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The RPA is thrilled to offer excerpts from Routledge titles to provide context and further understanding to our videos, including excerpts from Annie Loui's The Physical Actor, Avra Sidiropoulou's Directions for Directing. Theatre and Method, Suzette Coon's Short Plays with Great Roles for Women, Maria Shevtsova's Chekov in an Age of Uncertainty and Postmodernist Aesthetics, and Gary Cassidy's Contemporary Rehearsal Practice: Anthony Neilson and the Devised Text.
Frans Hakkemars
Jan Klaassen, Katrijn and the Crown of King William Alexander was made at the Coronation of the Dutch King William Alexander and Queen Maxima. Hakkemars adapted the Dutch tradition of hand glove puppetry with a modern twist. Mixing modern requisites as a chopping cart with the essential rude fights in comic and ritmic percussion. Interaction with the public is an essential part of each performance.
Frans Hakkemars has been a puppeteer since 1980. He both performs solo and works together with Koomans poppentheater and Droomtheater. He studied sociology of welfare, and he is a councillor at NVP-UNIMA-Netherlands.
Amie Dowling
Well Contested Sites was made in 2013 to tenderize people who were distanced from the issue of mass incarceration as a means to create an opportunity for dialogue. The title Well Contested Sites, refers to an individual imprisoned body as the site of carceral control where one is subjected to an elaborate choreography of containment and segregation. Behind prison walls, regimented rituals of eating, cleaning, labor and leisure curtail individual freedom of movement in the service of “orderly” systems, notating where and how one moves through space and time, shaping relations between objects, spaces, bodies.
Separate Sentences examines incarceration not as a single or discrete event, but a dynamic process that unfolds over time, affecting families for generations. The film draws upon individual experiences and physical memories of a cast that includes formerly incarcerated men — and their sons. Recent estimates show that 2.7 million US children have a parent who is incarcerated, and more than 5 million children—7 percent of all US children—have had a parent in prison or jail at some point.
Waterline and Ways to Disappear
Since the summer of 2013 the Artistic Ensemble has met weekly for two-hour rehearsals. The first “public” performance, in November 2014, was Waterline. Since then, three other devised evening length pieces have been performed, including Ways to Disappear in 2016.
AE members are scholars, directors, musicians, choreographers, activists, poets. designers – investigating modes by which to author their own bodies and histories. The members’ creativity offers possible pathways for visibility, connection, and agency. Personal story, writing, historical and current events, movement metaphors are brought to the group by inside and outside members and are developed over months of experimentation and rehearsal. The Artistic Ensemble asks audience members to take action - small or large- in dismantling the scaffolding that keeps the prison system intact.
The Strindberg Laboratory
“California Dreaming” was part of Strindberg Laboratory’s “Demonstration project” through California Arts Council’s “Prison Project” with people who are about to be released back into society. The play was formed from the dreams of our students about their family, relationships and their desire for a positive The play’s story centers on a lost soul who winds up in a magical train station where he is whisked away by a wise man who shows him how to build a better future through songs, scenes, dance, and poetry. The play was performed at California Rehabilitation Center in 2017.
The Strindberg Laboratory is a non profit theatre company that works inside correctional facilities in Los Angeles. In 2017 we created and directed "California at California Rehabilition Center.
George Rodosthenous
Directing Musical Theatre: An Interview with Michael Fentiman
In this Interview with theatre director Michael Fentiman, George Rodosthenous discusses different directorial approaches to musical theatre. Fentiman talks about his directorial style, approaching the chorus, the collaboration with the musical and movement directors. Michael Fentiman (born 1 June 1982 at Harlow, Essex, England) is a British theatre director whose directing credits include Titus Andronicus for the RSC, The Importance of being Earnest at the Vaudeville Theatre, Raising Martha and Joe Orton's Loot at the Park Theatre, London, Sweeney Todd, Royal Academy of Music/Theatre Royal Stratford East, Cinderella the Musical at Nuffield Southampton Theatres, I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change at the RWCMD, The Light in the Piazza at Mountview, The Last Days of Anne Boleyn (writer and director) for Historic Royal Palaces at the Tower of London, and Amélie the Musical (West End and UK tour). In 2020 his production of Amélie was nominated for three Olivier Awards, including Best New Musical and Best Actress in a Musical. The production's Original Cast Recording, which Michael co-produced, was nominated for Best Musical Theatre Album at the 63rd Grammy Awards.
