers, staff of educational institutions and students from a considerable number of countries. We call our handbook for trainees IT’S ALL ABOUT GAMES because… well, because it kind of is ! The methodology and placement of sensory labyrinth theatre in the universal cultural landscape might concern professionals and trainers but in the end it’s all about interaction, active learning and organic progress. We need a brain to process all information, and we have The Handbook for Trainers to take care of that; but in order to put our brains to work we need relevant information, we need our senses to get active and we need the right stimulus to provide a genuine touch of the real context. And games are giving us exactly that. Everything we explain or do in sensory labyrinth theatre we try to do through games. We only supplement games with theory so as to prevent a situation in which too much gaming becomes boring. And, of course, to fix information at a certain level of awareness so that we can step forward. This handbook is dedicated to all of you out there who enjoyed a sensory labyrinth theatre experience and are feeling inspired by it. In order to support your inspiration towards further experimentation we provide a collection of games for each major subject we touched during piloting or main course in the Labyrintheme project. We also provide this and especially an online upgradable format of this handbook for trainers who wish to have a larger spectrum of games available for their projects and also wishing to contribute to the expansion of our online games depot. Also, examples of sensory labyrinth performances will be included in this handbook as case studies and we address everybody (trainers, trainees and ‘audience’ members) an ongoing invitation to contribute their own material. We hope you enjoy it, and please help us make it better by reaching us at

http://labyrintheme.org/ and https://www.facebook.com/Labyrintheme

Reader’s Guide It’s All About Games is an educational resource divided into four sections:

Section A

is an introduction to the Labyrintheme project: what the project is and what it sets out to achieve, the partners and our ethos.

Section B

is a collection of games supporting a sensory labyrinth performance development in general (see the Annexes of Labyrintheme’s Handbook for Trainers).

Section C

is a collection of case-studies of various sensory labyrinth theatre performances or projects.

Section D

includes some additional materials.

Labyrinthteme is an international project financed by the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Comission. The project’s aim is to explore best practices and develop an innovative model for engaging adult learners using participatory arts, methods and techniques within the cultural and heritage sectors. The central outcome of LABYRINTHEME was to configure a training course and a series of workshops that support the use of participatory theatre approaches, methods and techniques in institutions managing and exhibiting heritage across Europe. The development of a project website and training handbooks are integral to the project, while the results and findings of the project are also shared with colleagues in various international seminars and conferences.

WHO ARE WE?

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BIVEDA

UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST

(Sofia, Bulgaria) has been in existence since 2000 as a non-governmental and non-profit organization involving in its activities young practitioners in the field of performing arts and social sciences. Until 2005 the focus of those activities was mainly institutions for children deprived of parental care and reformatory schools, targeting young people at risk and using theatre as a social tool. It is the only theatrical group in Bulgaria practising Sensory theatre – as community work, youth exchange theme, social work, and general public performances.

(Bucharest, Romania) is a university with academic integrity and concern for critical thinking, a significant point of reference in society. Through its high standard of academic endeavour across all its departments, the University of Bucharest sets forth to be the most important institution of higher education in Romania. The University of Bucharest is a comprehensive university, oriented towards natural sciences, social sciences and humanities.

It is involved in Labyrintheme with its Faculty of Geography. A Geography department has existed within the University of Bucharest since 1900, the oldest in Romania.

EPSILON III Association

UNIVERSITY OF BALIKESIR

(Bucharest, Romania) is a group of people passionate about what can be done with participatory arts and media to transform time, space, ourselves, and many other people around us. We are a voluntary not-for-profit group – so we do various things because they seem to be worth doing, or needed, at a certain moment, and NOT because we have schedule gaps to fill, or because boredom haunts us during long winter nights urging us to go out and do something impressive!

(Balikesir, Turkey) was established with the coordination of local higher education institutions within the Balikesir province. It started off with only two faculties and a few vocational schools in 1992.

Since then the university has developed rapidly and today, with the establishment of Faculties of Medicine and Maritime, it has nine faculties, five research institutes, twenty vocational schools and ten research centres. The University now has more than 30000 students and some 2000 staff. It is involved in Labyrintheme with its Faculty of Geography

THE MANCHESTER MUSEUM (Manchester, UK) is a University museum with a strong and loyal local following, which at the same time has global reach in terms of our collections and themes. Two principal themes drive everything that we do: promoting understanding between cultures and developing a sustainable world. In working on these themes we believe that as a University museum we should take risks and explore new approaches to museum practice. The Museum is strategically connected to the research and teaching activities of the University of Manchester and its collections are extensively used in academic research. Additionally the Museum has a thriving learning and education department which provides a unique opportunity for students to engage with the collection and experts across a variety of subjects at all school ages. In its work with the wider community the Museum is nationally renowned for its ethical and innovative approach to working with communities – this includes collaborative exhibitions, events, programmes and consultation on Museum policy development and interpretation of collections.

ONAGEB S.L. (Zaragoza, Spain) is a young company with entrepreneurial spirit composed of a team of professionals with highly specialized qualifications.

Our work is focused on language teaching and adult education.

Labyrintheme ETHOS Our aim is to offer institutions and individuals in the educational field an efficient methodology and a simple toolkit which helps them restore interest in relevant content and basic human exchange, as opposed to individual alienation, gender and agebased exile and cultural numbness induced by the bigger and louder forms of entertainment.

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M GA

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These are games and activities that lead the group process to the creation of a Sensory Theatre Performance. Some of them have been used in the training and piloting courses of Labyrintheme project. You can make your own selection, and add games of your own. For more theory on the group process, please consult the Handbook for Trainers “Back to our senses�. It is very important that all games take place in a clean space that decently accommodates all participants, as far as possible emptied of unnecessary objects. Dress code is casual (comfortable).

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1

Teambuilding

Icebreakers - in which ‘ice’ stands mostly for pre-fabricated ideas about ourselves (qualities and faults).

1.a Palm-tennis (dynamic, team-work, challenges focus, gives an idea about group involvement).

Needs: sponge ball.

The whole group stands in a circle. A sponge ball no bigger than a fist is brought in. The rule is to hit the ball with your palm (fingers closed) like your arm is a flexible tennis racket. The purpose of the game is that all participants to hit the ball one at a time and to keep the ball in the air as much as possible. The trainer can count every time someone hits the ball and ask for a minimum of hits to end the game.

1.b Hello, how are you

Facilitator: “Now I would ask you to walk around the room… it’s like a pleasant morning walk… meet other people’s eyes… say hello with your eyes, smile at them, you can nod… yes, you can even say hello to them… you can even shake hands with them and ask them “Hi! How are you?” Good! Now stop for a moment and stay where you are. Here is a game. When I give you the signal (Go!) you shake hands again saying “Hi How are you?”, but this time you don’t let go of the person’s hand until you start a handshake with another person. One of your hands should always be busy making a handshake. You are not allowed to have both your hands free! Don’t stop until you’ve done a handshake with everyone. Got it? Ready? Go!”

1.c These are two get-to-know games for beginning and ending a process

1. The trainer tells the participants they have to go back in time and find something interesting to share with the group. Each one takes a coin from a little bag (prepared in advance by the trainer), and studies it for a while. Seeing what the year on the coin is, they try to remember what happened in their life in that same year (if they weren’t born yet, they take another coin), then choose one important event or happening to share in the circle. It is good if they tell their names before sharing. The trainer should also participate in this, and make some connection with the theme of the training.

2. The participants sit in a circle and one by one say in one sentence what colour they would use to make a picture of the person sitting next to them. For example “I would make your picture in blue, because…” This game is suitable for the closing of a session – it always brings a positive mood.

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1.d Identities (instantly creative, self-describing: objective & subjective – who we think we are and how we see ourselves) Needs: personal objects.

The whole group sits in a circle. They are asked to place in front of them all the objects they came with at the meeting (including ID card, phones, books, money, bills, etc.) and all the accessories they are wearing (bracelets, glasses, necklaces, scarves, etc.) as far as they don’t feel that their privacy is abused. They are given 10 minutes to arrange all the objects in a way that pleases them and, one at a time, they describe themselves based on the objects collection placed in front of them. The trainer should make everybody aware (preferably at the end of exercise) that the objects we are carrying with us describe best what we think our elementary needs are since it is absurd to carry around objects that you think you’d never need. They provide functionality or emotional support that would help us get through the day ‘just in case’.

1.e Names 1 (it helps the group memorizing everybody’s name; gives and idea about how we see ourselves; introduces movement and sound)

The whole group stands in a circle. One at a time, everybody says “My name is… and I feel…” The word describing how they feel should be said on a singing note while also making a large gesture (or a short series of movements) to support it. After one says how she/he feels, the whole group says altogether “Today… (name)… feels … (mood and gesture)”.

Names 2 (variation of Names 1, with the same benefits)

The whole group splits in two equal teams, creating two parallel straight lines facing one another. The two lines are creating a corridor through which each participant goes singing her/ his name in a small movement or dance routine. At the end of the corridor, the participant adds up to the end of his line.

1.f

All my neighbours who… (dynamic, competitive, self-describing: objective, subjective) Needs personal or training objects.

Participants are sitting in a circle with an object of their choice in front of them, describing their ‘house’. One of the participants doesn’t have a house, so he’s moving inside the circle waiting for an empty house to move in. In order to free houses he’s filling the dots for “all my neighbours who… should stand up”. The rule is that everybody that fits the description of the statement are standing up, make a full circle, then find an empty house to sit behind it. Of course, everybody should hurry up to find a free spot, otherwise he is left out and has to step in the circle and fill in the “all my neighbours who…” statement. The trainer makes sure that everybody follows the rule.

Examples: “All my neighbours who… are wearing white shirts, are not wearing glasses, had eggs for breakfast, love poetry…”, and so on..

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1.g Hep! (suited for young participants, competitive, challenges attention and reflexes)

All the participants stand in the circle, while a signal called ‘hep’ is transmitted from one to another. The rules are gradually introduced by the trainer.signal called ‘hep’ is transmitted from one to another. The rules are gradually introduced by the trainer.

RULE 1: The Hep! has a natural tendency to go to the next person on your right (anticlockwise) , except when other rules are stating differently. Everyone should call out loud “Hep!” while clapping their hands together as if to eject the Hep! to the next person standing to the right.The Hep! signal should be sent as quick and clear as possible without anyone overlapping or anticipating.

RULE 2: When someone makes a mistake he goes in the middle of the circle and performs a penalty previously agreed by the whole group (push-ups, singing, etc.) while the exercise continues. Or, later during the game, if someone makes a mistake, he leaves the circle.

RULE 3: After someone’s mistake, the Hep! goes a full circle from the person standing on the right of the one that made the mistake. During this full circle, only rule 1 and rule 2 apply.

RULE 4: You can reject the Hep! signal by raising both hands as if to describe an imaginary blockage while facing the person directly sending it to you. In the same time with the gesture goes the voice command: “Boing”. After this, the Hep! goes back in the opposite direction (from the next person to your left to the person standing to her/his left and so on).

RULE 5: You can skip a person standing next to you when you receive the signal by saying: “Skip-dibby-dib” while making a gesture with one hand as if to describe a jump performed in the air (describing the skipping action). The person that you skipped does nothing while the signal is received by the person next to her/him who continues to send the Hep! as usual to the person standing next to her/ him (other than the person that was skipped).

RULE 6: You can shoot the Hep! to anyone standing in the circle, except the persons standing immediately next to you. You cand do so by shouting “Pow!” while putting your arms together as if holding an imaginary pistol. The Hep! one receives through a “Pow!” command cannot be skipped or sent in clockwise direction. It can be rejected with the “Boing!”, it can be continued with another “Pow!” or with a “Hep!” sent directly anticlockwise to the right.

RULE 7: When you feel like it (but if Rule 3 doesn’t apply) you can shout out command “Spoosh! ” which means that while the trainer counts down from 5 to 0 everybody has to change neighbours breaking the circle and re-creating it when the countdown is over. The person who was standing on the right of the one giving the command “Sposh” before the command was executed has the hep! and Rule 1 applies. If the respective person is not putting the signal back in the game in due time, he just made a mistake. If after this point, nobody remembers who the person standing on the right of the one shouting “Spoosh!” was, everybody is subject to a penalty.

