“John Cage said that fear in life is the fear of change. If I may add to that: nothing can avoid changing. It’s the only thing you can count on. Because life doesn’t have any other possibility, everyone can be measured by his adaptability to change.”
Every year, Ross Manson, Artistic Director of Volcano Theatre, brings together a group of nationally and internationally-acclaimed artists to teach at the Volcano Conservatory.
Explore the Alternative: The Volcano Conservatory seeks to provide professional theatre and dance artists with the tools to reinvent performance. For emerging and experienced actors, dancers, directors and theatre-makers.
When: July 22 – 31, 2011 in Toronto
Volcano: “The explosive company from Canada” – The Independent (UK)
For more information click here.
Courses include (but not limited to): Physicalizing Thought with Daniel Brooks Movement with Peggy Baker Fitzmaurice Voicework with Noah Drew Something From Nothing with Quinn Bauriedel from Pig Iron Theatre
A photo of Tehran Bazaar from ON THE BOARDS IN IRAN
Ross Manson, Artistic Director of Toronto’s Volcano Theatre, is currently in Tehran, Iran as part of a five-person jury adjudicating an international competition within the 29th Fadjr Theatre Festival.
It seems Ross has been quite busy: seeing everything from Faust to Bouffon – while getting caught up in a major demonstration, worrying about three Estonian theatre artists who got taken in by the secret police for issues relating to camera use, and finding time to blog about it all.
Regular readers of praxistheatre.com will already be familiar with The Africa Trilogy. The production being created by Volcano Theatre for a Luminato World Premiere in June 2010 contains three distinct plays that examine the relationship between Africa and the West. Over the past year, there have been monthly posts about the project that even have their own listing in our sidebar.
As the production kicks into high gear, The Africa Trilogy is getting its own blog and online media centre. Complete with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flikr tools, it begins with material culled from this website and the blog Volcano Artistic Director Ross Manson kept during the research trip the creative team made to Africa before the playwrights began their first drafts.
Here at Praxis we’ll continue to post some of the key content that will be posted on the Africa Trilogy Blog, but much of the content will be exclusive to this new site. Editors: adjust your blog rolls, readers: adjust your bookmarks, The Africa Trilogy is going solo:
Africa Trilogy assistant director Deanna Downes has been ruminating on the project from her secret lair in Philadelphia.
Africa Trilogy Set for a Smooth Landing in The States?
by Deanna Downes
David Mamet’s new play Race is playing on Broadway. A New York Times review calls it “a play that examines the self-consciousness that descends on American white people when they talk about, or to, black people.”
Fela, a play about the revolutionary creator of Afro-pop, Fela Kuti, is also on Broadway. When talking about his production of Fela, director Bill T. Jones says Fela’s life brings about, “questions like creativity, transgression, rebellion, sensuality, history, race, power.”
It would appear, the theatrical runways are being paved for a smooth landing of this multi-national but Canadian birthed trilogy about Africa and the West.
Left to right - Josette Bushell-Mingo, Ross Manson, and Liesl Tommy are each involved in separate presentations in Toronto this weekend.
Trilogy directors invade Toronto this weekend
Through sheer coincidence, all three directors of The Africa Trilogy are mixing it up in the T-dot this week:
Josette Bushell-Mingo, director, Glo
After directing the RSC/NAC original production to widespread critical acclaim, Bushell-Mingo has been mentoring directors working on Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad as part of Nightwood Theatre’s Directors Summit.
The public presentation of this work occurs November 15 at 3pm and 6:30pm, Dancemakers Studio Theatre.
Ross Manson, director, Shine Your Eye
Having toured Rwanda with Volcano’s Edinburgh Fringe-winning production of Goodness, Manson presents a retrospective of the experience at University of Toronto.
November 15th at 7pm, the George Ignatieff Theatre, U of T campus.
Liesl Tommy, director, Peggy Pickett Sees the Face of God
The Director’s Toolkit, Master Class: November 16 and 17, 10-1pm;The Agony and Ecstasy of Staging New Work, Panel: Monday November 16th @ 6:30pm; Staging Africa, Panel: Tuesday November 17th at 6:30pm.
For full details on price and location of Nightwood Theatre events visit their webpage.
"The map on the seat-back screen. I realized that I was flying over places i had never heard of before..."
Volcano AD Ross Manson on touring Goodness to Rwanda
An Africa Trilogy purist could quibble that this is not strictly an “Africa Trilogy” related post. This quibbler would point out that Volcano Artistic Director Ross Manson blogging about his experience touring the Edinburgh Fringe-winning production of Goodness he directed to Rwanda, is about an entirely different production and creative team (save for Manson himself).
Fair enough, but the stated dramaturgical goal of the Trilogy is to create a piece of theatre that examines the relationship between Africa and the West. In this regard, the detailed and passionate record he has been keeping about touring a Western-created play on the nature of genocide to Rwanda is pretty much a perfect fit.
You can read the blog complete with comprehensive photography here:
Peggy Pickit Sees the Face of God – Maev Beaty and Tony Nappo #1
This post is the first of several discussions that took place over email between Africa Trilogy actors Maev Beaty and Tony Nappo. Click here to read the introduction to Peggy Pickit Sees the Face of God.
The Human Problem of “What Do I Do?”
