WORKSHOPS
Christina Kyriazidi gives regularly workshops for children, adolescents, and young actors in Berlin and internationally. She created and ran the LAB (Laboratory Actors Berlin) between 2014 - 2016.
THEATRE LAB
Physical and Vocal Training
Creation tools for actors
The laboratory is directed to theatre actors and physical performers.
The purpose is to create a group of people who train together towards a performative result. It is necessary for the group to be fixed and kept the same throughout the whole duration of the laboratory in order to promote mutual trust in each other and in the work and to help the individual development through the group experience. Every meeting is divided into two parts. The first part concentrates on the actor's physical and vocal training and the second part is dedicated to composition/creation.
PHYSICAL AND VOCAL TRAINING
FOR ACTORS
The training is directed to theatre actors and directors.
The class is divided into two parts. The first part concentrates on the actor's physical and vocal training and the second part is dedicated to composition/creation.
Through an intense body/mind connection, the exploration of different qualities of energy and the experience of uncomfortable zones in the body and voice, the training aims to help the actor break his automatisms and reach a stage expression beyond his physical habits and clichés.
The actor will work not towards a body that moves, but towards a body free of personal blockings and transparent enough to communicate a story, through movement or stillness.
The training is based on the technique of physical and vocal actions and exercises the ability of the actor to treat his physical and vocal instrument with conscience, detail, and precision, as well as to engage his body and mind in acting (to act= to realize actions)- not in the description, nor pretension. Through real actions (movements with real impulses) the actor will focus on how to build his own presence on stage.
Contents:
o Training: body/mind connection, spherical awareness, breathing, rhythm, flow, resistance, energy, concentration, balance/unbalance, work with weight
o Creation: difference movement/action, construction of physical and vocal scores of actions, the interaction between organic and narrative dramaturgy, repetition, relation body/space, improvisation/connection between text/body.
CREATION TOOLS
FOR ACTORS
The workshop proposes different ways of using the physical and vocal instruments of the actor in order to discover, elaborate and transmit the emotional state of the theatre character. It aspires to provide the actor with the right tools to explore his body and voice potential in order to create a theatre character.
Areas of research:
– body and space relation
– feet: placement and moving of weight, relation with the ground, balance/unbalance
– palms: actions/ hidden actions
– breathing in relation to physical/vocal action
– rhythm, flow/break of flow of movement
– materials and resistance of movement
– connection theatre text and actor's voice
– contrapuntos in body and dramaturgy
– difference movement/action, form/information
– precision in the construction of physical/vocal scores of actions
– from physical awareness to the actor's presence
SOLO PERFORMANCE
The actor directing herself
The workshop focuses on the creation of a solo theatre performance.
It accompanies the participant from the composition of physical and vocal material, till the moment of elaboration and montage of these materials into a performance that communicates a story through leaps of associations.
Directing yourself in a solo performance requires being a creator and spectator at the same time. That is, find the right balance between, the sense that the performance has for you as an actor and the associations that your actions aspire to awake to the spectator.
Think at the same time in terms of actions and associations, images, costumes, objects, space, and lights.
Undertake the inner travel of the creator, while being responsible for a composition that addresses the inner universe of the spectator.
At the end of the workshop, every participant will have created a solo theatre performance with the materials generated in the workshop.
THE DRAMATURGY OF THE ACTOR
The dramaturgy of the actor is the organic dramaturgy of the performance and concerns the way of composing and interweaving the dynamism, the rhythms, and the physical and vocal actions of the actors, in order to stimulate sensorial the attention of the spectator. (Eugenio Barba)
The workshop proposes an exploration of different processes of self-creation: the generation of organic material and the procedure of montage and final elaboration.
It parts from the principle that, the actor's body must be studied with conscience, aiming towards both the physical awareness in movement, and the body/mind connection that permits the expression to exceed the form, and the actor to acquire a powerful presence.
We work simultaneously in 2 directions:
Vertical direction: the connection between movement and its internal necessity (impulse), stretching the difference between form and in/formation.
Horizontal direction: the technique of montage of different images in an evocative way.
The participants will create individual scores of physical and vocal actions that can be repeated with detail and precision and be able to communicate a story, through a dynamic narration.
PHYSICAL DRAMATURGY & ORGANICITY
IN THE WORK OF THE ACTOR
The workshop offers an intensive frame of acting research in the areas of intention, impulse and contact of action, qualities of movement, body and space relation, rhythm and break of rhythm, materials, and resistance of movement, physical and emotional unbalance, archetypes and inner movements, line of emotions and map of relations between characters. It investigates the flow state in the physical and emotional training of the actor, as well as the dramaturgy of movement and space. Eventually, it aspires to provide the participants with the necessary tools of physical, emotional, and character training that lead from physical awareness to the actor's presence.
FROM POETRY TO STAGE
Physical dramatization of poetry.
This workshop will accompany the actor on her journey from poetry to stage. Starting from a poem or a staple of poems, the actor shall create theatrical material, translating poetic images into physical actions, the atmosphere and dynamics of poetic speech into a stage environment, and the associations of poetry into theatre dramaturgy and stage presence.
The workshop also offers an intensive framework for acting research, especially with regard to the tools of physical theatre and the dramaturgy of movement and space.
The seminar is aimed at actors, dancers, performing arts students, and directors.
FLOATING STORIES
A sensory approach to physical theatre
In this workshop, we will investigate how emotion floats over the body of the actor. We refer here to an actor-creator who is responsible for their stage dramaturgy and presence, as well as for the associative, physical, and emotional landscapes they present to the spectator.
Initially, the participants will learn to generate organic material through improvisation and physical research, elaborate and edit it, till they create a final synthesis (score of physical and vocal actions).
Then through sensory awareness, we will focus on the emotion that the actor-creator wishes to communicate to the spectator and how this emotion may be triggered through the physical behavior of the actor.
The emotion of the actor cannot be prefixed and it is every time subjected to the here and now of the performance. However, the emotion must appear inside the spectator every time. How the actor may invite, through their stage material and presence, the spectator into a universe of diverse emotions?
The actor's material and presence is fragile and precious at the same time, like the ephemeral of theatre itself. It's a call to a personal encounter, an inner conversation with each individual spectator, that may or may not take place. But when it does, it is a unique, transformative and rare experience, almost like a miracle.