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2

Exercises to support the interactive and participatory aspect of sensory labyrinth theatre

While performing sensory labyrinth theatre, the team members should be prepared to act as “hosts” while sharing an experience with the audience. The part of this exchange which refers to the “receiving” experience of your participant has to do with the interactive side of the sensory labyrinth performance. The part of the exchange that refers to the “giving” experience of the participant to the build-up and performing of sensory labyrinth theatre has to do with its participatory side. In order to be prepared for the interactive experience, one should be very open to improvise. The improvisation skills are salutary but not enough, since improvisation has to be based on the genuine communication between performer and spect-actor. This has very much to do with the participatory aspect of the whole experience since best improvisation skills become active when you have confidence in yourself and you know your stuff. That is why best improvisations based on genuine communication occur in a sensory labyrinth performance precisely when you had the chance to bring your own material in the performance, which you know better than anyone else, and you are willing to share with basically anyone.

2.a If objects could speak (involves voicing out personal stories using personal material based on personal talents).

Needs: personal objects

RULES: the voicing out is presented in a performed-like style in front of an audience comprised of the other members of the group.

START. A task is given the previous day to find a personal object which you wish to give a voice to, so that it speaks about itself in any way it chooses. The ‘voice’ can be an actual voice, a singing voice, a written voice, or any other form of artistic expression that you master and find suitable to give others a feeling of how it is to be that particular object.

ACHIEVEMENTS: You get to express yourself artistically embodying a character you care about and also giving life to something you wish to share with others.

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3

Senses

Activating, opening up and increased focus in our senses is at the core of sensory labyrinth theatre. We recommend that through exercises each sense is approached individually, but individual exploration is crucial.

3.a And Now You Know (great team work exercise, explores the benefits of offering and receiving a sensory experience, provides an immediate response on the big question “what sensory theatre is all about.”

Needs: two working spaces (preferably in and out), scarves, sensory- friendly objects (bells, scents, ropes, feathery objects, etc.).

Rules: provided in the description of the game.

Duration: Depending on number of participants, 90 - 120 minutes

1.Start. Participants are brought in a circle, standing. An object is placed in the middle of the circle. They all focus on the object. the trainer counts down from 3 to 1. When ‘1’ is reached, every participant is looking directly to someone standing in the circle. If that someone happens to be looking back they are a pair. Repeat until all group is split in pairs.

2.Within each pair participants decide who is ‘1’ and who is ‘2’. When all pairs are decided, we have team One and team Two. Another option would be to let team One and Two choose themselves based on a less politically correct technique. Two participants pointed out by the trainer are alternately picking members for their team. This might stir some emotions but it also fires up creative energies.

3.Each team delegates its ‘lucky charm’ person. Both ‘lucky charms’ participate in a head & tail coin flip that will put them in a winning position: decide by themselves which performance title they like most: a)… (provided by the trainer) or b) … (also provided by the trainer). Based on their preference and without interference from the rest of the team, team One will use the chosen title for a performance and team Two the other one.

4.Having a performance title, the ‘lucky charms’ will again participate in a head & tail based assignment of performing spaces (indoor/outdoor). Whoever wins decides which space the team want.

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5 Another (final) flip of the coin will decide a winner from the 2 ‘lucky charms’ who gets to decide if he/she sticks with their team or want to switch teams.

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6.We now have two teams, two performance spaces and two performance titles.

The task is to create two performances in which every team will alternatively be performers and audience (spect-actors). Each performance should be experienced individually by spectactors while blindfolded, the individual experience should last no less than 7 minutes and no longer than 12 and the preparation time will be 45 minutes.

7.The trainer will choose a coach for each team whose task will be to moderate his teams working process, to ensure progress is made and to keep track with the time. He can directly ask for any type of support from the trainer.

8.The advised methodology is:

- 5 minutes to individually explore space and let the title of the performance inspire some ideas.

- 5 minutes to think about what you would like to experience blindfolded if you were in the audience’s shoes.

- 5 minutes to think about what you would like to offer as an experience to a blindfolded audience, addressing their senses and inspired by the title.

- 5 minutes to gather the team up and talk about the audience, who are they and what do we know about them.

- 10 minutes to individually express ideas, connect them in similar ideas (if any) or decide to make a moment out of a single idea.

- 5 minutes to decide a path on which one idea follows the other.

- 10 minutes to actually try the whole thing out and adjust.

Notes: The trainer should only moderate and make decisions based on the time given for the task. He should not, at any stage, take full responsibility for the process, ‘get in charge’ or ‘serve’ a group at his own expense. He should make sure that everyone’s voice is heard (including his) and no one’s voice is heard at all times.

Achievements: experience team-work process under pressure, get a clear feeling of a sensory labyrinth theatre experience, and of trust generated by achievement of concrete results in a extremely short time.

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3.b

Doodling Senses – free style (introduces the concept of ‘sensory image’, opens up experience and discussion about sensory stimulus and their interpretation).

Needs: a chair, a scarf, sensory-friendly objects.

Start: While participants are gathered as an audience, one volunteer is required to get “on stage”, sitting on a chair, blindfolded.Three other volunteers are asked at this stage and each of them is ‘in charge’ with one sensory language (smell, taste, touch, vision, hearing).

The three are given a word or two as an exercise theme and seven minutes to independently collect necessary props and figure out possible ideas for interaction. At a given signal they all start improvising and complete each other in a spontaneously coordinated dramaturgy supporting the theme of the exercise, of which the first volunteer is not aware yet. The ‘performance’ lasts a couple of minutes. After it stops, the audience gets to vote the name of the performance, the first volunteer gets to describe his experience and give a name for the performance and the other three volunteers reveal their given title.The exercise should be repeated a couple of times with different volunteers, different themes and different combination of senses.

3.c

Sensory Haiku (introduces the ‘poetics of senses’, generates advanced experience and discussion about sensory stimulus and their interpretation). Also relevant for space dialogue.

Needs: Various indoor/ outdoor spaces, papers, pens, ‘functional’ and ‘sensoryfriendly’objects, scarves.

Start: Participants split in groups of three. During the three stages of the exercise, each gets to be Master, Disciple or Poet.

The Master has seven minutes to pick a place and to figure out what image he wants to create.Then, for the next eight minutes he asks the Disciple to join in, explains the image he sets out to offer and the experience as a whole. If the Disciple has any ideas and the Master needs them, he might be opened to suggestions. Together they put everything in place. Five more minutes are offered to introduce the image to the blindfolded Poet. If the Master decides so, at a certain point the Disciple may take the blindfold off or ask the Poet to do so.While the Disciple becomes the New Master, the Poet writes down on a piece of paper a phrase (haiku) encapsulating the experienced sensory image, then folds the paper for another haiku to be written down without anyone seeing the previous one.

Then the Poet becomes the New Disciple and the Master becomes the New Poet. After they repeat the exercise, The New Master becomes the Last Poet, the New Disciple becomes the Last Master and the New Poet becomes the Last Disciple. In the end, all three haikus are revealed. A variation of this game more suited for smaller spaces is that each team’s Master has to offer a sensory image in the same spot, using only a different stimulus.

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4

Space and site

4.a

Silent dialogue (introduces space awareness zooming in and out from one sense to another; also relevant for senses).

Needs: open-space, preferably nature.

Rules: Individual exercise. Participants are not allowed to talk or interact with each other or with anyone else except to avoid embarrassment or other unnecessary unpleasant situations that might interrupt their focus.

Start. This is a free-walk exploration of senses based on the same technique as the blindfold: we get a different sense of reality if we inhibit our usual pattern of perception and we specifically direct our focus to one perception. Space gets to be “seen” more vividly, inspiring new feelings while we experience it for a period of time free from any other goals.

4.b The unseen space (introduces an acting technique that centers the actor in a space and increases presence through his becoming aware and focusing on the unseen space).

Needs: Rules: Try to keep-up with the voice leading you through the exercise and don’t cheat: if you’re not up to it just stand aside.

Start. While participants are gathered as audience, one volunteer is required to get ‘on stage’ standing, neutral position.While no further indication keep coming, the pressure of audience’s eyes is increasing and subject’s attention gets more and more focused on a ‘cover-up’, something that would protect him of the all-seeing eyes, something that will tell him where to keep his hands, if everything is allright with the way he looks, with what he does. That something is the space behind him, the unseen space. Placing his attention on that huge amount of space will give him confidence, will turn everybody’s attention from his face to his 3-dimensional presence in space – a just dialogue opened to perception and not to psychological rationalization.This is based on the fact that the actor is focusing the audience’s attention on stage and where the actor’s attention goes this is where the audience attention may tend to follow. If that is directed to self- consideration and judgement, the pressure will get unbearable to the point where the subject becomes truly insignificant.

Therefore extending attention is the smart thing to do, especially if that extension is towards the unknown.

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4. c Site-specific frozen images

This is a thematic exercise whose aim is to place the group members in a creative mood, further getting to know each other, connecting with a certain place, and tuning their minds to the polyvalence of meaning in (any) art.

The group should be well warmed up. The space should be as varied as possible – the exercise works perfectly in parks, yards, using both the inside and the outside of buildings, corridors, doorways, elements of interior and exterior design etc.

The group is told to take their time and have a silent individual walk studying all the available space, looking for a spot that is somehow attracting them. They should first contemplate this place from outside, feel its atmosphere, look at it as an image from different angles, with different dimensions. Then, after a while they should try to find their place there, feeling in harmony with it, and at the same time being comfortable. Or just find a body position which matches their mood at the moment. The participants should have in mind that they will be looked at by the others, so it’s advisable to think where the audience will stand to observe their frozen image, and also find a name for it. After the trainer makes sure that everyone is ready with his image he gets everybody together and one by one the frozen images are contemplated by the group. This happens in the following way: First the group gets to the spot pointed out by the author and closes their eyes. The author of the frozen image positions him/herself in it and the trainer tells the audience to open their eyes and have a good silent look at the frozen image. Then at a given signal the group starts suggesting names. The trainers should repeat the names so that the author (who is still in frozen position) can hear and remember them. Then s/he gets out of the image and applauded. The trainer asks which of the names s/he likes best, and what the original title is. The same process is repeated with all the pictures, and then the group is invited to share their observations, feelings, associations, and ideas born during the exercise.

This is one of the exercises which increases the sensitivity to space, and encourages connection with the chosen spot: something essential in a sensory labyrinth theatre performance.

The trainer should point out that the audience interprets the images in ways that are often surprising, sometimes even the very opposite of what the author intended as a message, but on the other hand they are in their right to do so. On the other hand they may see something that wasn’t in the artist’ mind or plans, but was definitely in the picture and that’s another aspect of the artistic gesture: you cannot know in advance what exactly your work will be like.

The audience is the complementing element of any work of art, and its perception is a creative gesture as well.

This applies for the labyrinth performance too: like any work of art it doesn’t have just one message, it is polyvalent, it gets in contact with the visitor’s mind and creates a plurality of meanings. At the same time there’s always a mysterious unity in the elements of the (good) work of art, pointing to something which is intangible, so difficult, even impossible, to describe but definitely there: THE IDEA of it.

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5

Sensory Labyrinth Theatre

a) Billiard Balls The participants stand in a circle. One volunteer closes his/her eyes (one of the leaders, or someone with experience should go first). The trainer explains that he/she is ‘the Billiard Ball’ and must be handled very carefully. Then he goes behind the Ball explaining, and doing it at the same time, that he’s going to gently push it to the other side of the circle after making a eye contact with the person to receive it. The Ball starts crossing the circle without opening the eyes following the direction of the push until s/he reaches the receiver. It is the receiver‘s responsibility to get the ball as gently as possible, turn it, and re-direct it in the same way to another player, again after making sure that s/ he is prepared to get the Ball. The receiver gets it, turns it round, and carefully pushes it to someone else in the circle. All this is done in absolute silence. When the game reaches a stable rhythm we can let a second Ball in the game. If the group is ready for it, even a third Ball can be added, although handling three balls in the circle is extremely difficult without collisions! And collisions mustn’t happen at all, even if that means getting into the circle to stop a Ball’s movement.The trainer takes a Ball out of role now and then; after receiving it, he positions it in the circle, and tells her/him to open her/his eyes, thus becoming a player again/, and then makes another Player close his eyes and become a Ball. Everyone should take their turn as Balls. Afterwards the participants share how they felt in the role of a Ball and in the role of a Player.

