Join us for a week-long, bilingual workshop of exploring dynamic practices with Jessie Mill and Katalin Trencsényi!
“Every archipelagic thought is a thought of trembling, of non-presumption, but also of openness and sharing.”
— Edouard Glissant, Treatise on the Whole-World
Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal (PWM), in collaboration with the Centre des auteurs dramatiques (CEAD) is announcing their third, week-long dramaturgy intensive workshop, Archipelago Dramaturgies/Archipel de dramaturgies, jointly led by Jessie Mill and Katalin Trencsényi. The aim of the intensive is to explore, exchange, share and innovate dramaturgical practices across cultures and art forms via collaboration, debates and discussion. The environment for our collective discovery (as has always been the case with these intensives) is a shared place where we feel supported to explore together, with a permission to fail and no pressure to deliver. Through these playful exchanges we hope to uncover things that cannot be planned, only found together. The format of the workshop will be hybrid (on-site and online) and bi-lingual (English and French).
Schedule
(5-day mixed on-site and virtual workshop)
9:30AM to 5:00PM EST every day
Monday, March 8 to Friday, March 12, 2021.
On-site location
7250 Clark St., #103
Montréal, QC
H2R 2Y3
This year’s theme is inspired by the local geography and forces of nature. Combining geography, philosophy and dramaturgy, we want to investigate how thinking with the archipelago (paying attention to the power of cross-currents, connections and the dynamic form of constellations) can help us, performing arts practitioners, to negotiate a fluid balance between a variety of cultures, practices, and knowledge systems. With this workshop we would like to think about practices that evoke and rely on interconnectedness, and inter-relations.
The workshop will be rooted in our local (artistic) communities and will be made to measure to respond to the participants’ projects. The aim is to create rewarding circulations and navigations between the contributions of all the participants and the workshop leaders.
For each day of the week, we’ll have a different entry to explore dramaturgy from that given perspective: space/time, body/physicality, text/translation, sound/silence/voice, and audience. Through these and the sharing of questions rising from the participants’ concrete and actual working processes and explorations, we want together to find out more about how thinking with the archipelago can inform and perhaps improve our work.
The format will cover:
- work in the studio (as a group);
- individual work and readings;
- encounters with invited guests (online and in-situ);
- discussions;
- access to visual documents, recordings & films;
- creating a shared virtual / online library;
- one-to-one support;
- one theatre outing;
- and our week’s closing feast.
To join us on this collective journey, exploration, exchange and practice-improvement, PWM and CEAD are offering the opportunity to participate in this week-long intensive for eight dramaturgs (of any performance discipline) or working pairs (dramaturgs with artist practitioners-playwrights, devisers, designers, choreographers, etc.) from the Quebec community who are interested in this topic, and are currently working on a piece or have a practice-related investigation that is challenging, innovative in its dramaturgy and resonates with our keywords.
Keywords and inspirations
- in-between-ness;
- interconnections;
- connectivity;
- dynamic forms;
- cross currents;
- sea changes;
- constellations;
- relationality;
- hybridity;
- metamorphosis;
- transformation;
- fluid states.
Requirements
- identify yourself as a dramaturg (of any performance discipline, including dance) or be part of a dramaturg/artistic practitioner pairing;
- have a project that you are working on/part of, that is relevant from a dramaturgical aspect or have a project/a question in mind that you would like to explore in the near future and this workshop would be relevant and useful for developing it;
- willingness to make a short (15-min) presentation about this particular project for the workshop participants;
- competency in both English and French to be able to follow and participate in a bi-lingual conversation;
- willingness to work collaboratively;
- to be free for the entire length of the workshop week.
Application Instructions
To apply, send a short application in English or French to Harris Frost at harris@playwrights.ca with the subject line: Application – Archipelago Dramaturgies. Your application should answer these questions:
- Applicant(s) name(s) and contact details;
- What is the work-in process project you are bringing into our working space to examine;
- How will this project benefit from your participation in the intensive;
- Your short biography;
- Confirmation that you are free during the whole period of the workshop, and that you are willing to (and in case of a collaboration have permission to) make a presentation about your work;
- Any access requirements.
Apply before 11:59PM on January 11, 2021 to ensure that your application will be considered.
About the Workshop Leaders
Jessie Mill has worked as an artistic advisor at the Festival TransAmeriques for its programming in theatre and dance since 2014. She is also responsible for organizing the festival’s artistic encounters and outreach activities, such as the “FTA Clinics”. She provides guidance and support to stage productions (Canada France, Burkina Faso), conducts interviews with artists and teaches on occasion. She is also part of the editorial board of Liberté, a cultural magazine in Quebec. Jessie writes about performances and critical issues in the performing arts. Between 2010 and 2014, she was the international projects’ advisor at the Centre des auteurs dramatiques (CEAD), where she currently serves as associate dramaturg. She currently works as a facilitator at the 2019-2020 edition of the Labo Elan, part of Récréâtrales, a Pan-African residency for writing, research and development in the field of theatre in Ouagadougou.
Katalin Trencsényi is a dramaturg and researcher of Hungarian origin, based in London. Her areas of interest are contemporary theatre and performance, in particular: new dramaturgy, collaborative processes, women in theatre, and epidemic and theatre. A freelance dramaturg since 2000, Katalin has worked with the National Theatre, the Royal Court Theatre, Soho Theatre, Corali Dance Company, and Deafinitely Theatre, and with many independent artists. As a theatre-maker Katalin has worked and taught internationally: in Belgium, Canada, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, and the US. Katalin co-founded the Dramaturgs’ Network (d’n) in 2001, has worked on its various committees, and served as its President (2010-2012). Katalin is the author of Dramaturgy in the Making. A User’s Guide for Theatre Practitioners (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015), editor of Bandoneon: Working with Pina Bausch. (Oberon Books, 2016), co-editor with Bernadette Cochrane of New Dramaturgy: International Perspectives on Theory and Practice (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2014). Since 2018 Katalin has been working as the editor of the dramaturgy section of the global theatre portal, TheTheatreTimes.com.
WITH THE collaboration of
This workshop is financially supported by
