Teatr Zar in Los Angeles

Our friends and collaborators of Teatr Zar are spending two weeks in Los Angeles conducting performances, specially arranged workshops and occasional concerts. "Gospels of Childhood. Triptych" opened last night at UCLA Live to a completely sold out run. Zar's work is for the intimate spaces, and that is a blessing. Royce Hall, a large venue, is transformed into a small sanctified space for closer transmission of song and action from performers to the audience. This proximity is paramount. Still nothing can compare to seeing their work at Apocalypsis room of Grotowski Institute in Wroclaw, where darkness of the room resembles that of the black hole, and the acoustics those of the ancient caverns. Tuning into their performances in London, Chicago or Los Angeles requires perhaps a greater amount of work on behalf of the audience to tune out brightly lit "exit" signs, the dust of the big city, the head noise of the daily grind. Here are a few eloquent accounts of encountering Teatr Zar by American colleagues who witnessed their performances in Poland last summer: A Search for the Oldest Songs in the World by Jim O'Quinn, and Applauding in Poland by Guy Zimmerman. If one is attracted to this kind of theatre, making a pilgrimage to Wroclaw can be life altering. It certainly was for every ARTEL member who went.

For a direct website of Teatr Zar, please follow this link: Teatr Zar.

Auditions for Kharmful Charms of Dani Kharms - World Premiere!

WHAT: After a sold-out workshop production last April, ARTEL returns with Kharmful Charms of Dani Kharms - A World Premiere: collaborative ensemble-devised project based on the works of Russian absurdist Daniil Kharms (1905-1942). Creation/training process will explore the styles of Eastern European clowning (Slava Polunin), vaudeville, cabaret, burlesque, commedia dell'arte, viewpoints, Polish/Russian theatre practices (Grotowski, Meyerhold, Vakhtangov), and devising techniques.

DATE/TIME/LOCATION: Oct 2, 6:30-8pm or Oct 3, 11-12:30. Artworks Theatre & Studios. Studio C, 6575 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, 90038. Tel. 310-985-9996.RUN: Presented at Artworks Theatre. Opens February 12, Fri-Sat 8pm (occasional Wdn, Th or Sun shows) 4 weeks. Please be open to extend. (another 4 -6 weeks)

WHO: We are looking for character actors-creators, dancers, singers, puppeteers, musicians with a proclivity for comedy and absurd. Physicality, expressivity, courage to create are a must. Everyone will be required to devise solo and group work. Training in physical approaches to theatre, commedia dell'arte, clown, cabaret is a plus.

AUDITION: The audition will be 1.5 hours long or so, with a group of people auditioning together (up to 12 people). It will involve physical, vocal and movement-led exercises, ensemble work, devising session and a presentation of prepared material. Very fun, high energy event. At the very least you will get an awesome workout. In the prepared material category I am asking for a short theatre/performance piece up to 3 min long. Preferably comedic. Original piece is a plus, but not required. The more unnaturalistic and expressive it is - the better. This can be done with any material, classical or not.

If you feel like creating something new on your own (which a few people did at the workshop audition we had in the spring) - you can take a look at the link below and see if any of the pieces of Kharms spark your imagination. In your preparation you can use anything you fancy - puppets, shadow play, monologue, write a song to Kharms' story - anything at all. This is just one site with Kharms' material, but there are many on the net: http://www.sevaj.dk/kharms/kharmseng.htm.

REHEARSAL: ARTEL's work is highly collaborative and physically/vocally demanding (think Robert Wilson). The styles of approaches to the material are varied: vaudeville, burlesque, cabaret, circus, commedia dell'arte, etc. All of them are tied together by something uniquely kharmsian, the show definitely has an overarching style of its own. All material is generated by the group utilizing Kharms' stories and references. The entire show is put together as a puzzle set to a rousing live musical score. We did a workshop production of it in April (in a research stage), and it was met with an enthusiastic response (oversold both nights). So there is a strong momentum: audience's anticipation, a good amount of material already generated, and a number of great bandmates in place. This next stage, what would be considered a development stage, is where we will add more material (text, song, dance, shadow play), a few new cast members and fine-tune the details. The long-term goal for this piece is to tour and/or to be presented in several countries (UK, Poland, Russia)

REQUIREMENTS: I ask everyone in the cast to be solidly available in January and February (Mo-Fr evenings) and have no other creative conflicts (jobs, ready performances can be OK, depending on dates, but no rehearsals). As this piece will demand a lot of time, even outside of rehearsal schedule. All of us will be working on getting at the quality of performance, which is placed in physical/vocal exactitude and high degree of expressivity. There are training sessions and creative opportunities that are open to all new cast members as early as October and a performance salon Gogol-Mogol that is slated for Oct. 24 (to be confirmed), where any creative material can be tried, especially connected to Kharms.