Maev:
Mr. Nappo, a pleasure to be having this “e-discussion” with you. Let me ask the first question…we’ll start light. We’ve done two workshops of this play now…has your perspective on the West’s relationship to Africa changed?
Tony:
I am not sure whether or not my perspective has changed. It’s just expanded, I suppose. I think at the heart of this play, there seems to be some kind of statement about our choices as human beings to get involved or not in any kind of human crisis. Are we obligated morally to help if we can, and will our help, ultimately, make any difference at all after a crisis reaches a certain point-and, at what cost to us as the individual?
It makes me think, historically, about the Holocaust and, contemporarily, about the Tamils. It seems that people want such atrocities to stop or never to have existed, and rightfully so, of course, but the natural instinct to survive and self preserve would dictate that one doesn’t actually physically get involved which becomes easier the farther removed, geographically, one may be from any given situation. So is desire for change strong enough to create a pull towards action?
It’s one thing to be appalled by what is happening and quite another thing to do something about it when something isn’t directly affecting your day to day. Like Bono sings in that Christmas song- “Well, tonight thank God it’s them instead of you.” That is one of the truest, saddest lines ever sung. And that sadness seems to permeate Roland’s piece. So, I am thinking, and answering, I guess, in more human terms than factual or political terms. But I am playing Frank, who makes the choice not to help but live his own life- as the actress playing Carol, you must have had to search for the part of yourself that would go- would have to go and at least try to make some difference. What surprised you or didn’t about yourself in this regard?
Maev:
Yes, Carol is a puzzle, as far as the original impetus (or courage?) to go and ‘help,’ but now it seems she’s left with a dismal sense of futility and loss and, I sense, some resentment. It reminds me of a book that Josette mentioned in our Glo workshop which I am now eager to read titled Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is A Better Way for Africa. I here confess that I had, of course, heard arguments that aid was not getting to where it needed to go and that it was often sucked up in corruption. But I had always, in my gut, believed it must still be ‘helping.’ From what I’ve read about the book, the author claims aid has made things much worse on the continent.
Carol’s journey feels a bit resonant of this (particularly in relation to Annie – and theatrically, Annie as a metaphor. Did she, in fact, exacerbate the cruelty of Annie’s circumstances?) This relates to the human problem of “what do I do?” And of course, this is theatre, so we are only going to ask lots of questions – not provide answers. But I DO think A3 has a responsibility to open up the questions to everybody. I’m really hoping there will be a way for audiences to immediately (like, in the lobby) respond to the work, ideally on computer (who even remembers how to write with pencil and paper anymore?), with live posting capability. And I hope there will be lots of resources available for some ongoing relationship/dialogue to the issue.
Peggy Pickit Sees the Face of God – Roland Schimmelpfennig
As the Africa Trilogy Series continues, there will be a number of conversations between Maev Beaty and Tony Nappo, two actors who have been involved in the project from the intial workshop in 2008. To have a full understanding of what they will be writing about, this post describes the show they have both been working on, Peggy Pickit Sees The Face of God, and some ideas from the playwright, Germany’s incomparable Roland Schimmelpfennig.
The Story:
Set in an unidentified Western city, Peggy Pickit begins with a white married couple arriving at another white couple’s house for a reunion. All four were best friends at medical school. All are now 41. Two have just returned from crisis work in Africa –escaping a particularly violent flare-up. They have been gone for six years. The other two stayed at home, had a child, and made a lot of money. Each couple looks at the other with envy. Both marriages are in trouble. The returning couple left behind a local child in Africa that the other couple was sponsoring. The fate of that child is unknown, but we learn she is dependent on drug therapy, and without treatment, she will likely die.
The evening turns into a post-colonial version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf . Accusations, pain, anguish and bitter comedy are used to explore damage/guilt in the West. The title refers to a small plastic doll intended as a gift for the African child – a child whose only representation on stage is a small wooden carving.
Says Schimmelpfennig:
There are things that are too big, too cruel, too complicated to be transformed into dramatic art.
There seems to be almost no acceptable way to show the disaster of AIDS in Africa on a theatre stage. But I am sure there is one, and I have tried to find it.
The focus of dramatic art is always on the human being. Theatre deals with people. Theatre is not that good at dealing with theory or with global economic structures. Theatre is good at giving these things a name and a human face. In the first draft of the play I am writing for the project, it is the face of a little girl. Or the faces of two little girls: Annie living in an unidentified African village, and Kathie, living in an unidentified Western city. We see these girls – but only through the lens of four Western adults grappling with impossible decisions, and through the figurines these girls play with.
From my personal point of view, as a writer (as far as I can say it by now), this subject needs a very clear and striking transfer to a western context. And that is why I want to write the play and take part in the project.
In the end there will be three points of view on a more than complex matter – as far as the writers are concerned. More creative minds will be involved: directors, actors and others. The result of all these people’s effort will be a rare and powerful experience. It will link people. It will raise attention.
Josette Bushell-Mingo, Artistic Director of Tyst Theater in Sweden, speaks about the Spring 09 workshop of Glo by Christina Anderson. Glo is one of three plays being produced as part of The Africa Trilogy by Volcano Theatre for the Luminato Festival in Toronto in 2010.
“After the years and years of weaker and waterier imitations, we now find ourselves rejecting the very notion of a holy stage. It is not the fault of the holy that it has become a middle-class weapon to keep the children good.”
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