This game has simple but very strict rules. We recommend it for every working process related to sensory theatre because it tells a lot about the relationship actor-visitor in a Labyrinth. Trust, responsibility, team work and coordination, concentration, adaptability and fast reactions, the importance of the physical touch, the different reactions to being unseeing/blindfolded, the varying contact with the energy of each person - it’s all there and should be pointed out by the trainer at the closing of the game.

b) Next comes a Sequence of sensory games of trust and communication for a group that has been through the initial stage of getting to know each other.

1.Participants stand in a circle close to each other, then turn to their right, placing the hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them and make a light massage. At a given signal by the trainer they relax their hands, close their eyes and start slowly and carefully moving around the space. At another signal, without opening their eyes, they start getting back in the circle trying to find by touch the person who was in front of them. When they find him or her they hold on to them until everyone has found their partner and the circle is formed again as it was during the massage. At a signal everyone stops, opens their eyes and the group acknowledge whether the circle is right.

2.In a circle each of the participants rehearses making a sound that can be repeated. Then everyone closes his eyes and starts making the chosen sound, at the same time listening to the sounds of the people on their right and their left. Then, at a given signal, the group falls silent and the trainer changes their places in the circle by gently pushing them to new places. Again, at a given signal, everyone starts making their sounds and moves around trying to find the people on their left and right listening for their sounds. The task is to get back in the circle as it was before the trainer shuffled them.

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3.In this and the next game the people should know each other very well, and should have been through a longer process of group dynamics. The participants stand in a circle, close their eyes, and try (without too many movements) to smell the people on their both sides. Then the trainer shuffles the group in the space (and this time it’s good if the space is smaller than in the previous games). At a given signal, very slowly and carefully, the participants have to find their way back in the circle finding their neighbours by their smell.

4.The participants stand in circle with closed eyes, but arranged by the trainer.

Very carefully, by touching, they study the hands of their neighbours on their left and their right. When everyone is ready the participants are shuffled again by the trainer and have to find they way back by finding the hands of the people on their left and their right.

c) Blindfolded walk in pairs

This exercise is the basic one for the sensory labyrinth. It comes after the group is warmed up, and following some preliminary sensory games like the above. It looks simple: the group is split in pairs, they decide who is A and who is B, then A puts a blindfold on B’s eyes and leads him/her around the space. After some time they swap: B becomes the guide, and A the blindfolded.

Here is a more detailed description. The pairs should have a starting point and a finishing point of the blindfolded journey. It’s good if the group are given time to walk around individually and plan the journey for the partner. The choice of the path may involve some sensory surprises for the blindfolded. The participants should think about the point where they will put off the blindfold of their partners. What will they see first? Should they be prepared for that?

An important instruction: Don’t use voice commands and instructions unless absolutely necessary (e.g., when there are steps or other obstacles or dangers). Lead the partner gently, and don’t be overcaring as guides, leave some space for taking risks, play with the unknown. There are moments when you can let go of the hand. If the blindfolded partner is too confident, find challenges for her/him, if scared – be reassuring, if timid – be encouraging. Try to get how they feel about their temporary blindness. And safety above all!

Then the journey starts. The leader of the game gives a signal for swapping the roles. After the second round (B’s leading the A’s) the group gets together and discuss the experience. They have discovered how important is the sense of touch, the way we hold the hand, the way we handle the whole experience. This works better than any theory.

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DIES

C

S CA

TU ES

?

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“

On 30 November 2008, the Romanian Peasant’s Museum in Bucharest, Romania (http://www.muzeultaranuluiroman.ro/ home.html) hosted the first labyrinth theatre performance to be delivered within the space of a museum. This was possible in the framework of TIKTIKA – Playing Beyond Time and Space, a Lifelong Learning Programme / Grundtvig Learning Partnership project that brought together in Bucharest Theatr Cynefin (Wales, UK), ARTEES (France), AE2O (Portugal) and Epsilon III Association (Romania, the coordinator of the project). Conceived as the third such performance in a series of five (the others being hosted in all other partner countries), The Lost Child did not focus exclusively on the museum’s artefacts or even on interpreting heritage at large. However, this experience was crucial for assembling the concept for Labyrintheme. Students and staff members from the Faculty of Geography at the University of Bucharest were involved in designing the performance in November 2008, and later on they joined Epsilon III Association (Bucharest, Romania), BIVEDA (Sofia, Bulgaria), The Manchester Museum (Manchester, UK), Faculty of Geography at the University of Balikesir (Balikesir, Turkey) and ONAGEB (Zaragoza, Spain) in aiming to develop a training course meant to develop abilities to working with participative arts methods and techniques in institutions managing heritage.

Here follow some of the stuff we have done over the years exploiting indoor and outdoor spaces of (or connected with) heritage sites and institutions.

For the Bulgarian team it all started in 2005 in the woods of North Wales, where Theatr Cynefin had created a mile-long fairy tale path and infected us forever with the bug of sensory theatre. In the following years we continued the training, and started using and developing this training in various contexts: from youth exchange projects, through social work with groups at risk, to performances for the general public. The most important thing we learned in those years was how to communicate with (should we say meet) people passing through the labyrinth: to be flexible to their reactions, to expect the unexpected.

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1. THE ZARAGOZA EXPERIENCE Labyrintheme training course in sensory theatre for museum and heritage institutions staff

The session in Zaragoza, Spain was the first test of the training course which had been developed in the first 16 months of the Labyrintheme project, going through the necessary stages of needs assessment and piloting. The questions, doubts, illuminations, ideas were an important part and necessary milestones in our attempt to make the Labyrinth approach work in a museum context. Here we present in short the contents of the course.

The basic detailed course description can be found in the Handbook for Trainers, Section D.

Time and duration: A six-day training course from 09.09 to 15.09.2012. It was the first attempt towards thematically-oriented labyrinth performances, designed and delivered by trainees working in the field of cultural heritage and museums. As was the initial idea, a particular importance was placed on the two sessions in the final day when the course was evaluated by the participants and future possible applications of its contents were discussed. They are summarized in section D of the present handbook as Zaragoza Q&A.

The place was the Rey Fernando Hotel in the outskirts of the city: a place used for conferences, seminars, business and corporate meetings. The working sessions happened mainly in one of the conference rooms, and on some occasions we went out to other spaces in and around the hotel –corridors, lobbies, staircases, the backyard of the hotel and the nearby park. Using the additional spaces was part of the initial agreement between the organizers and the hotel management, although some of them had to be negotiated in the process. As a whole the hotel staff and management was quite tolerant with the artistic ‘invasion.’ That helped the process a lot.

The trainees were seven museum workers from Sweden, Bulgaria, and Greece, two trainees involved in tourism management education from Turkey, a PhD Student from the Geography department of the Bucharest University, and two staff members of an adult education company in Spain.

The trainers were Yavor Kostov and Bistra Choleva (BIVEDA NGO, Bul-

garia).

The training was six-day long, following the format announced in the Comenius/Grundtvig database. Here is a summary of its contents: Day 1 Morning session: The group went through games and activities aimed at getting to know each other. In the afternoon a model sensory performance was organized for the trainees by the trainers and the attending members of the Romanian partner organization Epsilon III. The performance ended very late in the evening so the discussions about it were left for the next morning.

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Day 2 In the morning: feedback about the experience the previous night. Although the majority of the participants were quite impressed, there were lots of questions about the method and its applicability in heritage institutions. Next: a series of sense-focused games including guided walks with blindfolds in pairs in and around the hotel.

In the afternoon there was a site-specific experience: the participants chose specific locations and worked individually to create images in them, which were afterwards named and interpreted by the rest of the group. After the discussion following the exercise, the leaders suggested four topics to work upon in the coming days with the aim of creating a story and a sensory experience based on it. All the topics were centered on artifacts and written articles related to them. The trainees split in four groups according to their own choice of topic, which were based on:

1. A National Geographic article and photographs about the discovery of a funeral boat under the Kheops pyramid in Egypt (2500 B.C.).

2. An article (also in National Geographic) about Robert Scott’s expedition to the North Pole in 1912 and the dramatic photograph of Scott and his men at the Pole, shortly before their death.

3. Reproductions of the German-Swiss artist Paul Klee, togethe with an excerpt from his biography.

4. An article about the origins of writing (from Wikipedia).

Day 3 included a theoretical session on museum interpretation split between Professor Tony Jackson and Lucian Branea, followed by an exercise ‘Designing a museum performance event’ led by Tony Jackson. The participants had to imagine and present ideas for museum performances choosing from a limited set of ‘exhibits’ having in mind a specific target audience and other specifics of the museum context. In the afternoon there was a visit to Zaragoza’s most famous Roman heritage sites, as well as other landmarks of the city.

Day 4 continued the theoretical line of Day 2 with a short lecture on archetypes, and their sequence and narrative functions in fairytales. This was followed by a collective storytelling activity using the sequence. The final of the theoretical session consisted in a short presentation on the sensory labyrinth theatre approach and its possible use in the museums.

In the afternoon the real creative process on the four ‘projects’ (as we came to call the work of the four groups on their topics) started. The first task for the groups was to brainstorm a list with all the associations that came to their minds in connection with the topic and the materials (photographs, texts etc.). Then the list had to be reduced to the 10 most important

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items, and finally a title had to be chosen and presented together with the short list to the other groups. Then the trainers drew a simple scheme: The groups had to prepare a sensory experience which should have:

1. Threshold: The introductory part where the visitor is detached from reality and is involved in the game. This is usually where people get blindfolded.

2. Sensory part: Actors are either in role, or work on the senses of the visitor (or both).

3. Story: This experience should eventually lead to the focusing of the senses on a story based on the chosen topic. It could be presented as a written text, or read, projected, narrated in any manner.

4. Reflection: Visitors should be given time and space to reflect on the experience. This is also called decompression zone – comfort and relaxing is strongly recommended.

The group work continued the next morning.

Day 5 The four groups worked until early afternoon on the next day when the four miniperformances were tested by the trainers and some corrections were made. Then the work continued, and the four performances following one after the other were presented to the audience starting at 6 and finishing at 11 p.m.

Day 6.

Evaluation day. The morning was dedicated to discussing the performance and feedback, and the afternoon to the evaluation of the whole training course and exploring possible applications in trainees’ own institutions.

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Description of the four mini-performances: 1. Money

This was a solo performance. The visitor is blindfolded and introduced to a small space where different simple objects are consecutively placed in his/her hands (a cup, an apple, a spoon). Through a process of gently exchanging the objects, using only the sense of touch and occasionally sound, one is gradually introduced to the idea of the barter trade (object for object), then a coin is introduced, with the idea of value attached to it, finally coming to the cycle object-money-another object. In this short but really sensory experience one gets a really fine no-word lecture on the basics and origins of trade and money (it wasn’t completely silent for the various sounds and some words in Turkish, which presumably the visitor wouldn’t understand).

The Labyrintheme perspective. As the trainers later pointed out this was an almost ready-made piece to be performed in the money section of a museum with students of the lower grades as visitors, perhaps with some touch of the Oriental world. It was very simple, clear, well focused, and at the same time mysterious, like a real travel back in time, but also leaving more than enough space for the imagination.

2. Letters from the end of the world KEY WORDS (shortlist): disappointment, diary, letter, home, South pole, heroism, frozen, challenge, end of the world

The team followed very carefully the threshold - work on senses – story reflection scheme. In the beginning the visitor is prepared for a journey, a backpack is given to him with a few instructing words, and then he is blindfolded at the very threshold of the room (actually the conference room of where the training was taking place). Inside it’s cold (the air conditioning was on). Through a series of putting the blindfold on and off the visitors experienced different scenes related to Scott’s expedition: (sound of a train or ship), a group of people with equipment holding hands together saying ‘We are a team!’ (obviously starting the expedition), Ms. Scott reading, (sounds of the expedition – wind, ice crushing –all done acoustically), a tent, where the visitor had to crawl in. Inside is ‘Scott’ who starts reading a letter to his wife. It is a farewell letter, and it becomes clear that all the men are exhausted and will probably die. They have reached the South Pole only to find the Norwegian flag there – Amundsen won the competition! After saying good bye to his beloved, Scott handles the letter to the visitor asking him to carry it back to his wife. The journey goes on blindfolded and the visitor is taken out to the ‘reflection table’ where he has cup of tea and has a good look at Scott’s photograph.