WHAT TO DO: Send PIX and RESUME to contact@arteltheatre.org, or via post: ATTN: KHARMFUL CHARMS, 6569 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90038

The Russian Yorkshire experience

Our dear friend Evgeniya Osipovna Zasimova has joined us in Leeds for 10 days of singing and exploring Western Yorkshire. We have warmed our house, discovered new material for future projects and learned how to meet once again each other, ourselves, and guests through song.

US Artists Initiative

Artel is honored to announce its acceptance into the US Artists Initiative, part of the UNESCO sponsored Year of Grotowski International Theater Event, The World as Place of Truth. http://www.grotowskiyear.pl/

This amazing program is the work of Arden 2 in collaboration with the Grotowski Institute to bring 30+ US Artists to Wroclaw, Poland during an inspirational festival celebrating the life and work of Jerzy Grotowksi. The festival will host performances, films, and dialogues of world renowned practitioners (Peter Brook , Anatoly Vasiliev, Pina Bausch, Krystan Lupa, Eugenio Barbo, Theodorus Terzopulous, Tadaski Suzuki, Teatr Zar, Maisternia Pisni, etc.). The US Artists Initiative is an opportunity for a varied group of American theatre practitioners to attend the festival and to meet and discuss 21C theatre outside their homeland and habitual context.

Alongside the phenomenal experience of being in Wroclaw for such an event, the US Artists' Initiative is designed to create opportunities for dialogue and hopefully a little experimentation around the work seen throughout the festival. During the two week+ festival, Artel has been asked to lead a session on theater-laboratories and contemporary practice for the group of US Artists. We look forward to engaging the many fantastic companies and practitioners that have been working in the US for years in this discussion to investigate the potentials of 21 C theater .

We will post updates later in the summer.

A HUGE THANK YOU to Joanna Klass and Rachel Jendrzejewski for their vision and dedication to make this a reality.

Giving Voice

In April, Olya attended the 11 International Giving Voice Festival hosted in Wroclaw, Poland in collaboration with the Grotowski Institute and the Giving Voice festival producers, the Centre for Performance Research (CPR).

This stunning ten day event presented workshops, work demonstrations and evening concerts by a range of artists organized around Grotowski's work with voice and action as well as the growing concern of where and how to continue passing vocal traditions on to younger artists.

Not only was this Olya's first solo trip to Wroclaw, allowing for more particular relations to be built between Artel and the Grotowski Institute, but she also had the pleasure of meeting Judie Christie whose CPR has been an inspiration and model for our modest [via]Corpora House.

Beyond being immersed in a mixture of vocal practices, Olya worked with Theatre Lalishlabor and continued our previous year's explorations with Natalka Polyvinka of Maisternia Pisni.

Thank you to Jarek Fret, Judie Christie and Ditte Berkeley for making Olya's attendance possible.

For the list of practitioners hosted and more information:
http://rokgrotowskiego.pl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=48

Kharmful Charms of Dani Kharms!

AUDIENCE COMMENT: Alisa Slaughter said...
I saw Saturday's show with some friends, two of them from Ukraine. We were all amazed! Such high quality, and such commitment, for a single weekend of performances! The collective apartment piece was absolute genius.

Kharmful Charms of Dani Kharms
Based on writings of Daniil Kharms
Devised by Ensemble
Conceived and Directed by Olya Petrakova
2 performances only
Friday, April 10 and Saturday, April 11th at 8PM

Reservations: www.brownpapertickets.com/event/60213,
24 hour Ticket Hotline 1.800.838.3006,
Information 323.871.1912
Tickets: $17-30 General Admission
______________________________

Daniil Kharms (1905-1942) was an early Soviet-era surrealist and absurdist poet, writer and dramatist.

By the late 1920s, his antirational verse, nonlinear theatrical performances, and public displays of decadent and illogical behavior earned Kharms - who always dressed like an English dandy with a calabash pipe - the reputation of being a talented but highly eccentric "fool" or "crazy-man" in Leningrad cultural circles. He was imprisoned in the psychiatric ward at Leningrad Prison No. 1. and died in his cell in February, 1942 -- most likely, from starvation, as the Nazi blockade of Leningrad had already begun. His writings (a vast assortment of stories, miniatures, plays, poems, and pseudo-scientific, philosophical investigations) were virtually unknown until 1970's, and not published officially in Russia until "glasnost".

