Belltable:Connect is delighted to announce a series of Professional Development Workshops at Belltable Hub for Mid-West Based Artists in 2020

Please complete this form if you wish to attend: https://forms.gle/aAKjuUFJ6GSoAo3f7

If you have any questions, contact Belltable Artist in Residence Veronica Dyas at dyasvera@gmail.com

Workshop 1:  “Developing Audience Engagement” Facilitated by Simon Thompson
Date:               Wednesday 1st April 2020
Time:               6pm to 8pm
Location:         Studio1, Belltable Hub
Cost:                Free, places allocated upon application on a first-come/first-served basis

Developing Audience Engagement is a short workshop which will focus on how we can develop the relationship between the audience and the performer.
Do we want the audience just to be a passive spectator, soaking up the content with little regard? Or do we want the spectator to be actively engaged, becoming almost an active participant? Sharing emotions, becoming engaged and caring about the performer. In the workshop we will concentrate on breath, movement, the construction of narrative, incorporating play and failure in order to generate empathy. A small part of the workshop will involve the application of neutral mask.
The workshop will be physical and participants should wear warm and comfortable clothing (ideally no tight jeans.

Simon Thompson – PhD Candidate, Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick
Simon is a performer, director and teacher, he began clowning as boy but later he took it seriously and trained with LeCoq, and Gaulier. Along with being a practicing artist he is currently a Lecturer on the M.A. Festive Arts @ U.L and also researching for a PhD (A Creative Pedagogy using Mask and Clown). After years of touring with circus’s, festivals and a variety of theatre companies, in 2014 Simon began to write a Clown Trilogy to be performed as three separate 1hr shows. Part 1 “Clown Noir, This is me” was first up. Then in 2015 Part 2 “Peines d’amour perdues” an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labours Lost”, and finally in 2016 “Nose Business”. Some of his more recent projects include a metaphysical mask exploration of Australian Indigenous Peoples Stories; entitled “Altjeringa” performed by Lucy Dawson as a gestural etude at the Irish World Academy.
If you want to catch him live on stage, he’s touring a clown adaptation of “The Millers Tale” and also “Lifted Up” a full-mask performance that highlights the difficulties of sensory overload in adults who are diagnosed with A.S.D.

 

Workshop 2: I AM NOT A ROBOT Facilitated by Gina Moxley
Date:               Saturday 4th April 2020
Time:               10.30am to 5.30pm
Location:         Studio 1, Belltable Hub
Cost:                €10*  – places allocated on a first-come/first served basis

I AM NOT A ROBOT
We are now at the point where we have to prove to computers that we are not robots. Apparently, software robots can’t recognise traffic lights or awnings. The hope is that actual people can. Some days it’s very encouraging to complete this process and pass this test.
This is just one tiny example of the forced disconnection from what it means to be human. What impact has this had on theatre and playwriting? One of the main functions of writing of all stripes is to teach us empathy. As Nietzsche said: ‘We have art in order not to die of reality.’
In this workshop we will look at how we might respond artistically to the increasingly worrying and bizarre reality we find ourselves in. Our job is to find, shape and train a voice strong enough to rise about the idle chatter, the myriad crises and the fake news. Our job is also to provoke, evoke and entertain. We’ve got urgent work to do.
In the morning we will wrestle with these ideas and write some scenes and scenarios. In the afternoon we will put the ideas on their feet, performing and directing what we’ve just written. At the end of the day we will take time to consider our work together and how the work might go forward.

Gina Moxley is a Dublin based writer, actor and director.
Her most recent play The Patient Gloria was co-produced by The Abbey Theatre and premiered as part of Dublin Theatre Festival in 2018. The show then played at the Traverse Threatre as part of Edinburgh Fringe in 2019 where it won a Fringe First and a Herald Angel. Gina has previously written plays for Rough Magic, Fishamble, National Connections UK, CoisCéim and Pan Pan Theatre. Her recent performances include Pasolini’s Salò Redubbed for Dublin Theatre Festival; The Patient Gloria in Dublin and Edinburgh; Futureproof at Cork Midsummer; Adler &Gibb in Edinburgh, London and L.A.; Playing The Dane in Wuzhen, China; LIPPY in New York, Berlin, Thessaloniki, Prague and China. Directing credits include Spliced by Timmy Creed; My Magnetic North by Gary Coyle; How to Keep an Alien by Sonya Kelly and Solpadeine is My Boyfriend by Stefanie Preissner. Gina has had several radio plays broadcast by RTE and has published some short stories. She has collaborated with artist Sean Lynch on many exhibitions, including Venice Biennale 2015.

*Subsidised by Belltable:Connect