Photograph and article thumbnail credits: Workcenter Open Program performance of Electric Party Songs at SF MOMA (Photo by James Lyons, 2011)
All of the Open program’s events explore the poetics of encounter. Interdisciplinary Performance Studies at Yale is partnering with the Eli Whitney Museum, InterCambio, Sound Hall, the People’s Arts Collective of New Haven, as well as local artists and activists, to create dialogue and exchange between diverse New Haven communities.
Open Program is an endevour directed by Mario Biagini, Associate Director of the Workcenter and a longtime Grotowski collaborator. Through performance, members of the Open Program - 10 actors from around the world - investigate the moment of meaningful contact between individuals and the poetic word as a tool for human interaction and action. The two performances presented as part of the programme are I Am America and Electric Party Songs. They take as their source material the complexity and richness of Allen Ginsberg’s poetry and traditional African American songs and shouts from the southern United States to highlight distinct relation between song and the poetic word.
I Am America brings the poetry of Allen Ginsberg to life in a performance with language culled from Ginsberg’s poetry and calls, shouts and traditional songs from the southern U.S. Original compositions by members of the Workcenter's Open Program, developed in intensive collaboration over a period of three years, are placed in dialogue with these sources. The performance unfolds around fragments of Ginsberg's poem America.
Electric Party Songs created by the Workcentre’s Open Program under the direction of Mario Biagini, is a cabaret-style performance and a flow of songs and actions based on the poetry Allen Ginsberg. Members of an international group elaborated and composed all of the songs, approaching the meanings, rhythms and sounds of the spoken texts as the seeds of musical and dramatic creation. Their varied backgrounds generate a stylistically diverse body of music, drawing inspiration from blues, rock, pop, punk and traditional sources. The team weaves into Electric Party Songs its investigation of traditional songs from the southern United States.
As part of the project, a symposium entitled Poetry as a practice of encounter is held on the 2nd of March 2013, at the Yale Whitney Theatre. The events are crowned with a experiment in the potentialities of a party as an art form, a special version of Electric Party Songs, featuring DJ Dave Coon at the BAR in New Haven.
Grotowski+Performance Research is a yearlong programme pivoting around the work of Jerzy Grotowski. The programme is presented by the Interdisciplinary Performance Studies at Yale (IPSY) and the Theatre Studies programme at Yale University. The events are part of the Poland-U.S. Campus Arts Project, run by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and supported by the Polish Cultural Institute in New York.
Jerzy Grotowski is among the original, influential theatre practitioners of the 20th century. Grotowski revolutionised the theatre in many ways, changing the way Western theatre practitioners and performance theorists conceive the audience-actor relationship, theatre staging and the craft of acting.
Perhaps best known for his notion of "poor theatre", Grotowski’s practice extends beyond the confines of conventional theatre assuming a long-term, systematic exploration of possibilities for the human being in a performance context. In practical terms, Grotowski’s praxis explores the ways in which specific performance techniques unlock forgotten potentialities in the human being.
Grotowski’s contributions to contemporary performance include a reconceptualization of the physical basis of the actor's art and an emphasis on the performer's obligation to daily training, as well as the exploration and refinement of a performance technique rooted in the principles of Stanislavsky s Method of Physical Actions. Early on, Grotowski articulated a need for a type of performance laboratory modeled after the Bohr Institute (in nuclear physics), a forum for the investigation of the principles governing artistic creativity, which would demystify the creative process. Grotowski's formulation of investigations into the actor's craft, while by no means scientific, were focused on denoting the "objective" - understood as observable facts with certain precise and determinable effects on the participant's state of energy.
Grotowski s life-long research, while taking various forms and undergoing multiple transformations, is unified by a single underlying propulsion: the work on the self with and through the other. There are at least two threads that run through all stages of Grotowski s work. The first is a focus on the self-development of the individual both as an artist and as a human being. The second is an exploration of the potentialities of a meeting between two or more people.
Run by the Warsaw-based Adam Mickiewicz Institute, the Poland-U.S. Campus project aims at promoting Polish art and culture in some of America's most significant academic centres, with numerous artistic exchanges, presentations, exhibitions and discussions scheduled to visit on-campus centers across the US.
Event schedule:
22nd and 23rd of February 2013, 8 pm
ELECTRIC PARTY SONGS
Calhoun Cabaret, 189 Elm Street, New Haven, CT 06511
28th of February and the 1st of March 2013, 8 pm
I AM AMERICA
with set built by children at the Eli Whitney Museum
Whitney Theater, 53 Wall Street, New Haven, CT 06511
2nd of March 2013, 11 am - 4 pm
SYMPOSIUM: POETRY AS A PRACTICE OF ENCOUNTER
Whitney Theater, 53 Wall Street, New Haven, CT 06511
3rd of March 2013, 4 pm
ELECTRIC PARTY SONGS
(An experiment in the potentialities of a party as an art form), with special guest DJ Dave Coon
BAR, 254 Crown Street, New Haven, CT 06511
The Associate Director of the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, Mario Biagini, has been a central contributor to practical research in the domain of Art as Vehicle for more than twenty years. Working in a team led by Thomas Richards, Biagini quickly became a key member of the Workcenter's practical research. He was a doer in Downstairs Action and a principal doer in Action, a performative opus created by Richards that underwent continuous development from 1994 to 2009. Beginning relatively early in his residency at the Workcenter, Biagini was entrusted by Grotowski with artisanal and pedagogical responsibilities that lead him in 1987 to direct a working team at the Workcenter, working as principal actor and also as director.
At the Workcenter in 2007, Biagini began the supervision of the newly formed Open Program, continuing the investigative thrust of Project The Bridge in its exploration of publicly accessible performances that keep alive within themselves aspects of the subtle interior process characteristic of Art as Vehicle.
To date Mr. Biagini has directed four new performances by the Open Program team based on the poetry of Allen Ginsberg: I Am America, Not History's Bones - a Poetry Concert, Electric Party Songs, and Electric Party. In addition to his artistic contributions to the Workcenter, Biagini refined his pedagogical skills and knowledge by assisting Jerzy Grotowski in the preparation of lessons and conferences for the Collège de France. He also frequently translated for Grotowski in public meetings and assisted Grotowski in the translation and revision of texts.
As a well-recognized director and teacher, Biagini is regularly invited to speak about his work and the Workcenter s research, and to lead workshops in prestigious schools and artistic institutions across Europe and the U.S. Biagini has been a guest teacher and speaker in Italy, France, Poland, Greece, Turkey, Russia, Singapore, USA, Tunisia and the U.K., among others.
Editor: SRS
Source: Polish Cultural Institute in New York, press release, Dominika Laster