Hey everyone, over the coming weeks/ months NTW will be offering a variety of training and development opportunities.  The opportunities vary from workshops looking at creating, working and celebration within communities to specific artist development mini residencies.  Check out below and register your interest asap.

Assembly Training week - as we gear up to deliver the SuperAssembly, NTW's democratically elected creative arts performance debate events, we are giving people the opportunity to take part in free training/ development workshops.  However it is a first come first serve basis and the first 10 people to register by sending an email and stating which workshop they want to take part in. You can take part in all or some of the workshops.  The location for these workshops will all be CHAPTER ARTS CENTRE in Platform 1 room.

Monday 29^th Oct 2012  

TIME: 10pm – 5pm

WHO: John Fox & Sue Gill 

THE NATURE OF CELEBRATION.

John Fox and Sue Gill founded and directed the legendary celebratory arts company WELFARE STATE INTERNATIONAL ( 1968-2006 ) 

www.welfare-state.org   Over the decades they invented prototypes of socially engaged theatre such as lantern parades, site specific fire shows and community carnival operas, many of which have infiltrated mainstream culture. Since archiving WSI on April Fools Day 2006, with their new company DEAD GOOD GUIDES www.deadgoodguides.com their work has gone in new directions. From their Beach House a wooden self built home on stilts on the west shore of Morecambe Bay they have worked with marine biologists and botanists to research the ecology of their immediate environment. In their "Weather Station" project they have explored perception and performance, ceremonies for rites of passage and the nature of art and its connection to everyday living. In their workshop  THE NATURE OF CELEBRATION  Sue  and John will expand on their radical philosophy and with participants facilitate celebratory models of engaged practice. This will be a simple and direct hands on antidote to the excesses of commodity culture and spectacle. 

Tuesday 30^th Oct 2012

TIME: 10pm - 4pm

WHO: Keith Murrell & Angharad Evans (Assembly Artists, Performers, Musicians)

Assembly - the logistics & realities.

A look at the process of creating an Assembly/ performance debate event - what were the barriers & what worked.  If you were to create an Assembly event for Chapter what would it be?  These 2 artists will question the notion of creating community oriented projects and how realities and local values/ thoughts have to be balanced with creative impulses & ideas.

Wednesday 31^st Oct 2012

TIME: 10pm – 4pm

WHO: Carys Shannon - Community Producer/ Facilitator & Writer

Listen/Talk/Listen

Carys Shannon will lead a workshop based around facilitating ideas and dialogues within a community. Working with memory, stories, listening and using group activity to bring people together, this workshop will look at alternative ways of encouraging exchanges between people.

http://www.vetchveg.co.uk/

Thursday 1^st Nov 2012 

Time: 10pm – 4pm

WHO: Abdul Shayek & Laura Jeffs (NTW Creative Associate & Assembly Artist/ Performer)

Devising with a community.

How do we devise theatre/ performance with a community/ non theatre group.

Some ideas and thoughts about how to instigate creative thinking, create material & how to source/ find stimulus.  

This workshop will look at basic ideas around communities and stories and finding/ generating personal stories as stimulus to creating work within communities.

Friday 2nd Nov 2012

TIME: 10pm – 4pm

WHO: Mathilde Lopez- Theatre Director  

Mathilde Lopez was one of the first NTW Creative Associate and delivered 6 of the first year Assemblies - in this workshop she will share and give an insight into her learning.

Does quality of community art matter? Making Theatre with communities - how far can communities be pushed to realise an idea.  How do you make the most of the resources you have to hand & what is creating art for a community? Is product more important then process?

The Drift Project

run by Zecora Ura & Persis-Jade Maravala (Brazil/UK)

in partnership with National Theatre Wales

13rd - 15th November 2012

mini-DRIFT Cardiff schedule

Tuesday         5pm-7pm  (informal gathering of participants and leaders)

Wednesday    10am-8pm (mini-DRIFT day one, including internal sharing)

Thursday       10am-8pm (mini-DRIFT day two, including sharing with guests)

mini-DRIFT

Participants are encouraged to collaborate with each other, without the goal or pressure of a performance product, but with an open environment for work to be shared.  It is a model of process and community building that will provoke and inspire different ways of thinking about your practice and different contexts through which ideas are exchanged – that will include training, performing, nightly sharings of process, feedback, one-one-one sessions and insight into your own practice.

mini-Drift Residency Leaders

Jorge Lopes Ramos is joint artistic director of Zecora Ura (Brazil/UK) and the Hotel Medea trilogy, lecturer at University of East London and has recently completed the cultural leadership program run by Battersea Arts Centre.  Jorge develops playful theatrical structures which allow for a participatory, immersive and interactive perspective of the theatrical event. His work with audiences includes performative documentation, artist-led curatorship and Dramaturgy of Participation which is often site-specific, time-specific and audience-specific.  As joint leader of the Cardiff mini-DRIFT will be mentoring artists through performance and coaching methods in the fields of audience participation, artistic vision and project management.

As Zecora Ura's joint director and solo artist, Persis-Jade Maravala is committed to an ongoing actor training. She directs, writes and performs in interactive performances, exhibitions and performance lectures that explore the role of the outsider and examine conflict in an intercultural society. Her work provokes meetings of active culture, transcending commonplace social behaviours and liberating the actor from accepted traditions of actor training and theatrical acts by encouraging direct and unpredictable communication between actors, audiences and participants.  Her approach as joint leader of the mini-DRIFT in Cardiff will focus on physical and vocal exercises that aim to reconnect the artist to his individual inner life and discover it as a source of creativity. The training is driven by the research of Jerzy Grotowski, and has developed from Asian and Eastern European roots. She leads an intercultural training that does not aim to produce a style, but a continuous process of encounters, transformations and discovery of theatrical dynamics.

Informal Meeting (Tuesday)

5-7 Informal gathering of participants and mini-DRIFT leaders

Participants are invited to articulate their practice, interests and their 'idea/project' which will be used during the mini-DRIFT.  This is an opportunity to engage in dynamic dialogue with a number of other artists and their practices, as well as a chance for new collaborations to emerge in preparation for the following day.

Please get in touch with Abdul Shayek for more details and to enquire about booking a place for these workshops/ opportunities.  Please note the Drift participants will selected through a shortlisting process. 

Email: abdulshayek@nationaltheatrewales.org

Phone: 07545 915 185