Exploring Practice: What's Collective? - Playwrights' Workshop Montréal

A workshop with Public Recordings (Toronto) exploring strategies for working collectively within the artistic practices.

Application Deadline: Sunday, FEBRUARY 18TH, 2024 AT 11:59PM EST.

If you have any questions regarding accessibility, or require assistance with this application, please contact accessibility@playwrights.ca.

In this ongoing project Public Recordings researches ways and means of making that promote shared agency and authorship. Using the framework of a co-facilitated workshop, each iteration of What’s Collective? stages an artistic exchange through which collective approaches to art making can be shared, questioned, and renewed. The result is a gathering in which participants can more deeply consider their own artistic contexts, and develop new questions and ideas in response to the project’s title.

What’s Collective? is co-facilitated by associate artists of Public Recordings. Participants will explore systems and strategies borrowed from past Public Recordings projects and the personal practices of the facilitators, to uncover common issues of group work. The sessions will include physical practices, sound-making, listening, discussion, reading, writing, and reflection. The goal with What’s Collective? is to hold a space in which participants can reflect on past experiences of group work, better understand and articulate important aspects of collaborative and collective practices, and discover how we can work together better–inside and outside of art making.

SCHEDULE

Monday, March 18^th, 2024, 11AM to 4PM

Tuesday, March 19^th, 2024, 11AM to 4PM

Wednesday, March 20^th, 2024, 11AM to 4PM

Thursday, March 21^th, 2024, 11AM to 4PM

In person at the PWM Studio.

LOCATION

PLAYWRIGHTS’ WORKSHOP MONTRÉAL
7250 Clark Street, #103
Montréal, QC
H2R 2Y3

HOW TO APPLY:

If you are interested in applying, please fill out this Google Form by 11:59 PM EST on Sunday, February 18th, 2024.

Application results will be shared by email the week of March 4th.

Questions about this workshop can be sent to leila@playwrights.ca with the subject line: Exploring Practice with What’s Collective?.

If you have any questions regarding accessibility, or require assistance with this application, please contact accessibility@playwrights.ca.

Click here for accessibility information and video tours of our location.

PWM is committed to creating an environment where all individuals are treated with dignity and respect. We are continuously working to make all of our programs accessible and inclusive. While recognizing that the identity of each person is fundamentally plural, and multidimensional, we strongly encourage applications from artists who are: Indigenous (First Nations, Métis, and Inuit), Black, POC, racialized (including recent immigrants), 2SLGBTQQIPAA+, neurodivergent, disabled, living with chronic illness and/or chronic pain. PWM is strongly committed to supporting a wide range of cultural identities and lived experiences, therefore we encourage applicants to self-identify in their application if they are comfortable doing so.

Participation is free. Workshop participants are selected based on the complementary experience of the collective group. We encourage all levels of experience to apply.

FURTHER DETAILS:

SESSION FORMAT
There are four parts to each session of What’s Collective?, each led by a different facilitator. In each session, every facilitator changes roles. Using this rotating structure and recurrent format we hope to deepen our knowledge through a variety of modalities and histories, both shared and individual.

WARM UP
A sense-led exercise for grounding ourselves and preparing for the day. The warm-up seeks to bring us into a shared, possibly harmonious, sense of space, time, awareness and receptivity.

READING & REFLECTING
A facilitated reading of texts provided by Public Recordings, which seek to focus our attention on a specific aspect of collaborative and collective work. The reading is followed by exercises that invite reflection and discussion in smaller groups.

TUNING
A compositional exercise that considers ensemble thinking, proximity, and sensory driven approaches to group work.

REAL QUESTIONS
A speaking composition that centers participant perspectives and allows reflection and consideration with respect to the day, our lives and each other.

WHAT ARE YOU MAKING IS HOW YOU ARE MAKING IT
In the past Public Recordings have used the statement above to describe an important aspect of our work and the intentions behind it. The statement proposes an inseparability of processes and outcomes, and is meant to emphasize that how we are working has both aesthetic and ethical implications. We recognize that processes of artistic creation, learning, and facilitation are not distinct from issues of social justice, democracy, equity. Therefore, active listening, consent, care, and responsibility to the group are values that we will be continuously working to center throughout this project. Thank you all for joining us for this edition of What’s Collective? We’re honoured that you’ve chosen to work and learn with us.

