| The Dramaturgy of the Flesh
A workshop with Gisela Cardenas
January 20th 11am-4pm
at the Headwaters Theatre
Fee $75
Workshop Description
A five-hour workshop designed to introduce directors, actors and dancers to Cicely Berry’s dramaturgical devices that facilitate the exploration of Shakespeare’s plays through the body, and uncover the inner dynamics of a scene.
Using monologues, dialogues and choral scenes drawn from The Taming of he Shrew, Macbeth, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Coriolanus each participant will have the chance to learn practical devices to activate the inner dynamics of heightened poetic language using their bodies and improvisation as the main tool. In this workshop the voice is understood as another muscle of our body and an extension of it, opening the participant to a wider range of meaning in terms of text that accentuates its poetic qualities.
Cicely Berry has been the voice director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and is known for her work as a voice and text coach. As quoted in the past “I see my job as intrinsically to do the following: (i) through exercises to open out the voice itself so that the actor finds her/his true potential – after all, do not singers train? (ii) by working on text – hearing and listening – to give the actor choice, and power over that choice”. Her work puts actors in touch with their imagination, and therefore, can lead them to their own greater self-awareness. Cicely Berry’s exercises tend to be based on resistance and rougher, physical work. As she usually says quoting Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy: “Where words prevail not, violence prevails.”
About the Instructor
Gisela Cardenas, a NYC based Director, has trained with Ms. Berry at The Royal Shakespeare Company and in New York. She has also trained theater professionals and directed in England, Germany, Peru, Romania, The Netherlands, and Norway. She holds a M.A in Performance Studies from NYU and a M.F.A in Directing form Columbia University. Gisela has been a Drama Desk Nominee, a twice-awarded Princess Grace Recipient and a TCG/ NEA Fellow. Ms. Cardenas has recently directed ACT/eSe Teatro’s production of Oedipus El Rey in Seattle and is scheduled to open R3 with PETE in January 2013 at the Headwaters. |