The Labyrintheme perspective. This piece came out to be a perfect example of a mix between amateur theatre and sensory theatre. It had a script following the historic events, and yet a lot was left to the visitors’ imagination in the sensory journey. This format is usable for a group of school kids (the way I see it, 10-12 years old), and a thematic task. The scheme may look like this: 1. Put the kids through group activities and a sensory experience to get them fascinated (session1); 2. Provide facts and materials (article, photograph, objects), and create a story - perhaps working in small groups to cover the different parts of the big story (session 2); 3. Assign the task of re-creating the different parts of the story

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as sensory surprises (session 3), plus some rehearsing and you have a thematic sensory performance by kids for their peers. All it takes is a drama teacher with some sensory theatre training, working in collaboration with a knowledge providing institution.

3. What’s in the darkness KEY WORDS: Klee (key!), face paintings, no ears, no nose, two senses (sight, taste), self portrait, a ‘something’ caught in a frame.

Other words: lines, divided, colours (soft, sadness, melancholy), a wall (?), child, head bigger than body, light and dark, behind and in front, concrete.

This piece was inspired by a child portrait by Paul Klee, although the original task was to study and possibly present in a sensory theatre mode a moment of his biography. The group stripped it from any reference to the artist and his story and focused themselves entirely on the portrait (an oval form with two dots for eyes, no hair, no ears) and the words, phrases and questions that came up in the brainstorming session. The place is a corridor in the hotel, turning into another corridor, which is dark. Originally the visitors were not supposed to be blindfolded but only walk through darkness. In the beginning they are sitting on a chair where the first corridor starts, they are given a book by a man who silently encourages them to have a look at it. The book is wrapped and sealed in such a way that only the self portrait is visible.

Then they have their photograph taken and are led through the corridor entering the darkness (blindfolds had to be used after all, because the corridor could not be darkened the way it was needed). When the blindfold is off the visitors are staring at a mirror – the portrait is staring back drawn on the mirror with all the words from the brainstorm stuck around to be read.

Then the blindfold was on again and the journey into the darkness goes on to the other toilet (because this was a toilet). Now the mirror has only the two blue eyes staring back. A lipstick on the sink is waiting to be used to draw the face around the eyes and possibly write on the mirror (we had to get a special permission for this from the management). Another blindfolded walk going deeper. Sitting on a chair. Two hands gently touching the face. The blindfold is off and this time it is the fully painted portrait watching you from a screen in the darkness. Then the portrait morphs into your own face photographed five minutes ago in the corridor…

The Labyrintheme perspective. This was an art piece, without comments or explanations, speaking on its own, gently engaging and aesthetically complete, a real study of a portrait without any reference to knowledge or information – just personalized experience. It can be used as a model for an art game involving youths into looking longer at a single work of art and connecting with it. Later they can find out loads of things about Klee themselves. I just checked in Google images to see again the portrait – there are loads of them, a beautiful array of pictures.

4. Cycle of Nile / Cycle of life KEYWORDS: ship, mummy, pyramid, mysteries, ritual, death, Nile, father and son, hieroglyph.

Other words: mask, underworld, eternity, code, water, symbols, destiny, necropolis, Khufu, discovery.

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This mini-performance was based on Ancient Egypt mythology and more specifically on the belief of soul’s afterlife, metaphorically represented by the central artifact - the funeral boat discovered under one of the great pyramids. This journey was the most important part of the sensory experience. The visitor meets a mysterious lady who does some fortune telling for him, and plays a game of dice (or at least a version of it), then collects a coin and sends the person on a visit to ‘the other side.’ The visitor sits on an office chair with wheels, and is blindfolded. The chair starts to move, first slowly, then fast and turning through vast spaces and gusts of wind (it was a big half-open space in the back yard of the hotel.; this day was a particularly windy in Zaragoza, which prevented us from using the park for this journey). When the journey ends and the blindfold is taken off, the visitor sees a dimly lit woman’s face just in front of him. The woman is dressed in white Egyptian style. That is Isis who touches him gently and leads him to the exit of the labyrinth. The visitors shared that seeing a face so close after the stormy passage was quite strong as a sensory experience, and this image stayed long in their minds after the performance.

The Labyrintheme perspective. What was said about the second group (Letters from the end of the world) applies here too. Instead of a story about an explorer, the participants can study an Egyptian myth, plus the central artifact - the boat. There may be more activities related to this boat, like drawing it, or making a jigsaw of its photograph (resembling the work of an archeologist). This group experienced some difficulties. First one of its members had to leave to perform some administrative tasks related to the project.

Next, another member had a health problem and also missed the last part of the preparation.

And finally the bad weather made impossible the going to the real river in the park which would have been a really mystical experience. These difficulties were successfully overcome: the experience came to show how we cope with such situation. Note on the final performance. The mini-performances were not meant to be linked with one another. The above descriptions are given following their original order, which in its turn was dictated by the position of the groups in the space available. That is, it was technical, rather than narrative or following some other logic. However, many of the visitors tried hard to create the narrative link between the mini-performances, which could have been helped by us (if we had more time) by providing a simple introduction, or working in some other way on the framing of the event (see section D).

In a manner of feedback

Despite all the questions (again: have a look at section D: Zaragoza Q&A), doubts, or even skepticism the training ended on a very high note. This is how the trainers summarized the experience after the evaluation session:

“What happened here was the following: we put you through a series of exercises and activities. We never gave you specific explanations as to why we do this or that. We know that learners always want to know where they are – what’s going to happen next, where are we going, what’s the purpose? They have the right to ask, but on the other hand… they don’t, because labyrinth cannot be rationalized that much. If the activities may not be justified by the end of the course, that’s another matter. To us this process, the way it happened, was justified. Why? Because all the things we put you through somehow entered the performances without too much theory: they shaped the style, the format, the scale of the performances. In the exercises you put a person out for a blindfolded walk, having planned beforehand a series of little adventures that should happen to that person; this is a

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performance in itself. This is a very simple model of the whole thing. Next we did the exercise with the living statues outside – and we saw how the core of a narrative appeared – by suggesting names we were actually suggesting stories. A person chose to stand somewhere in a certain fashion, this could mean so many things, the imagination and the associations started to work. So combining those two exercises we come to the symbolic and associative language of the sensory performance, where what you show is equally important with what you don’t show, leaving space for the mindwork of the visitor. We never said you have to do it this way, you used it in your own way, combining it with your own ideas. You did it in four different ways, all sensory, which was wonderful. You applied what you took in the first three days.”

2. TOWARDS THE OTHER THROUGH YOURSELF / TOGETHER

“Towards the Other through Yourself” - training for trainers in Sensory Labyrinth Theatre was financed by the EU Program Youth in Action. The training was lead by Iwan Brioc from Theatr Cynefin, Wales. It took place near the town of Gotse Delchev, Bulgaria, in a chalet guesthouse in Pirin Mountains, 24-28.04.2007. The performances were on 28, 29 and 30 April twice a day (lunchtime and evening) and on 1 May.

Project managment: BIVEDA, Sofia Person submitting case study and role in the project: Bistra Choleva-Laleva (project manager and Coordinator) and Yavor Kostov (trainee, supervisor in Ognyanovo) Target audience: The local community, children from five social institutions, clients of a daily center for rehabilitation of addictions, business clients/visitors who will approach the event in the form of a team building, including the students of a private high school, journalists, governmental institutions representatives. This was one week open space training for trainers in sensory theatre Labyrinth ending up with an open space theatre performance – for the local community as well as for children and adolescents at risk.

The project “Towards the Other through Yourself” was part of a sequence of international events in the informal European network for Sensory Theatre Labyrinth. The network was initiated by the Welsh theatre company Cynefin (http://cynefin.org.uk) that usually, and now as well, takes the role of the trainer institution.

The organizations taking part in the current project, besides the Welsh trainers (Iwan Brioc and Mike Hotson), were from: England (UK), Bulgaria, Denmark, Northern Ireland, Portugal and Hungary. All of them had already been involved in one or more sensory theatre projects or performances. The training used techniques from various actors’ trainings, mostly from forum theatre (that is socially engaged form of theatre for community change).

The aim of the training was to transfer techniques for working with groups of people so that the project participants will be able to run on their own group sessions based on sensory theatre and eventually be able to produce with these groups sensory theatre performances.

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The group process took three days and then there was one day to prepare the labyrinth which started from inside the guesthouse, went out in the yard, then deep in the forest, and then back to the guesthouse but this time in the kitchen. This was the second training in Bulgaria that BIVEDA got from Cynefin (the first one was the year before) and a step towards organizing and finding ways for building a big natural labyrinth...

(SOME) FEEDBACK FROM THE AUDIENCE:

“I realized that trust always brings good results. I will need some time to think over what I’ve just experienced. Open your eyes, see the beauty surrounding you. These are your dreams, believe in them, so that they can believe, too. Alone with my thoughts, memories bring me back in time, they remain always in my mind and I am in them.”

“I was born. I started walking. I went through everything. If every beat of my heart was a soul – you could be able to read what I think. I am not able to think right now – I can only feel so much love! Everything was so earthly and I was feeling so unearthly wonderful! I have no words!”

“The Labyrinth feels like the birth – you have a blindfold on your eyes, somebody takes care of you, you wonder what is going on around you. It feels like it is not you, like you are another person or somedody else has entered your soul. You feel the heart of the other person, and then yours, and realise that they beat in the same rhythm. And then the blindfold is gone and you can see again...The feeling is incredible from the beginning till the end.Whoever experiences the Labyrinth feels like his life really changes.”

“… The work is very special because it brings together art and spirit in the present. No dogma, no pretence, no belief – only the truth of the moment…” (Adrian)

“...I needed this in my life. I also felt though I was doing an important deed for humanity…” (Elle)

“… I get back home knowing that the world is so much more...” (Henriette)

“… I have never thought before that it is possible to get know somebody in a minute. “Towards the other through yourself”…” (Aliz)

“… Big challenge both for participants going through and for inhabitants…” (Luis)

“… A total joy and pleasure was. Ideas for future projects and applications…” (Valerie)

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3. FOLLOW UP: “TOGETHER” - THE LABYRINTH IN OGNYANOVO

One immediate outcome was that from that moment on BIVEDA started employing this format of training to create labyrinths in Bulgaria. One such example is the training and performance which was created the following year (April 2008) in Ognyanovo, in the same region, Gotse Delchev. We give this as an example of a low-budget follow-up of a training experience. This activity had a format of a youth initiative called Together, again supported by the Youth in Action Programme and in it BIVEDA was supervising a group of young theatre makers (25-27 years old) who had taken part in the two labyrinth events in 2006 and 2007 either as participants or as audience.

They organized a 3-day training for a group of teenagers from a local high school in Gotse Delchev (it is important to note that some of the teenagers had had a labyrinth experience the year before and were strongly motivated to take part). The training resulted in two labyrinth performances. The main target group (audience) was represented by teenagers from a local orphanage. In short it was a training for teenagers to create a small labyrinth for their disadvantaged peers. The whole process and the performance took three days: two days for the training and the making of the labyrinth and one day for the performances (there were two of them: at 2 and at 7 p.m.).

HOW IT HAPPENED

The place for the training and the labyrinth was the suite in a small hotel in Ognyanovo, a village known for its mineral springs, 5 km from Gotse Delchev. There were four trainers and 13 teenagers, plus one photographer and one supervisor from BIVEDA. The teenagers knew each other, some of them were from the same class. The trainers followed the usual pattern: 1.WARM UP GAMES; 2.SENSORY-ORIENTED GAMES; 3.GOING THROUGH A SENSORY EXPERIENCE: 4.CHOICE OF PLACE AND ROLE; 5.PERFORMANCE.