Led by Olya Petrakova (a co-artistic director of ARTEL along with Bryan Brown), a mad-gang of artists and scientists will cook up in a devised-collaborative fashion a Russian Surrealist Absurdist Comedy at its most iniquitous and irrational, violent and erotic. Kharmful Charms is structured as an evening of not-so-innocent pranks and antics, vignettes and dreamlike incidencies set to rousing musical soundlife by multiple award-winner Jef Bek.

This production is paying respects to Daniil Kharms' founded avant-garde collective OBERIU, or Union of Real Art, whose aesthetic centered around a belief in the autonomy of art from real world's rules and logic, and the intrinsic meaning to be found in objects and words outside of their practical function.

Next Series of Workshop Auditions for Theater-Laboratory in Leeds

A Series of Workshop Auditions for a new Theater-Laboratory at the University of Leeds

“Meyerhold's vision was of a mutually supportive, interactive organisation incorporating a stage, a workshop and a training school in which: "the discoveries in the workshop would affect the training in the school as well as what was exposed on the stage" in a three-fold symbiosis.”

Bryan Brown, co-creator of Artel*, is looking for Performers and Students of Performance (performers, actors, dancers, musicians) that wish to explore the interstices of performance and the possibilities of a contemporary UK Theater-Laboratory within the framework of his Practice-As-Research Postgraduate work under the auspices of Prof. Jonathan Pitches and Dr. Tony Gardner.

The laboratory will be a continuation of Artel, extracting its research questions from the previous work in the USA and focusing its investigation into the relevance of theater-laboratories in the 21century by clearly defining the practical mechanics of theater-laboratories of the past in hopes to discover inspiration for the future. [This new Artel will be working throughout the next three years; however, acceptance into this stage does not imply or require a three-year commitment.]

The Structure of this new Artel will be based upon a triangular model, perhaps most clearly articulated by Vsevolod Meyerhold. The triangular model allows for a systematic investigation of Performer Training as well as Performance Development - the two branches of this Artel that will specifically focus on appropriation, tradition and innovation.

The third branch of the laboratory will be the Stage – the creation of specific productions that grapple with Russian thematic material as a means of creating a distance from which to approach new perspectives on UK contemporary reality. Wrestling with the great writers and philosophers of the last two centuries in the schools of Romanticism, Modernism, Existentialism and Postmodernism, the Stage will approach a language of production that aims at an articulation of hope and change while standing on the precipice of collapse.

If you are interested in participating in either or all three branches of this Artel, please send an email to bryan@arteltheatre.org

* Created in Los Angeles, California three years ago, Artel - a Russian word meaning labour collective as well as an acronym for American Russian Theater Ensemble Laboratory – is dedicated to an investigation of tradition and innovation in actor training and performance research with a focus on combining American and British experimental collective devising work with Russian and East European ensemble practice.

PLEASE NOTE DATES, TIMES AND SPACES CAREFULLY**

While there is no requirement to attend all of the workshop auditions, an ability to attend as many as possible indicates commitment and interest.

Performer Training Branch

“Everyone learned — students and teachers alike. It was a laboratory for working through the foundations of a new aesthetic.”

This branch of the laboratory will be a place to explore the potential syntheses of training practices that have arisen from American experimental physical approaches to theater and dance training with the ensemble actor training of Eastern European/Russian theater in order to arrive at an engaged Performer Training that provides a springboard for the creation of dynamic contemporary performance.

The Workshop Auditions aim to cultivate will, awareness, and sensitivity through the discovery of physical and vocal potentials. Our aim will be supported by a focus on imagination, rhythm, coordination, and the relations of the individual and the ensemble.

Participants should be prepared to work barefoot, to move in ways that will challenge their physical habits and to sing.

Tuesday 10 March 2009 9:30am – 12:30pm
Alec Clegg Studio, Stage@Leeds

Thursday 12 March 2009 6 – 9 pm
Dance Studio, Stage@Leeds

Saturday 14 March 2009 11am – 2pm
G14 Man Made Fibers Building

Tuesday 17 March 2009 9:30am – 12:30pm
Alec Clegg Studio, Stage@Leeds

Thursday 19 March 2009 6 – 9 pm
2.03 Man Made Fibers Building

Performance Development Branch

“The participants were not required to present preconceived conclusions, but were expected to find new paths to create new concepts of theatre.”

This branch of the laboratory will investigate the meetings and divergences of American/British devising processes with the rigor of Russian/Eastern European etude work. The majority of participants for this branch will ideally be mature(ing) artists searching for new possibilities to encounter the edges of our potential within the container that is Performance.

The Workshop Auditions will aim at physical approaches to individual and ensemble creation. We will begin with physical and vocal warm-up and training in order to move into three specific ways of composing etudes.

