Cutting It Up workshop at Brecht Forum upcoming - sliding scale!

[Julia Barclay]

The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB)

presents

Cutting It Up

a two-day workshop

facilitated by Julia Lee Barclay

Saturday, January 26, 2013 from 12:00 noon to 6:00 pm, and
Sunday, January 27 from 12:00 noon to 6:00 pm

at The Brecht Forum
451 West Street (West Side Highway at Bank Street, one block north of
West Eleventh Street)
New York City


In this two-day workshop, we will review the tools learned in the
one-day workshops last Spring and move forward so that participants
can create their own work using these tools. Beginners to the workshop
as well as prior participants are welcome.

On the first day we will review the tools that break down both the
basic elements of how we communicate with each other and the (mostly
unspoken/hidden) rules that govern that communication. Working with
verbal and gesture clichés relating to class, race, religion and
gender, we will look at how (and to whom) we speak, and develop tools
that will enable us to get underneath social clichés in a playful way,
thus coaxing the hidden rules into the room. By so doing, those rules
will be shown to be mutable rather than fixed.

These tools are useful both for creating new kinds of
political-philosophical performances and interactions, and also for
discovering new ways of communicating within and among groups that are
interested in getting beyond habituated patterns of “that's the way it
is” thinking. We will discuss the meaning and possible application of
each tool outside the workshop.

In the second day, participants will break into smaller groups so they
can integrate these tools  with their own specific skills and/or
interests (therapeutic, pedagogical, activist, performance, visual,
musical).  These groups will experiment with creating events and/or
exercises in which these tools can be applied to specific
concerns/disciplines.  These events and/or exercises will be presented
to the whole group at the end of the day.

The Cutting It Up workshop has evolved from over 15 years of work with
an international groups of actors, dancers, writers, visual artists
and musicians in experimental theater labs in New York City (The
Present Company: 1997-2001) and London (Apocryphal Theatre:
2004-2011).

This workshop is open to all and no prior theater experience is
necessary to participate. Pre-registration is strongly encouraged.
Please write to topl...@gmail.com for further information or to let
us know you will be attending.

Julia Lee Barclay is an award-winning director and writer whose work
has been published and produced internationally. She lived in NYC for
most of her professional life, and, having lived and worked in London
for the past eight years, returned home in October 2011. She received
a practice-as-research PhD from the University of Northampton (UK) in
December 2009, for which she received a full fellowship, and was the
founding Artistic Director of Apocryphal Theatre in London from
2004-2011. She has led these workshops at many universities,
conferences, festivals and other venues throughout Europe and the US.
Many of her plays have been published in anthologies and most can be
read online at http://www.indietheaternow.com and she writes about her
shifting roles and identities on her blog Somewhere in Transition at
http://julialeebarclay.blogspot.com. She is Adjunct Assistant
Professor at CUNY, teaching acting (Hunter College).

Tuition--sliding scale: $65-$95

Register online at
http://brechtforum.org/civicrm/event/info?id=12398&reset=1