Designing Musical Theatre: Madeleine Girling
In this Interview with theatre designer Madeleine Girling, George Rodosthenous discusses different design approaches to musical theatre. Girling talks about her preparation before working on a musical theatre production, her discussions with the director and establishing a common language. Working with actor musicians and the opportunities this provides for the design was associated with her recent work on Amélie (West End and UK Tour). Madeleine is an Honorary Associate of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Her awards include the Linbury Prize for Design (2013) and the Lord William Memorial Prize for Design (2012). She has designed extensively for the theatre https://madeleinegirling.co.uk
George Rodosthenous is Associate Professor in Theatre Directing at the University of Leeds, and has edited The Disney Musical on Stage and Screen and Twenty-First Century Musicals: From Stage to Screen.
Patricia Bardi
Jig Saw is a duet performance that is captivating, sustained, high-intensity interaction that blurs the boundaries between dance, voice, text, improvised performance and music. The performance effortlessly flows from sharp, comical dialogue to an imaginative interplay of vocal dance, music, and improvised performance.
Patricia Bardi and Alex Maguire create fluid tides of mood and movement in a resonant and vibrant exchange between voice, dance, movement, text and music.
Patricia Bardi and Alex Maguire create performances that build bridges and dismantle boundaries between movement, dance, voice and music. They allow room for the unexpected to emerge while creating finely tuned and evocative characters of emotion, memory and image.
Patricia Bardi’s written text provides a ground plan for the improvised collaboration with percussionist, Michael Vatcher’s music and sound textures to transform and evolve the expressive qualities of sound, rhythm, movement and text in the performance. The performance is an encounter with memory itself. The haphazard, unpredictable stories that arrive from somewhere we do not know and reveal a flash of insight glimmering in the dark recesses of our lived experience.
Since 1987, The Rocca Project has been an annual summer retreat for interdisciplinary performance arts and healing practice in Roccatederighi, a picturesque hilltop village in rural Tuscany. The program interweaves dance, theatre, movement, ensemble improvisation, active breath, voice practice, integrative somatic practice, and bodywork. The documentary includes a view of the unique village setting, the local peoples responses to having these activities in their village, aspects of the training approach to somatic voice, body and movement, Antonello Mendolia, master teacher of Commedia dell’Arte, teaching his work with the neutral mask, student’s feedback about their experience, a village performance by the students and a solo performance by Patricia Bardi.
The Sense of Touch- The Role of Bodywork in Perception and Embodiment Practice
Patricia Bardi at the VMI Center in Amsterdam had a series of interviews with Antonio Rodriguez, Art Professor at the Federal Institute of Paraná (IFPR). ORCID, Brazil. Rodriguez was participating in the one year Foundation Course of the Voice Movement Integration (VMI) Somatic Practice Certification Program centred in Amsterdam. This interview focused on how the capacity of hands-on touch and Organ Rebalancing can affect and change a persons’ relationship to their presence and expression.
Embodying the Voice through Movement Presence
In her talk, Patricia Bardi presents some of the guiding principles of her work, invites volunteers from the audience to experience the ‘Active Breath’ practice focusing on organ presence with voice and movement and shares a short video clip of a recent performance of Vocal Dance collaborative work with pianist, Alex Maguire.
Physical Voice within the Moving Body at the Brain, Body & Cognition World Conference
In Patricia Bardi’s demonstrative lecture, she presents the guiding principles of her work, demonstrates some of the vocal somatic movement practices and explains how they work to align and integrate the body in serving the creative movement impulse. She focuses on the organ system to describe how scientific and embodied understanding of subconscious, life-sustaining systems can generate profound creative wealth in the dancer and movement artist.
Patricia Bardi is the founder/director of the accredited certification program Voice Movement Integration (VMI) Somatic Practice combining Vocal Dance, Voice Movement Integration, and Vital Movement Integration Bodywork centered in Amsterdam - an accredited program in somatic movement education and natural health practice. She is a dance/voice artist, researcher, educator, bodywork specialist, registered somatic movement therapist (ISMETA) and licensed natural health practitioner (BATC).
Bardi is the originator of Organ Rebalancing, an accredited advanced bodywork training, and has received a London Arts Choreographer Award and an Arts Council England bursary researching North Indian vocal music in India. Bardi continues to tour extensively as a teacher, performer, and researcher. She contributed the chapter “Awakening Resonance in the Moving Body” to Somatic Voices in Performance Research and Beyond published by Routledge in 2020.