Participants should be prepared to work barefoot, to move in ways that will challenge their physical habits, to sing and to bring their own personal histories to the joyful act of creating!

Saturday 21 March 2009 11am - 2pm
2.03 Man Made Fibers Building

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday 25, 26, 27 March 2009 6 – 9
2.03 Man Made Fibers Building

MAP OF UNIVERSITY
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/timetable/assets/map/index.htm

** We will be meeting outside the main entrance to the MMF Building or the Stage@Leeds Building 10minutes before scheduled start time. In some cases, the doors will lock once we enter the building. Please do not be late.

BRYAN BROWN has taught and studied extensively in New York City, Europe, and Los Angeles. He is co-creator of Artel and [via]Corpora. Deeply influenced by American Experimental theater teachers Stephen Wangh and Raina von Waldenburg as well as Mary Overlie, Viewpoints and Contact Improvisation practitioners, Bryan has spent the last two years investigating the contemporary theater practices of Eastern European and Russian ensembles primarily through his relations with the Grotowski Institute and the Song of the Goat Theatre.

Recently he was Artist-in-Residence at Hooyang Performing Arts Centre, South Korea. Besides consistent teaching in Los Angeles at [via]Corpora - Center for Performance Research and Development, 2008 had Bryan leading workshops in Poland, New Orleans and NY as well as co-producing numerous workshops including the first 5 day worksession of Song of the Goat Theatre in LA and a Teachers Practicum in NY of Stephen Wangh’s devising. He is currently teaching Performance Technique at the University of Leeds where he is a Postgraduate Research student.

All quotes are from Pitches, Jonathan Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting (London: Routledge, 2005)

Theater Laboratory in Leeds

Bryan Brown, co-creator of Artel, is creating a theater-laboratory in Leeds under the auspices of Prof. Jonathan Pitches and Dr. Tony Gardner as the practice-as-research aspect of his Post-graduate studies. The laboratory will be a continuation of Artel incorporating directly the use of a triangular model that allows for a more systematic investigation of Performer Training and Performance Development as two branches of the lab, with the third being Productions of new performance. The productions will grapple with Russian thematic material as a means of creating a distance from which to approach new perspectives on UK contemporary reality.

If you are interested in participating in either or all three branches of the laboratory, please send an email to bryan@arteltheatre.org

Auditions for New Work in Los Angeles

American Russian Theatre Ensemble Laboratory (ARTEL) is casting Kharmful Charms of Dani Kharms, a collaborative ensemble-devised project based on the works of Russian absurdist Daniil Kharms (1905-1942). Creation/training process will explore the styles of Eastern European clowning (Slava Polunin), vaudeville, cabaret, Viewpoints, Polish/Russian theatre practices (Grotowski, Meyerhold, Vakhtangov), and devising techniques.

Director Olya Petrakova Brown, training leader Garth Whitten.

Training/Devising March 9-April 9. Weekend Presentation April 10, 11 at Artworks Theatre. A full-production run is possible, dates/locations TBD.

Seeking character actors-creators, dancers, singers with a proclivity for comedy and absurd. Physicality, expressivity, courage to create are a must. Everyone will be required to devise solo and group work. Training in physical approaches to theatre, commedia dell'arte, clown, cabaret, sketch comedy is a plus.

Submission address: ARTEL, Attn: Kharmful Charms, c/o ArtWorks Theatre, 6567 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90038, or email pix and resume to olya@arteltheatre.com. Audition Workshops will take place Sunday, February 15th 11am - 1pm and Monday February 16 7:30pm - 9:30pm at ArtWorks Theatre and Studios. Prepare to move, create and have a blast! Prepare a short monologue, preferably comedic.

Workshop Auditions for Theater Laboratory in Leeds

Workshop Auditions for new Theater Laboratory at University of Leeds

Saturday 14 Feb 2009 10am* – 1pm G14 Man Made Fibers Building

Bryan Brown, co-creator of Artel**, is currently a Post-graduate research student under Prof. Jonathan Pitches and Dr. Tony Gardner investigating the relevance of theater-laboratories in the 21 Century.

This Workshop Audition is for the first of two branches, the Performer Training Research branch, of a Theater Laboratory that will be created in the coming months and working throughout the next three years. (Acceptance into this stage does not imply or require a three year commitment.)

The laboratory will be a place to explore the potential syntheses of training practices that have arisen from American experimental theater, British devised theater and Eastern European/Russian ensemble theater over the last century in order to illuminate an engaged Performer Training that provides a springboard for the creation of dynamic contemporary performance.