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP FACILITATORS:

Christopher Willes (in person) is a multidisciplinary artist, musician/composer, dramaturge and facilitator. Moving across experimental music/sound, dance, and visual art forms, his work focuses on the subject and practice of listening. He is an associate artist and producer with Public Recordings, and has worked in dance and theatre as a dramaturge and sound designer for over a decade. He studied music at the University of Toronto, and holds an MFA from Bard College (USA). He is currently completing a certificate program in Conflict Mediation through the University of Waterloo and he actively tries to bring this learning to his work as a facilitator.

Evan Webber (in person) is a writer, playwright, performance maker and dramaturge. His theatre, dance and interdisciplinary projects explore the limits and potentials of shared experience and common narratives. Evan’s an associate artist and producer with Public Recordings and studied acting at the National Theatre of School of Canada. From 2014-17 he was curator and facilitator of the HATCH performing arts residency at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre.

Brendan Jensen (in person) is a dancer, choreographer and teacher who lives and works in Tkaronto-Toronto. He is a graduate of the National Ballet School of Canada and has worked with many dance artists and companies including the Toronto Dance Theatre. Brendan’s artistic work has been presented at P.S. we are all here, Flow Chart and the Fluid Festival. He was a recipient of the DanceWeb Europe scholarship in conjunction with the ‘2008 Impulstanz’ festival in Vienna, Austria. He is an associate artist with Public Recordings. His current research investigates ‘practice as performance’, in relation to his work as a dance and movement teacher, and his ongoing training in the Alexander Technique.

Bee Pallomina (remotely) is a dance artist making and performing work for stage, installation, film/video and puppets. Bee’s work often explores themes of relationship, identity and belonging and her practice is centered on movement, care and the everyday. She is an artist, educator and mom. She is an associate artist with Public Recordings and an active performer and collaborator who has worked with many choreographers over the years. She also has an active teaching practice and is certified to teach Open Source Forms, and Modo, Yin and Restorative Yoga. She is a graduate of the School of Toronto Dance Theatre, holds an MFA in choreography from York University, and is currently studying Expressive Arts Therapy.

Germaine Liu (remotely) is a scenario-maker and percussionist based in Tkaronto-Toronto (born in Hong Kong). Liu is interested in exploring and sharing things she finds joyful in collaborative settings, with hopes that participants are open and willing to participate. Her work explores tactile, movement, sonic and physical explorations of found objects and percussion. She has composed solo and ensemble works and is a co-founder, along with Parmela Attariwala and Nicole Rampersaud, of Understory––a web-based, inter-provincial series dedicated to showcasing improvising artists working across Canada and to building a network between the artists and their audiences.

About Public Recordings:

Public Recordings is an artist-led collective based in Toronto. We develop and present hypotheses about group work using dance, theatre, music, publication and other collective gestures. And our work has been shown and distributed in theatres, art galleries, museums, bars, clubs, civic, outdoor and digital spaces across Canada, Europe, Australia and Asia.

Public Recordings is a non-profit, registered charity. Founded in 2003, the challenges and possibilities of collaboration and shared leadership have been a perennial subject, touching all of the work we do––within artistic projects and in the evolving structure of the organization itself. In 2015 Public Recordings officially adopted its current organizational model: an interdisciplinary collective led by its associate artists, two of whom also work as producers and lead administrators. Working and managing resources collectively, this team supports each other to produce their work together, and help cultivate new projects.

Artistic Producers: Evan Webber, Christopher Willes. Associate Artists: Brendan Jensen, Bee Pallamino, Germaine Liu, Evan Webber, and Christopher Willes. Board of Directors: Chris Dupuis , Lee Henderson, Lauren Vandervoort. Design: Jeremy McCormick. Bookkeeping: Emma Walker. Public Recordings was founded in 2003 by choreographer Ame Henderson and new media artist Daniel Arcé.

For More information: publicrecordings.org

LEARN MORE ABOUT EXPLORING PRACTICE WORKSHOPS