WRITING FOR PERFORMANCE: KAITE O’REILLY, MIKE PEARSON AND SARAH WOODS
1-6 November 2010. Ty Newydd Writers Centre, Criccieth, Gwynedd, Wales.
This is a dynamic and diverse residency for writers of performance keen to explore different source materials, processes, and dramatic structures, whilst seeding new work. The course will be intensive and stimulating, allowing participants to engage with a series of respected and ground-breaking practitioners, working in new ways.

The week will be a series of themed workshops with course tutor Kaite O’Reilly, plus two special full day workshops: PERFORMING PLACES led by Mike Pearson, and PATTERNS IN PLAYS, led by Sarah Woods (see below).

Daily workshops will include practical exercises exploring site, the senses, existing stories and memory as inspiration and source material. Alongside the practical, skills-based sessions and generation of new short work, will be the opportunity for participants to reflect on process and structure. At the end of the week writers will leave with tools and approaches that can be used long after the course has finished.

Evening sessions will include informal discussion, video screenings, and the opportunity to share work in progress in a relaxed environment.

MIKE PEARSON: PERFORMING PLACES
How can memory be used as a creative agency in devising theatre?
How can place be evoked dramatically?
How can performance contribute to enhancing public appreciation and
understanding of landscape?
A practical workshop that introduces approaches to the use of biography and
topographical writing in the creation of texts for performance.

Mike Pearson has created theatre in Wales since 1970. He was an artistic
director on Cardiff Laboratory Theatre (1971-80) and Brith Gof (1980-97). He continues to work with artist Mike Brookes in Pearson/Brookes (1997-present) and as a solo artist. He is co-author with Michael Shanks of Theatre/Archaeology (2001) and author of In Comes I: Performance, Memory and Landscape (2006). He is currently Professor of Performance Studies in Aberystwyth University.=


SARAH WOODS: PATTERNS IN PLAYS
Writing a play can mean managing so many different elements that you feel more like an accountant than an artist! This workshop expplores how all the element are connected, each contributing to one single pattern - your play.



Sarah ran the Mphil in Playwriting at Birmingham University from 2002 to 2006. She is a regular teacher at Arvon.


Kaite O’Reilly has recently adapted the world’s oldest surviving play, Aeschylus’s PERSIANS for National Theatre Wales, directed by Mike Pearson in a site-specific production on Ministry of Defence land in August 2010. She has recently been awarded an Unlimited Commission, part of the Cultural Olympiad, connected to the London Olympics in 2012.
Ty Newydd Writers Centre, Criccieth, Gwynedd, Wales.
01766 522811. post@tynewydd.org www.tynewydd.org