The Workshop aims to cultivate will, awareness, and sensitivity through the discovery of physical and vocal potentials. Our aim will be supported by a focus on imagination, rhythm, coordination, and the relations of the individual and the ensemble.

Participants should be prepared to move, to work barefoot and to sing.

It is recommended to have some text memorized that we could work with.

To reserve your place, or for more information, please contact: bryan@arteltheatre.org

* We will be meeting outside the main entrance to the MMF Building at 10am sharp. The doors will lock once we enter the building. Please do not be late.

** Created in Los Angeles, California three years ago, Artel - a Russian word meaning labour collective as well as an acronym for American Russian Theater Ensemble Laboratory – is dedicated to an investigation of tradition and innovation in actor training and performance research with a focus on combining American and British experimental collective devising work with Russian/East European ensemble practice.

BRYAN BROWN has taught and studied extensively in New York City, Europe, and Los Angeles. He is co-creator of Artel and [via]Corpora,. Deeply influenced by American Experimental theater teachers Stephen Wangh and Raina von Waldenburg as well as Mary Overlie, Viewpoints and Contact Improvisation practitioners, Bryan has spent the last two years investigating the contemporary theater practices of Eastern European and Russian ensembles primarily through his relations with the Grotowski Institute and the Song of the Goat Theatre.

Recently he was Artist-in-Residence at Hooyang Performing Arts Centre, South Korea. Besides consistent teaching in Los Angeles at [via]Corpora - Center for Performance Research and Development, 2008 had Bryan leading workshops in Poland, New Orleans and NY as well as co-producing numerous workshops including the first 5 day worksession of Song of the Goat Theatre in LA and a Teachers Practicum of Stephen Wangh’s devising. He is currently teaching Performance Technique at the University of Leeds where he is a Postgraduate Research student.

Artel in Leeds, England

Bryan has been accepted into a Postgraduate Research program at the University of Leeds, under the supervision of Prof. Jonathan Pitches and Dr. Tony Gardner. His research will be primarily focused on the relevance of theater-laboratories in the 21 century. While predominantly investigated and contextualizing Russian and Eastern European models, the research will extend to theater-laboratory models the world over. The research will encompass questions of Tradition and Innovation not only in Performance Technique and Performance Development but also in Leadership and Social Structures. While the terrain is still being mapped, the proposal is a practice-led PhD which essentially entails the reconstitution of ARTEL in Leeds under the auspices of the University for Post-graduate research.

New Chapters

After the close of our well-received Legendary Times of Bulgakov in June and the recognition of nearly two and a half years of continuous work together, the four active long-term members of Artel decided it was time for a necessary break.

It was clear that a period of gestation, review and reorganization, of not only our labour collective, but of our individual lives was in order.

After some rich meditation, we decided that the collective needs were not sustaining the individual needs, and so, a New Stage in Artel is developing.

Artel, as a laboratory, is continuously proposing lines of research, evaluating how they are or are not being carried out, and adapting our actions to suit new methods of inquiry. The stage of an administrative collective based on consenus of each member of the performance collective has come to an end. We are proposing a return to a slightly more familiar theatrical model - that of Artistic Directors, Director, Members and Associates - but with the insight of our previous Stage and within the framework of an ensemble theater laboratory, exactly how this model will be adapted is still in process.

In fact a reevaluation of where and what Artel is, as well as what it can be, is also in process as we negotiate the continued building of community and associates in Los Angeles with the internal need for developing working relations with practitioners in Europe and Russia.

We recognize a need for our investigatory ensemble processes as defined and provided by [via]Corpora - Centre for Performance Research and Development, the intensive collaborative and performance opportunities provided by Artel, and the support and recognition of new work provided by Artworks Theater. At the same time, we recognize the need for our own work to enter a new phase of challenge - one that promises a deeper knowledge of research methods allowing for more engaging and relevant performance to be generated as well as an ability to articulate and contextualize our work in a language that may provide new models for American theater in the 21 century.

Towards this end, Bryan completed a PhD application to the University of Leeds under Jonathan Pitches (author of the keen description of a Theater Laboratory that serves as inspiration for Artel - posted elsewhere on this blog).

And so, Artel grows in unsuspected and exciting ways. Recently Bryan has made the move to Leeds while Olya remains in Los Angeles, organizing a new production, new workshops and new possibilites for our home, ArtWorks Theater, to expand beyond Artel and [via]Corpora to support and sustain other local artists.

While the research in England provides more opportunity to work with practitioners in Europe and to realize our goal of building relations and working with practitioners in Russia, we have a strong sapling growing in Los Angeles and are nurturing it towards the vision of an orchard.

Thank you for your continued support, involvement and excitement.