tg STAN de KOE Maatschappij Discordia

How can we make visible the actor’s workshop, the workspace for his art and his practice ? This is the question posed by those at the origins of Atelier (‘workshop’): Damiaan De Schrijver, from tg STAN, Peter Van den Eede from the KOE collective and Matthias de Koning from Maatschappij Discordia. Unlike a painter or sculptor, actors do not have a tangible, visible workspace, and yet this is precisely what the three artists attempt to bring to the stage: an imaginary workshop or a workshop of the imagination. Simple, different actions, such as sitting on a chair or opening a door on a theatre stage, open up a whole panoply of different dramatic possibilities for the actor. Each situation is then honed down, analyzed, and dissected, similar to how a painter does sketches before embarking on his painting. Thus, Atelier, a chaotic and jubilant piece, could be seen as aninvitation for us to get inside the mind and body of the actor. There will be no treatise on the art of the actor nor any definite answers just attempts, trial and error, and experiments, shared, at close hand, with the audience.
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Running time: 1h40