Unrehearsed Futures: MASTER-LESS livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv Thursday 3 June 2021 at 4 a.m. EDT (New York, UTC -4) / 9 a.m. BST (London, UTC +1) / 10 a.m. SAST (Cape Town, UTC +2) / 1:30 p.m. IST (Mumbai, UTC +5:30) / 6 p.m. AEST (Hobart, UTC +10).
Although the nomenclature of physical theatre methods are predominantly the names of male "founders" (with notable exceptions!), instances of influential women practitioners abound. Please join us for a discussion of the politics and practice of gender in the canonical lineages of physical theatre.
Speaker 1: Cass Fleming
Organization / School: Founder, The Chekhov Collective | Lecturer, Goldsmiths, University of London
Cass Fleming is the founder and co-director of The Chekhov Collective and works with the department of Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths. She is a director and a teacher of acting, directing and theatre making. Her practice and research centres on the use of play in the actor training and theatre making processes developed by Michael Chekhov and Suzanne Bing (2013). Cass has a long-standing interest in developing non-canonical actor training genealogies and co-edited a special edition of the Theatre, Dance and Performance Training journal entitled ‘Against the Canon’ (11:3) with Mark Evans (2020). She also contributed an article on the work of Bing and her female collaborators to this journal (2020). She has also written a book section with Mark Evans on the director Jacques Copeau, and the contribution of Bing to his practice, in The Great European Stage Directors, Vol. 3 (Bloomsbury, 2018) and presented a paper ‘Suzanne Bing: The interior rhythm and musicality of play’, at the Makings of the Actor: Rhythm in Acting and Performance Conference, Athens, March 2021. Cass was lead researcher, with Tom Cornford, on the long term, muti-institutional practice research project that led to a book: Michael Chekhov in the Twenty-First Century: New Pathways, which she edited with Cornford (Bloomsbury, 2020). The Chekhov Collective has run over 50 open access practice research events including workshops, lectures, work demonstrations, theatre productions and panel discussions exploring different uses and dialogues with Chekhov Technique. In 2020/2021 she is Scholar in Residence, with Roanna Mitchell, at the Michael Chekhov Association in the USA where they are exploring: The ‘Third Space’: Chekhov Technique in Pedagogic, Applied, Therapeutic and Community Contexts and in February 2021 she presented a paper “A Constant Process of Expansion’, on the Michael Chekhov: Imagination and Community Panel at the Performing Arts Research in Times of Crisis (II).Conference, Universidade Estadual do Paraná, Brazil.
Speaker 2: Paola Coletto
Organization / School: Pedagogical Director, The School for Theatre Creators
Originally from Padua, Italy, Paola Coletto is a graduate of the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris and has the honor of being one of 40 students in the school’s 50-year history to receive Masters Certification in Theatre Pedagogy under Lecoq’s direction. Her combined 25-year career as a teacher, artistic director, business coach and sport trainer, has provided her with the fortune to work with individuals from over 35 different nationalities. She has worked as an award-winning artistic director, teacher, director, and actress in England, Scotland, Spain, France, Israel, South Africa, the United States, and Italy. Relocating to Chicago in 2004, Paola has created a wide net of collaboration both in teaching and directing with Universities like DePaul, Northwestern, Columbia College, UIC and theater companies like Redmoon, Plasticene and 500 Clown. Additionally, she founded The School for Theatre Creators in 2012 in Chicago, which offers professional courses in Devising Theatre and Performance at a postgraduate level. At the School, Paola leads a team of teachers with a wide diversity of experience in acting, directing and writing.
Curator: Amy Russell
Founder of Embodied Poetics
Amy Russell is Founder and Pedagogic Director of Embodied Poetics, which offers exploratory workshops and three-month summer intensives on the pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq, Jacques Copeau and Suzanne Bing in London, U.K., internationally and online. She is the Pedagogic Co-founder of the London International School of Performing Arts (L.I.S.P.A.) and founder and Chair of the Naropa University M.F.A. in Lecoq-based Actor Created Theatre. She has taught theatre creation internationally since 2003, at schools and conservatories, theatre companies and festivals. She is also an award-winning playwright and a qualified and accredited Gestalt psychotherapist and group facilitator. Her doctoral research at the University of Tasmania, Australia, is focused on theatre devising as a practice of social space.
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