The topic of the labyrinth was Coming of age, and it was chosen by the teenager group. The performance was all suited to the rooms of the apartment – the visitors entered the corridor where they were blindfolded, then introduced to the childhood room where they were put on a rocking chair and nurtured with milk and honey, the blindfold was taken off in front of a small black cloth spiral with an Indian clairvoyant at the entrance, the centre of the spiral was the Oracle and his Servant – the visitor had to choose a symbol to be drawn on his/her hand. On the way out of the spiral there was a glimpse of an angel staring from outside through the window. Then quite unexpectedly there was a figure of a scolding mother (Look at you! Where have you been? You are filthy! You need a hot bath!). A bit later the visitor entered (again blindfolded) into another room where there were different actions for the boys and the girls – the boys experienced their first visit to the barber’s, and the girls to the hairdresser’s, then the first sip of coffee, the first chat about the opposite sex, the first dance

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with a boy or a girl (to me the dance was the most powerful experience in the labyrinth)…

Then there came the mini-rite of passage – a wave of sounds in the bathroom. The final point was when the visitor (still blindfolded) was greeted like a VIP person with sounds of cameras clicking and whispers: Is that HER!? Is that Sylvia? (the actors made sure they got the name on the visitor’s entering of the labyrinth). The teenagers did a wonderful job, they were dedicated to the end, the performance had a powerful effect both on the kids from the orphanage, and the evening audience which consisted of friends, artistic people, labyrinth fans, journalists, local people.

The Labyrintheme perspective.

These were some of the factors that, we think, made it work this way and are worth taking into consideration when organizing a similar event.

• The trainers had already had two labyrinth trainings and performances as an experience.

The trainees knew what Labyrinth was.

• The labyrinth format was very simple and relied on something very basic: the human touch. It used the openness, vitality and the unpretentious style of the teenagers (as is the case with the energy of all first-timers and volunteers in labyrinth making).

• There was a very specific target group – the kids from the orphanage. The trainers and the supervisor had experience working with such kids in institutions. They knew what behavior to expect from them, and also knew how to avoid the over-sentimental attitude that is common in such cases. It was a game, a serious one, but still a game.

4. THE TREE OF LIFE • Person submitting case study and role in the project: Bistra CholevaLaleva - artist, trainer; • Dessislava Petkova – participant.

• Financial Support: self support through ticket sales.

• Location: Irakli, Bulgaria.

• Timing and duration: The process: 26 – 30.07.2011; performances: 31.07 - 7.08.2011, between 7 and 11 p.m.; end of process: 8.08.2011; people going through in groups of 4-6. Time for going through the labyrinth: 80-90 minutes.

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• Project managment: Art Laboratory for Community and Individual Development, Veliko Tarnovo; BIVEDA, Sofia (Bulgaria) • Project manager: Dobrinka Valkova and Bistra Choleva-Laleva • Artistic coaches: Dobrinka Valkova and Bistra Choleva-Laleva • Technical and logistical coordinators: Dobrinka Valkova, Zlatina Toleva, Ivan Donchev, Bistra Choleva-Laleva • Target audience: The local community, visitors who will approach the event in the form of a team building, people who have an interest.

• Participants: 15 artists, psychologists, musicians - about half of them with experience in making labyrinths and trainings.

For a number of reasons this performance became (probably) the most popular labyrinth event in Bulgaria. The main reason for it was the location: Irakli is a protected area situated where the range of Stara Planina mountains (or the Balkan Mountains) reaches the Black Sea. It has been the scene of fierce legal battles between ecological organizations fighting to preserve its status of a no-building zone, and entrepreneurs and local people who want to develop it as a tourist area. There have been many national protests, the environmentalists got a huge national support and Irakli became a household name for a victory (although temporary) over the construction craze, scarring the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, especially in the last ten years. This fact brought another social and ethical dimension to the project. The tree of life is an old symbol of the connection between the upper and nether world, between physical and spiritual life, a spot where all dualities (light and dark, good and bad) become one whole. This was a central image around which the group built the performance. The presence of oak trees in the area was also very important for the choice of topic and the general atmosphere of the labyrinth, the oak tree being an old druid symbol of life and growth.

The initial phase lasted five days and involved building the team, getting to know and connecting with the place; exercises for the relationship actor-visitor: how to be caring, and flexible at the same time according to the individuality of the spect-actor; discussions, meditations, looking for a role in the labyrinth and forming its overall message. The training took place in an improvised camp, 5 km from Irakli. The conditions were harsh, but that contributed to the consolidation of the team, and the sharpening of the senses.

The preparation stage ended with searching for a suitable place of the labyrinth, mapping it, fixing the roles and the positions, following a logical and metaphorical sequence.

After a long search and rejecting one option because of the difficult access, just 24 hours before the opening night the location of the labyrinth was finally fixed – not far away from the camp. The labyrinth makers felt really ‘called’ by the place, and although the time was very short, the great experience of the core of the group and the powerful preparation process helped them get ready on time.

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Performance

The visitors went through in groups of 4-5 people. It was meant to be both individual and group adventure – they were getting their own experience and shared it at the same time with the others in the group. It was very important for the group to get an identity in the beginning. A guardian in the beginning of their journey helped them choose a name for the group feeling their presence, and energy, their voices and pulse. There was a Fellowship of the Brave Hearts, or Amazon Sisters’ tribe, a name by which the world in the labyrinth was expecting them. Each group had the mission to cross the forest, find and carry the Seed of Light and plant it in the center of a stone labyrinth, go through the Darkness, which played an important part of the experience. There were long passages in the dark tree tunnels, silent or with sounds, which sometimes had to be decoded.

After planting the seed and dancing the ritual dance of the labyrinth in front of the rope ladder hanging from the sky, the groups went through the heart of the forest and had encounters with its inhabitants - archetypal images from the different stages of life (childhood, youth, maturity, old age), ethereal creatures, dwarfs, spirits. They were tested all the time and had to make their choice like in a real fairytale. In the process they mingled with the forest, felt its rhythm, entered its womb, and finally opened themselves to the stars. In the end they saw again the Gate to the short way, which was closed for them in the beginning, but then they were happy to have taken the long way as they shared with the dwarf there. The exit went through a little tent where the visitors left something to the labyrinth – a token, a present, a picture, a poem..

Here is some of the feedback:

“I was happy to see, feel, live through so many things and realize once again that life is beautiful...”

“… In the wood – going deep, bliss, calmness…”

“… When my turn came – I started scared, although we were in a group, but it didn’t last long, I even succeeded in getting lost…”

“t turned out to be an extraordinary experience going through the labyrinth with the whole family. Nowadays when we have so little time to spend with our kids, the adventure in the woods with them is a deeply emotional thing.”

Feedback from the trainers:

“… The entire group got out like in a ritual and stood in front of the black cloth. I looked at them slowly, as if testing them – can you go on deeper are you ready to do this?

And I shifted the cloth deciding who should go first, and who should go next. It was indeed very deep and dark there, so I put their hands on a rope to lead them in. In most cases people were silent, maybe some of them scared, but they trusted me. I was sure, though, that in there under the stars they felt the greatest possible freedom.”

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“The ritual is of big importance. We would gather there, on that glade, and the time-space would start to dissolve in the flow of the present. From this moment on that was the only thing, that would make sense for us – the present moment. As we form slowly the ring and watch the others in their costumes, we take each other by the hands and let our fantasies and out awareness circulate through it. We are here, on the glade, and we prepare to become the labyrinth. Our mind turns into a creator of that small sacred world, whose degree of reality depends on how deep we’ll dive into it, how strong we’ll believe in it. And with how much devotion we’ll identify ourselves with our role…”

5. TECHNO MAGICA - A LABYRINTH IN THE MUSEUM 10 performances in the National Polytechnic Museum in Sofia (19.11 - 01.12.2012) Case study submitted by Yavor Kostov and Milena Stanojevic - trainers and actors.

The performance Techno Magica was created and managed by BIVEDA NGO in collaboration with Global Vision Circle NGO as part of the Labyrintheme project. The opening was on 19.11.2012 and the last performance on 01.12.2012. The audience as usual was general public (above 14 years old), participants in the final conference of the Labyrintheme project, staff from institutions managing and exhibiting heritage, and volunteers in such institutions.

The labyrinth makers were trainers from BIVEDA NGO, professional artists, volunteers.

The aims were: • To create a Sensory Theatre performance in the museum related to its theme: science and technology, using the experience of the Labyrintheme project

• To develop a cooperation with the staff of the Polytechnic Museum and to involve them as much as possible in the process

• To attract a diverse audience in this particular museum and to disseminate the achievements under the project Labyrintheme

Description of the process 1. Initial phase The decision to start working on the performance was made by the group at the end of August. That was when the core of the team was set and the general nonofficial agreement with the museum was made about the timing, finances and the general parameters of the performance. The idea was to start the process in the second half of September. However, for various reasons the real working process didn’t start until midOctober. By that time most of the team members had visited the museum several times individually or in groups. There was a special visit to select the objects (kept in the store rooms of the museum) to be used in the performance. These were photographed and sent to the members of the team for consideration, since only a few of the labyrinthers were

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present in the visit. Contrary to the initial expectations, those objects took minor role the initial creative process. Neither did the general exhibition and the spaces of the museum as a whole. They were supposed to spark the imagination of the group and serve as basis for creating a story and characters. One reason for this was the impossibility to work as a group in the museum - due both to the general limitations of the museum as an institution and the size of the group with most of the people working during the opening hours of the museum.

The other reason was the limited access to the spaces and objects (contrary to what most of the group had naively imagined), and in general all the technical and psychological constraints related to the institutional nature of the museum.

2. Brainstorming phase. Nevertheless, the theme was very inspiring for the team, which became apparent during the brainstorming sessions taking place in informal surrounding starting from mid-October. Here are some topics and images which emerged: during the night the Polytechnic Museum turns into a different museum where science merges with magic, strange people decompose the world into its basic elements looking for its building stones, creating machines for poetry and dreams, looking for the spirit of the object. The key role of the visitor is stressed all along: visitors and exhibits swap places, or the visitor turns out to be the long awaited crucial factor of an ongoing experiment. In short, techno-logic turns into techno-magic.

3. Group work. The ideas emerging from the brainstorms were recorded and later shortlisted. It was important for us to focus on the basic ones on the one hand, and having everybody involved by choosing what s/he wants to do on the other. There were also four sessions in a special training space (again outside the museum) with games, exercises and activities aimed specifically at the consolidation of the group. Many of these were senseoriented, and served as an introduction to the newly involved volunteers, which eventually turned out to be a quarter of the group.

4. Building the labyrinth. This process, working outside the museum, lasted until the week preceding the opening night. This last week was dedicated to the creation of the labyrinth. The itinerary was created and mapped, the basic locations were fixed: the sensory/blindfolded section, entrance, exit etc. In addition to this, the members of the team chose what they wanted to do, and where to do it. This was, as the usual practice is, both individual and group work – in small groups and the team as a whole.

5. Performances.The Labyrinth had 13 meeting points for the passing visitor. There were20 actors inhabiting these points. The route started from the main entrance of the museum, went past a very short section of the exhibition, then through the administrative section of the museum, the conference/theatre hall, then through a lobby down to the basement and then out through the staff exit to the outer yard of the museum. One passing lasted for approximately 55 minutes, with visitors coming in individually every 7 minutes.

The performances started at 6 p.m. and lasted until about 11.30 p.m. when the last visitor went out. The number of visitors per night was 30, which makes them 300 for the whole period.

Some key elements: it wasn’t possible to build a black spiral in the museum.

Instead, there was a movie machine which was placed like a big helmet on the head of the visitor who started watching and at the same time walking into a movie, following the

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journey of the camera. The experience was completely disorientating, as the spectactor was introduced to another reality. At the center of the labyrinth was the blindfolded journey through the theatre stage of the museum, with someritualistic and musical elements. Other important points were the sound room where two cosmic DJs used the heartbeat of the visitor to create a special techno set, and the alchemic dance session in the basement. As a whole there were quite a few ‘blindfolded’ parts in the labyrinth, it was more theatrical than sensory.

The Labyrintheme perspective.

