BodyConstitution is a pilot educational programme focused on teaching methodology, based on the experience and practice of studios and artistic groups working at the Grotowski Institute. It is aimed at young actors from Poland and Norway. The project, which will run from January 2014 to April 2016, will include a series of trainings, work sessions, seminars and academies with Polish and Norwegian students and pedagogues, and will culminate in April 2016 in a practical seminar held as part of European Capital of Culture Wrocław 2016, which will present the results of sessions held between 2014 and 2016 and feature special guests.

The project centres on physical actor training, its problems, teaching and self-study, on opening up for new methods of theatre work and on an innovative methodology of the actor’s work understood as his selfdevelopment with particular emphasis on selfdiagnosis and selfreflection as well as the ability to communicate the actor's processes.

One of the main premises of the project is a belief that the creative development of artistic work methods is possible mainly through the constant confrontation of learned techniques with the experience, richness and variety of methods developed by teachers and artists from other traditions and cultures. With this in mind, the Grotowski Institute, together with the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and the PWST National Academy of Theatre Arts in Kraków Branch in Wrocław, wants to create a space for meeting, sharing experiences and learning from invited Polish and Norwegian teachers as well as prominent artists and masters of movement techniques representing various traditions and bodywork methods (martial arts, techniques from the borders of theatre, dance and contact improvisation). This exchange will take place both at the practical/workshop level and in the domain of theoretical reflection.

One of the central objectives of BodyConstitution will be to show the diversity and multi-valance of body practices: from body objectification to body subjectification, from “having a body” to “being a body”. We would also like to build a practical and theoretical heuretics and hermeneutics of the body.

BodyConstitution is a creative extension of the activities focused around acting techniques that have been happening at the Grotowski Institute since 2004.

The core of BodyConstitution will be comprised by groups currently in residence at the Grotowski Institute: studios focused on distinct movement traditions/techniques and three ensembles that have developed their own performer training approaches based on source movement techniques:

• Studio Kalari, led by Sankar Lal Sivasankaran Nair and Justyna Rodzińska-Nair
• Two Paths Studio, led by Przemysław Błaszczak and Jakub Gontarski
• Teatr ZAR, led by Jarosław Fret
• Studio Matejka, led by Matej Matejka
• Jubilo Group, led by Daniel Han and Diego Pileggi

PROGRAMME

 Thu 10 April                                                                                             

The opening meeting will include a presentation of the brief and aims of the project “BodyConstitution: Intercultural dialogue on actor training – a series of work sessions, academies and seminars with drama schools students from Poland and Norway”, undertaken as part of the programme “Promotion of Diversity in Culture and Arts within European Cultural Heritage within the EEA FM 2009–2014”. Participants will include representatives of the institutions that partner with the Grotowski Institute in this project.