Techno Magica was the first sensory labyrinth theatre performance created in a museum and for a museum in Bulgaria. The project involved volunteers and museum staff, who found a common language and successfully cooperated. From the feedback of the audience it was clear that this performance had succeeded in creating a very powerful experience. The performance was a logical conclusion of the two-year process of trying to get together the ideas and experience of the labyrinth theatre and the needs and visions of people working in heritage institutions. It should be considered as a peak of possible cooperation between an already experienced Labyrinth group and a heritage institution, and above all it showed that a full scale sensory performance is indeed possible in a museum with the good will and interests of both sides (museum staff and artists).

The team consisted of three groups: an experienced core – about 8-9 people with 5 or more years of joint experience in different Labyrinths; newer members – about 6 people who have taken part in one or two Labyrinths in the last two years; brand new members (volunteers) - people with no experience in Labyrinth making (some of them had taken part as audience, though), their number varied between 5 and 7.

The presence of volunteering first-timers was crucial for the process, as was the proportion between those experienced and those less experienced.

There were several difficulties in the process, some of them were overcome at a certain point, and others stayed until the end. Those of the first type were connected with the human factor and were recognized by the team quite early in the process. As one of the museum staff rightly mentioned, a museum is a conservative institution and such an artistic ‘invasion’ would inevitably create some tension, apprehension, misunderstanding.

For example, as it was already mentioned, the Labyrinthers, seeing the great potential of the hidden spaces (corridors, basements, storage rooms), expected a much more extensive access to the facilities of the museum, and the blank refusals puzzled and disappointed them.

The limitations seemed overwhelming and for some the whole adventure seemed useless.

There were two factors which eased the frictions and frustrations. The Labyrinthers were helped by the fact that four members of the staff (one of them the deputy director of the museum) were involved in one way or another in the Labyrintheme project – some of them had passed through the model Labyrinth in the summer of 2011, others had taken part in the piloting and training courses, and their help and understating was crucial. The other factor was the fact that most team members had a rich experience in working with people (including in institutions, although of a different kind) which definitely helped to ease the communication.

The long experience with labyrinths of a different kind also contributed to finding flexible solutions.

The difficulties that lasted till the end (or almost) were predominantly technical ones: the installation (mainly cloth separating different parts of the labyrinth) had to be removed several times during the period of the performances, which was a strenuous process and added to the physical exhaustion of the labyrinth makers.

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What is there for you: 1. It should be borne in mind that this performance was done by a core group with serious background and common experience in Sensory Theatre.

2. If ever you have an experienced group (it doesn’t have to be so large) willing to make a Labyrinth performance in an institution, there should be a serious process of preliminarycommunication and mediating between artists the museum staff. Ideally members of the museum staff should take part in the teamwork. Piloting is also advisable but probably in some other space, possibly another heritage site.

3. It’s good to have someone in the creative team whose task is specifically to communicate with the museum on all levels – from the top to bottom. They should be diplomatic and charming (yes, that’s serious!). Especially when the creative process starts, there should be a real buffer ensuring the smooth work of the team, unbroken by sudden problems with the staff. In general if the tasks of the team (like manager, artistic director, PR, mediator etc.) are not clearly defined, that creates a mess.

4. Members in the management of the museum should have had a firsthand experience as visitors in a Labyrinth performance before.

5. The needs and interests of the museum as regards the Labyrinth should be clearly defined and taken into consideration by the artists (is it general publicity, or money, or being part of a larger event, etc.) and the whole performance should be built around these specific goals, so that the outcome can be evaluated after the event has finished.

6. Be realistic about the parameters of the performances (number, duration, number of people involved both as audience and as a team), as a general rule start smaller.

6. RECOUNTING BUCHAREST Submitted by: Lucian Branea Location: Bucharest, Romania – itinerary developed within an area of central Bucharest, bordered by Romana Square, Ioanid Park and Gradina Icoanei Park, encompassing a large number of heritage buildings. Timing and duration: 23 and 24 May 2009; length of performance – around 60 minutes (for each participant) Funding: Recounting Bucharest was co-funded by the European Commission, though its Youth in Action Programme (Action 1.2: Youth Initiatives).

Project manager: Lucian Branea (lucian.branea@gmail.com) Artistic coordination: Stefana Popa, Adina Popescu Technical and logistical coordination: Lavinia Carcu, Lucian Branea Target audience: Youth aged 18-30 involved in providing the background stories, and constructing the performance itself and a final exhibition (in which the labyrinth theatre

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itinerary ended); youth aged 16-96 as spect-actors and visitors. The initial plan was to: • launch a public call for stories (in text, photo and video format) focused on one or more experiences particular to [living in] Bucharest; then • evaluate submissions to the above ‘call for stories’ and select a number of distinguished story-tellers with which • we work together in a series of workshops, adapting their stories so that they generate • a labyrinth theatre performance • and an exhibition (included in the labyrinth theatre itinerary, most probably in the end), • as well as a publication collecting some of the most outstanding stories.

However, our ‘call for stories’ was over-successful (in particular after we lost control over the buzz on Facebook, and once the project was featured on MTV Romania), so the plan had to change: we expanded our selection a little, and instead of trying to accommodate all of our storytellers to a demanding schedule for the series of workshops we had in mind, we interviewed them individually or in small groups; then the project team brainstormed a script for the performance. So only some of our storytellers effectively performed on 23 and 24 May 2009 and the others moved through the itinerary as spect-actors (but all of them assembled their spot in the exhibition).

The spect-actor sips a tea cup on the terrace of the Serendipity tea-room when s/ he is suddenly summoned to a taxi supposedly taking her/him to an important meeting with Mr. Bucur (name coincides with that of the supposed founder of the city of Bucharest). The taxi chauffeur drives slowly, complaining about what ‘this city’ has become, and telling his life story to the spect-actor in the process. After some (short) time, during one of the stops waiting for the traffic lights to change, the taxi is hijacked by three young boys, apparently drunk, who suggest that everybody should go to a certain fashionable club right away. They all negotiate what the taxi should do and the spect-actor is eventually dropped at the next major crossroads, where s/he is approached by a stranger who leads her/him in an old courtyard, inside a 30-year old abandoned Trabant car. The spect-actor then moves further to a fake beach, answers a public payphone, is lead inside the Gradina Icoanei Park where s/he launches paper boats and meets several people (including a hippie group, high school students flunking math classes and a gipsy fortune-teller); then s/he heads towards the exhibition (hosted by the Bucharest Branch of the Architects’ Guild), not before being urged to suggest how a statue of Bucur the Shepherd, the supposed founder of the city of Bucharest, should look like.

The above is a brief of the 7-page script we used that described the overall narrative and the context and rationale of each ‘moment’ in the performance, without prescribing compulsory dialogue or anything of the sort. The result, while not a ‘typical’ labyrinth theatre performance (no blindfold involved, among others), but spiced with a reasonable dose of an urban quest, unfolded a series of narratives focused on the present and past of Bucharest and some of its people.

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7. THE LOST CHILD (ROMANIAN PEASANTS AND MINERALS) Submitted by: Adrian Ciglenean Location: Bucharest, Romania – itinerary developed within an area of north-central Bucharest, bordered by Victoriei Square, Aviators’ Statue, Kiseleff Boulevard and Romanian Peasant’s Museum, the narrative thread developing via two National museums, a park, through traffic and Romanian Peasant’s Museum’ underground workshop spaces.

Timing and duration: 21-30 November 2008; length of performance – around 50’ (for each participant, with a 5 minutes time delay between participants and with audience being invited at performance start in groups of 5 at each 30’ interval. Overall around 3-4 hours performing time for each day of performance – 29 & 30 November Funding: The Lost Child (Romanian Peasants and Minerals) was part of TIKTIKA – Playing Beyond Time and Space project, a Grundtvig Learning Partnership co-funded by the European Commission through its Lifelong Learning Programme / Grundtvig.

Project manager: Lucian Branea (lucian.branea@gmail.com) Artistic coach: Adrian Ciglenean Technical & logistical coordinators: Lucian Branea, Adrian Ciglenean, Eliza Donescu Target audience (type): young students (17-22) of various artistic disciplines (directors, actors, visual artists) and from the Faculty of Geography at the University of Bucharest involved in providing the dramatic content for a commonly agreed narrative of the performance as well as in the constructing process of the performance itself and the final act, its presentation; museum staff, teachers, educators, influential cultural figures, youth aged 16-96 as spect-ators and visitors.

Context: Conceived as the third performance in a series of five (the others being hosted in all other partner countries (Wales, UK; France; Portugal) this sensory-labyrinth performance did not focus exclusively on the museum’s artefacts or even on interpreting heritage at large. But since this was the first sensory-labyrinth theatre performance put together by a Romanian team and the second ever performed in Romania, The Lost Child also put into perspective the Romanian sensory labyrinth team and future projects.

The museum was simply the best alternative of a welcoming host/ inspiring space available and it proved us right during the process. Răzvan Supuran and his hand-made paper workshop space hosted and nurtured the training, preparation phase, artistic debate and development of the entire process and also provided the proper context for the maze and sensory space of the performance itself. Also we found an unexpectedly prompt and welcoming response from the Geology Museum which, with a prior notice of just 2 days in advance, allowed us to use its lounge space and even a small exhibit space as the starting point of the performance.

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How did it go?

As an audience you are invited (since you come in groups of five, you can come with friends or family) to sit down in the lounge of the Geology Museum, to order a coffee or tea, to make yourself comfortable. Not too much comfortable since you soon realize there is a young ‘teacher’ having the room under control. Her helpers, two nice ‘pupils’, are taking over the social tasks of offering you the beverages and to ask you politely but friendly questions about how was your day, what do you think about the ambience, do you want to play with a musical instrument or with coloured pencils, maybe you want to draw a horse or... learn the alphabet! Caligraphy! The teacher evaluates your work and finds it unsatisfying, and also your behaviour somehow too rude. You’re kicked out!

In the hallway you might find yourself a little disconcerted to see people looking a bit coldly at you but, happily, a girl with a red hood approaches you in English about her lost aunt to which she’s asking you to deliver an apple in case you find her. Not ‘in case’ actually, since this becomes now your main task – a matter of life and death. But in the meantime let’s look at these rocks and minerals so that no one will become suspicious.

Outside in the park some greenish looking creatures try to protect you by rain with their colourful umbrellas, introducing you to even weirder characters next to the Heart Fountain who talk to you in perfect riddles & gibberish.

Finally it all makes sense, you’re crossing the zebra in big hurry and get kidnapped by one black leathered mysterious character who gets you into a nearby car where you meet your maker: the Wolf! Mean-looking, over-confident, sarcastical fellow. You soon realize you’re looking for a grandma who’s face you’ve never seen, going through late autumn rainy Bucharest traffic, towards an unknown destination. All you have to offer the hungry Wolf is your life. And an apple… Belly-laughing about your delicate situation, he asks the mysterious leathered woman (yes, she’s in the back with you) to record your feelings of helplessness and to blindfold you all the way to the secret location. You’ll be fine, don’t worry.

Luckily the Wolf is vegetarian and the apple will do J

After a couple of more minutes of driving around in silence and blindfolded (actually driving endlessly in-between two roundabouts) you get out of the car.

You don’t see but you hear. Happy people, willing to play with you, like with a child-friend, they sing with you, they dance with you, they put you on a carriage which is shaped like a horse on wheels. Kids having fun in the Romanian Peasant’s Museum’s Weekend Fair, with people selling traditional home-made cakes, flutes or cheese. Your journey continues in the basement, but it’s a journey of inner-corridors, a journey of senses, archetypes and memories. At one point, when you open your eyes you see your future (a sunny street of Bucharest, with people waiting at the traffic lights at a crossroads) through a gap in the labyrinth’s texture. But you come back to the present moment and fully enjoy your senses with a nice cup of water and scent of lilies. You remember you had just visited your grandmother somewhere in the folds of the labyrinth and she held you on a small chair to tell you how a great story ends.

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8. HELPING HANDS (the community) Submitted by: Adrian Ciglenean Location: Bîrlad, Romania – itinerary developed within the central area of Bîrlad, bordered by the main City Square, the Vasile Parvan Museum and the George Tutoveanu Cultural Center Timing and duration: September 3-12, 2011; length of performance – around 60’ (for each participant, with a 5 minutes time delay between participants and with audience being invited at performance start in groups of 5 at each 30’ interval. Overall: around 3-4 hours performing time for each day of performance – September 11 &12.

Funding: The Helping Hands project initiated by the Myosotis Association in Bîrlad was co-funded by European Commission through its Youth in Action Programme.

Project manager: Loredana Dobrin Artistic coach: Adrian Ciglenean Technical & logistical coordinators: Loredana Dobrin & Adrian Ciglenean Target audience (type): young volunteers of Myosotis Association and teenagers aged 15-18 from Bîrlad involved in providing the content, structure, build-up & performance of a sensory-labyrinth theatre narrative; NGO staff, local educators, local cultural & political figures, parents, high-school colleagues as spect-ators and visitors.

Context: folowing a sensory-theatre labyrinth ‘demonstration’ in the ‘Nonformals’ Laboratory at Portita organized by the Romanian Youth in Action National Agency, Loredana Dobrin (psychologist, employed by Myosotis) contacted me and talked about her prospective project that became Helping Hands, a project she initiated, wrote, and coordinated. The projects’ intention was to capture the state of things concerning the general acceptance of people with disabilities within the Bîrlad community and to offer creative and non-formal alternatives of increasing awareness and involvement of local community on the issue.

Sensory-labyrinth theatre was just one of these proposed alternatives (developed extensively though during three consistent sessions) and this presentation/ performance is the result of the first workshop.

I knew the team from a previous session of forum theatre, and – as a coach – this was a special project because it deeply challenged the motivation and the dynamics of an established volunteer group within a strong organization. The teambuilding process was very complex and fruitful, since it generated a new wave of enthusiasm within the group, doubled by a new insight on their approach towards voluntary services.

For this first workshop + presentation package our main theme was the community of Bîrlad. The next two focused on the idea of being a volunteer and exploring sensory-labyrinth theatre’s possibilities.

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How did it go?

So you know, as an audience member (a spect-actor) that you’re supposed to begin the performance in the Main Square of Bîrlad. You have no idea what that actually means, there is a big chance you’ve never seen a sensory labyrinth performance before.

Nevermind, you go there and nothing seems to happen. No stage, no group of people gathered in one place that would attract attention and would indicate that a performance is about to take place.

No, wait, there is something: a guy dressed like a mountaineer, with a climbing bag on his back and with a funny hat asks people around about a place to sleep in Bîrlad.

It’s his first time in the city, he’s coming from Ardeal, from the mountains, he speaks like someone who has lived all his life there and he says he will be here for a couple of days supposed to meet some friends who came to his town last winter but he dropped his phone, it’s broken now and you can see it, and cannot get in touch with them. He has a hand-drawn map with him, a map of Bîrlad, and asks you where he can have a cheap but decent meal, a nice place to sleep (even a nice bench on a park, maybe). Definitely a weird guy, but he needs help around the city and he seems curious about your life to so you find yourself soon drawn into a discussion with 4-5 others like yourself about life in Bîrlad, places, memories.

All of a sudden your phone rings. If you don’t want to answer it, he will tell you to, maybe someone is on the line who knows a better place to sleep for the night, you know? And, after all, you are here with a purpose, right? Maybe something went completely wrong… You realize that it actually didn’t, everything is on schedule. The voice on the phone is calm and warm and welcomes you to the show. Of course, they know your number from the reservations call, when you called them to make a reservation for the performance and they asked you if you would be available on this number in case something comes up. You play along, even if it’s a weird feeling to be led through the Square and the surroundings by an unknown voice that obviously sees everything you do. You are seen without seeing and that is unusual. Which one of these people talking on the phone around me is the owner of the voice?

You are led to what the voice calls the first test of the performance, you see a boy in a wheelchair smiling at you – God, he looks like he knows everything that happens in your mind – and you have to drive him around where he needs to go. And this is how it starts.

You drive him around on the main boulevard of the city and you understand immediately cracks in the pavement, lack of ramps between two surfaces of different levels on the ground, the people looking at you or not at all, the zebra crossing, the couple of stairs climbing on a small plateaux.

In the meantime: conversation again. About the way we live and what this city used to be. At a point a woman comes into the picture, she is a friend of your friend and wants to chat to him for a couple of seconds. You are on a bridge, a faint thread of water is flowing under it. It is called Cacaina by the locals. You find out that this used to be once the Bîrlad river, which was diverted outside the city to avoid frequent flooding. But there was a time when…

Actually you can listen to it, the old times. Luckily your new acquaintance has it all on her mp3 player. You say goodbye to the boy in the wheelchair, you now have earphones and ambience of hundreds of years ago. You close your eyes and dwelve into the past.

Sounds of carriages, animals, peoplespeaking the old language. Even if you now walk along the shore of a deserted river, the trees are stillhere, the grass is still here, the bridge is here as well. You play along, it sounded like a chicken just passed by, a dog is barking, someone whom you don’t see says hi to you…

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Actually, your ability to see becomes more of an obstacle now, let’s take care of that. Here, a blindfold, and you can ride with your imagination while a friendly hand guides you around. It’s a sensory journey in its own rights, since smell comes into game too, here smells like sausages and there it smells like home-made soap.

Soon you realize it is all theatre, still; and rightly so, since you were invited to a theatre performance. Only that the theatre is in your head now – you hear its ending credits. It was all just a recording of aradio-show, based on “Take, Ianke & Cadîr” play – an old Romanian famous text. But its action takes place, you now remember, in old Bîrlad. So everything clicks together.

It also clicks that when the credits ended, and the name of the actors and the director were fading away, you take your blindfold off and you find yourself on a stage, with a text in your hands and a real theatre director in front of you. Your colleague actors are looking at you like you just came back from a coma and help you out getting back into your character.

You become for five minutes and actor at work, embodying one of the three: Take, Ianke or Cadîr. If you are a lady, of course, we have parts for you as well.

The director finds your interpretation satisfying (after a bit of work on it) and now you can go backstage to try the costumes.

Backstage it’s nothing like what you ever imagined. This backstage is made by curtains folded and shaped into a maze. Right at the entrance you hear yourself projected on a big white screen as you step in. You can take a good look at yourself stepping into this ‘live movie’ of the streets of Bîrlad.

The background of the projection is that – blocks of flats.

You meet two guys. They have the same name, live on the same street, their mothers have the same name and they were born in the same day. True story. They show you pictures with their mothers, ID snapshots, etc. One of them trained extensively into becoming a kick-boxer, you can see it on him, he has his training bag with him, hanging here on the corridor. The other one’s passion is physics and he developed a theory of his own about time energy and time-travel that he would like to reveal to you. True story. But you have to choose your way, so you are allowed to go further with just one of them. The other will say goodbye.

After you had your time travel secrets revealed or your kick-boxing tips learned you move on into a shadowed area in which a guy looking like a secret agent is actually enquiring the possibility of him furfiling a whish you might have. He is definitely not a fairy, but if there is anything you would want to get done and you need a hand: he’s your man.

Carrying around something maybe, cleaning your barn – whatever. He has a list and makes appointments. He is a volunteer.

You will meet all sorts of people in the maze. They are your neighbours. They can do massage, show you their slideshows, dance for you, express and share their feelings about life and the city. It’s just like you’re paying a visit to all of them, and each has something nice to offer as an experience. You even meet yourself in a mirror and leave a message for the future ‘you’ just before you arrive at your destination, to pay a visit to one of your old teachers. A history teacher, well known in Bîrlad for her kindness and generosity, greets you with coffee, tea, cookies and conversation.

Then you go home.

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9. A JOURNEY IN THE INNER SPACE Location: Cluj, Romania – itinerary developed within the South-Western area of the city, between (and slightly into) the Faget Forest and the outskirts of Zorilor and Manastur neighbourhoods.

Timing and duration: October 9-17, 2011; length of performance – about 70-80’ (for each participant, with a 2 minutes delay between participants, begining the performance in groups of 3 – 6’ delay between groups – but spliting and re-uniting a couple of times during the performance; overall 5-6 hours performing time for 140 audience members).

Funding: self-sustained, private contributions Project managers: Adrian Ciglenean & Diana Serban Technical & logistical coordinators: Adrian Ciglenean, Tiberiu Kiss and Calin David Target audience (type): 38 professional and non-professional actors aged 20-60 from Cluj-Napoca as well as others within the same age range – from various professions and discipline not related to acting; the spect-actors group of 140 didn’t have a clear profile: they were friends & relatives of those who attended the workshop, as well as other guests and even people from nearby cities attracted by direct advertising (word-of-mouth) Context: So this is a group of people united by one common passion: yoga practice J Due to the fact that some of them had experienced a labyrinth performance as audience members in various previous instances and they found it interesting and suited to their interests – they decided they would like to be part of a 10 days training followed by a public presentation. It also happened that this was one of the biggest productions of a theatre sensory-labyrinth performance mainly because of the great variety of backgrounds and experiences these people were bringing in the process, but mainly due to their enthusiasm and dedication along the build-up phase.

Whilst the workshop in itself was a good process, the build-up phase was spectacular mostly because of the efficient and solid solutions people made available to replace big production costs which were not susidized by anyone. Alpinism, journalism, tibetan singing bowls therapy, accountancy, massage, shopkeeping, education, engineering, IT, mobile communications – various skills that brought artistic ideas to life with minimum costs.

So you leave in groups of three from a building destined to host the yoga classes and activities. You know the type: clean, airy, at every moment someone is playing the flute in a corner or plucking the sitar on a recording.

You leave in groups of 3, abruptly blindfolded due to the nature of your journey – fully experience the Present Moment. You get into a car without actually knowing that the other two people are blindfolded audience members as yourself. You might mistake them for actors and might look for meaning in their actions or words. There is none. The meaning is on the CD the driver is playing during this 7-minute trip to the Faget Forest, a steep climbing for which we needed 4 SUVs. There is a pre-recorded calm voice coming from the speakers.

Calm but nevertheless alert, enquiring the nature of the mind. „A vessel” the voice says „filled

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at every step with the reflection or a reaction towards what actually takes place. A vessel like this very car driving you deep into the unknown, eager to consume it and to classify it”.

A compilation of philosophical or spiritual meditations on the nature of the mind puts your mind in wandering mode, while you reach the forest. Out of the car, you’re greeted by a guardian who basically says that the wandering of your mind has no power from this stage on – you’re about to enter and let yourself guided by whatever feeds your mind: the Realm of Senses.

Into the Realm of Senses you go, into the singing woods – the sound of air through leaves, the sound of nature at night. But another sound comes in contrast with the sound of nature, is the sound of a big bell – following you for a while, tempting you to get into resonance with its deep and pure vibration.

You’re in a swing at night, you throw yourself into the chords, flying among unknown trees, you hear your name being sang, you get down and the one who is apparently calling you is the tree you are embracing now. And crying. You go into shelter, a tent made of plastic and branches, wide enough to receive the warm and firm touch of a soothing spirit of the woods. You go out vaguely refreshed, totally confused, just so that you can dance around the fire with a goup of two others under the spell. You don’t see fire, you feel its heat – which is more comforting and menacing at the same time.

All of a sudden those who are holding your hands want to run. As crazy as it seems, you’re having quite a lot of fun already so you give yourself to it. You’re running in the woods at night, blindfolded,guided by unseen hands and most probably you’re laughing you mind out.

But you come back to it, in a car (maybe the same, maybe a different one) a symbol for your mind, a vessel, quietly driving you towards a new present moment. You cleary feel you’re entering a closed space. You can hear birdsongs, dry leaves. Someone is helping take your shoes off. In the end, your blindfold is also gone. You open your eyes and find yourself in the woods. There are woods inside this room. Dry leaves all over the place, a couple of trees even and the sound of nature. Under a tree there is even an old Elf, dressed accordingly, he set up his house here. Soon you find out he is a guard too. In order to move on you have to answer him a couple of questions. About truth, beauty, wealth – what do you choose? You’re passing the test, regardless of your answer. He is not judging you, your test was to admit what you cherish most. He asks you about something you are ready to leave behind. He writes it down on an old paper with a feather. He dries the ink out and gives it to you. You move forward.

A room full of white smoke, a room with fairies. In attitude and ambience. They dance and sing to you. You notice on the other side of the room the Piper. He’s playing his flute under a beautiful tree made out of lights and after he finishes his tune he’s asking for your piece of paper, if you are ready to leave it behind. He sets fire to it, without looking.

He sais comforting words about what you inspire him, on a first glance. He sais objective, nice things about you. You move onto a balcony where an Angel is making an unexpected appearance showing you the way.

You enter another room, silent but visually quite rich. There’s a chair in a spot of light in the middle of the room and a big projection on the wall in front of it. You most likely realise what is projected only when you sit on the chair. This is what it is projected, you in the chair, close-up. Your eyes are huge, the twinkling of an eye becomes dramatic. You give a final interview to yourself (lead by an unseen live voice) about this very moment – how is this very moment for you? Where is your mind at?

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D.1 THE ZARAGOZA Q&A: Sensory Labyrinth Theatre in the museum context Most of these are questions that appeared during the two final evaluation sessions of the training course in Zaragoza on 15.09.2012. To them we added some more reflections in the same Q&A format, and some other questions that still keep popping up from here and there.

Most of them are related to the possible applications of the Sensory Labyrinth Theatre in museums and heritage institutions, but some also seek to define Sensory Labyrinth Theatre as such. We roughly divided them in two groups: contents- and relevance-related and feasibility-related:

1. Contents and relevance: Why Labyrinth?

Q: Labyrinth has been defined as having two main varieties – process-oriented, or performance-oriented; which one would you recommend for a museum?

A: For a start you should do something simple and manageable, for example a youth-oriented project involving young volunteers. So we are talking about a process-oriented activity. It’s much safer to use what you have been through as a model: get a bunch of motivated people or kids, provide a trainer in sensory theatre (it could be you if you feel trained enough), and replicate the process of the training course – it is a model sequence for you. In the end you will have a small presentation of a group process which could be in the form of a performance.

Q: Is sensory labyrinth a working method in museum practice? Is there a model for it?

A: It is obvious that the model of such a performance (the one that we used to introduce you to the idea of the sensory theatre) can hardly be directly applied to a typical museum or a heritage institution. So we are looking for ways to use the strong points of this approach adapting it to the museum practice.

Q: People visiting the museums are generally not prepared for such an experience. How do we announce sensory theatre?

A: This is a very important question for any theatre (or indeed artistic) intervention in a museum, because people have certain expectations when they go there and putting them through something as intimate and engaging as a Sensory Labyrinth performance could be really unsettling.

Our answer is: help this performance preserve its autonomy in the museum, announce it as a special theatre piece with all the necessary warnings (see the general advice section). Then the visitors can really make their choice. Or better still, they may come to the museum with the expressed purpose of seeing this performance. So the question is not to attract or divert the regular museum-goer from their itinerary, but to invite people to a theatre performance in the museum. It would require special organization then. The issue of the thematic link between a Sensory Theatre piece and an exhibition is discussed below.

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Q: What is the educational or information effect of a labyrinth? How do we learn through it?

Isn’t it just an adventure, making people feel playful and happy?

A:The Labyrinth challenges the very notion of knowledge as something external which has to be internalized. It is much more centered on the person seeking knowledge, rather than on what is defined by our culture as knowledge. So if we measure its educational effect on facts and information level, we would be denying its own nature. It seeks emotional involvement and it places the accent on two very basic phenomena that actually presuppose knowledge: the wonder and the immediacy of experience. In this, labyrinth theatre is not very different from other practices. The difference is that it quite dramatically breaks away from the world outside and goes down to the basics of the senses, encouraging the visitor at the same time to ask a question and find an answer within his or her own mind. The labyrinth opens doors.

The least effect from this, if you are worried about getting specific knowledge, is to make people curious. And if we get them curious and wanting to learn more, what could be better from the point of view of a knowledge providing institution?

Q: In what way does a labyrinth tell a story? How can we convince museum authorities that it is actually telling a story?

A: Such a performance is much more indirectly related to an exhibition, event etc, than what is generally expected from a theatre-in-museum performance. On the other hand, as you witnessed, it opens the doors of perceptions and sharpens the senses. You can then focus them on something they really need to see – and artifact, or a detail, and the the visitor really connects with the object.

2. Feasibility and technicalities: How can we do it?

Q: What are the musts of the Sensory Labyrinth Theatre? Can you do a sensory experience without blocking the eyesight?

A: To what extent it is sensory is entirely up to you and your own intuition. There is not a fixed format. If it is predominantly sensory (sight is blocked in one way or another, less words, more smells, touches etc), it is a bit vague as a story and more powerful on associative level, and it leaves more space for imagination. If people ‘see more’, then the message is clearer but you have to take care of its theatricality and aesthetics, and work on the details.

Q: Is it possible for groups to go round in that kind of a journey, and if it is possible doesn’t it take away from the individual experience?

A: Most of you are really concerned about the low audience capacity of a Labyrinth. If people come in at regular intervals, every 5 or 7 minutes for example, a normal 3-4 hour performance can be experienced by no more than 20-25, maybe a maximum of 30 people.

Since it is an individual experience, obviously it is the quality, not quantity that counts. It runs contrary to the general standards and what people expect from a theatre performance, but this is actually what makes this experience unique. There are other ways to make it accessible to many. Like what we do: we spread it around, we train people to use it. Or you can make it simple and repeatable in time.

To answer directly to the question: yes, of course you can do it with small groups, rather than with individuals (there have been performances for groups both in Romania and Bulgaria, look at the case studies), but then you have to make up for the loss of the intimacy of the person-to-person contact.

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Q: How can you have kids as audience? They tend to move around in groups, make comments, etc. It is difficult to split them. Is it any good to have them as individual passers through a labyrinth?

A: We come again to the question of how the performance is framed. It cannot be part of a regular museum visit, unless it is something really small, but then it is difficult to break it from the museum. It becomes part of the exhibition rather than a theatre experience. If kids visit it as a special event, then it has to be formatted according to the group. For a start we recommend kids-to-kids approach. That is, make a small workshop and create something with a group of children, then make some of their peers pass as visitors (see Zaragoza and Ognyanovo case studies).

Q: It is difficult to have a labyrinth FOR EVERYBODY, isn’t it?

A: Yes, it is. You should have a specific target group. In the labyrinths for grown-ups, for example, we don’t allow kids under 14 years of age, because this convention is recognizable by the adults, but not by the children. If it is for kids, there are other conventions and rules.

In general there are people who don’t like this experience, and that’s normal. An actor in a Sensory Labyrinth performance should be prepared for a range of reactions.

Q: What about when artifacts are under glass?

A: Well, you shouldn’t think that a sensory performance in a museum is just to present the artifacts and exhibits in a more ‘sensory way.’ The exhibit is just a starting point. You should be creative and find out what is central for you: Is it the animal as a species? Is it this particular specimen and its story? Is it the fact that it is stuffed? You can even work something out on the process of preservation, why do we preserve things, etc. Brainstorm the idea first in the most general way. Get someone from outside to bring in their view, fresh minds are indispensable, as the case studies show.

Q: What about sustainability? Does labyrinth require substantial funding and substantial staff in order to make it work? Whatever work you want to do, you want to make sure it’s really high quality.

A: If you create a community event then it’s not the quality but the involvement that counts.

We come back to the question whether to choose a product-oriented, or a process-oriented approach. In any case we should start with a process-oriented approach until we gain experience and popularity and do something which is product-oriented. Have a look at the case studies – you need years of experience until you start thinking about a performance.

And yes, it costs money. Try little things and then go to bigger things. If possible, do it on a project basis, get a little project approved, test it with some people, and do a small performance, which could be open to visitors, or to a specific group. And so on, until you’ve accumulated some practice, because it’s the practice that decides. You can’t say that in six days you’ve learned it and now you want to apply it, and also get some results, like doing something as serious as a full-scale performance in a museum with visitors etc.

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D.2 THE TYPICALITIES OF A SENSORY PERFORMANCE – some final thoughts and tips

In a Labyrinth performance you work by analogy and on an associative level, rather than illustrating or informing.

Senses other than vision take time to form a conscious picture of what’s going on. Make sure the person going through a sensory experience has enough time to take it in and enjoy it.

The powerful effect of the incomprehensible (for example, a speech in a strange language) creates a feeling of wonder and beauty!

Even when there isn’t an apparent story line in the sequence of events in a labyrinth, the human mind is bound to look hard for it, and it will eventually find it. Of course, you should have a story in your mind when you create a labyrinth, but you shouldn’t press too hard to get it taken the way you planned it, or become too ‘narrative.’ There is a fine balance between the specific content and the freedom of interpretation, as in any art.

Simple things work amazingly when the mind is open and the senses just left to do their work. I was raising a plastic cup to my lips and my thought went like: There is nothing, still nothing, there is some liquid! It’s both sweet and salty, a bit sour… That’s milk!

(I was just given enough time to actually taste a sip of milk)

Few people can go through a labyrinth, but it’s the quality not quantity that counts. And the individual! People like being in a labyrinth as performers because it’s a gratifying experience, the human touch and the exchange of energy is hard to describe.

Less is more. The economy of sensory stimuli and expressive means is extremely important.

To have in mind: labyrinth theatre is much more engaging than ordinary theatre, people shouldn’t be expecting anything like ordinary theatre. They should know for example that passing is individual and takes time, that blindfolding, complete darkness and touching is involved. It’s a game, and they should know the basic rules of behavior.

Visitors mustn’t drink alcohol before performance, it’s downright dangerous for the actors. It’s good to warn them not to use light (from mobile phones for example) in the labyrinth.

There should be a signal for warning that someone of the actors in a labyrinth needs help (for obvious reasons it’s no good shouting “help!” unless it is a very serious danger). Also, there should always be someone (not in role) looking after the safety of the whole labyrinth. If there is a need, a visitor should be taken out of the labyrinth, without interrupting the performance.

All in all, safety is of an utmost importance in a labyrinth. Usually there are lots flammable materials, so don’t forget the fire precautions!

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Labyrintheme consortium owes a tremendous amount of gratitude to people from all over Europe that contributed with precious feedback to the project’s outputs, in particular the training course developed and/or various draft versions of this publication.

First and foremost, to Iwan Brioc (Wales, UK) who inspired us all in various ways and to various degrees.

Then, to participants in our training courses in Zaragoza, Spain (9-14.09.2012) and Bucharest, Romania (7-12.10.2012): Irina Gerasimova, Elena Ivanova, Margarita Petrova, Sylvia Tosheva, (Bulgaria), Laura Alicu, Valentina Bucur, Ana Craciun, Adriana Carnu, Emma Vanessa Carnu, Elena Madalina Coman, Alin Mohor, (Romania), Kerry Beeston, Hazel Fenton, Catherine O’Donnell (UK), Seda Sahin, Bayram Sahin (Turkey), Lars Annersten, Charlotta Franzen, Kristina Kalen (Sweden), Beatriz Martin (Spain), Suzi Elena Apelgren (Denmark), Foteini Venieri (Greece).

Finally, to a long list of friends of Labyrintheme, including representatives of a continuously expanding group of associated partners: at the time of printing: Anna Farthing (UK, former Chair of IMTAL-Europe), National Polytechnic Museum, National Museum of Natural History, National Gallery for Foreign Art, National Museum of Military History (Bulgaria), ARTEES (France), BIDA e.V. Kultur und Bildung (Germany), Tos ungmennaskipti (Iceland), Artemide Association, Lunaria Association, Eptabeta srl (Italy), Serpentina Association (Portugal), A-maze Me Association, FULCRUM Social Development and Support Group, Translucid Association, Transcena Association, A Wonderful World for Children Association, Community Resource Center Cluj-Napoca, Grow Up Project Association, Transylvania Museum of Ethnography, Museum of the Iron Gates Region, Olt County Museum, Radu Greceanu National College, Spiru Haret Pedagogical High School, UNIVERSITUR, Vrani Cultural Association (Romania).

The Labyrintheme project core team: • Bistra Choleva-Laleva, Milena Stanojevic, Yavor Kostov (Bulgaria) • Dr. Daniela Dumbraveanu, Anca Tudoricu, Eliza Donescu, Adrian Ciglenean, Lucian Branea (Romania) • Kate Glynn, Professor Anthony Jackson (UK) • Professor Yilmaz Ari, Dr. Alper Uzun (Turkey) • Begona Gomez (Spain)

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