PARATHEATER LAB: ENCOUNTER, IMAGINATION, and ACTIVE CULTURE

“What does it mean, not to hide from another person?...Not to play a different person?...and to come forth like that?”  

This was the question asked by members of Jerzy Grotowski’s Laboratory Theater when they broke with traditional performance in 1969 to pursue what they called “paratheatre” or “next-to” theatre. What would happen, they asked, if we took the same intentionality that we bring to acting training and rehearsal and applied it to open-ended explorations of ritual and play? What possibilities emerge when we free ourselves from the need to produce anything? 

In this 5-part series, participants will engage with improvisational movement, exercises in psychosomatic awareness, and group witnessing activities. Our focus will be on building trust with each other so that we can practice moving and being with more potential and with an enhanced sense of creative agency. We will try out a variety of techniques and practices that emerge from Grotowski and those who have developed on his work: “Rivers” are open scores that emphasize imagination and play while the “plastiques” are a particular way of approaching the body’s relationship to impulse within those rivers and beyond. The “I Am One Who” provides a space for building comfort in the presence of others. These techniques are useful for actors, dancers, and performers of any kind, but they are mostly just opportunities to be present in the world in a more fluid and playful way. 

No acting, dance, or performance experience is necessary. Space is limited, PWYC on a sliding scale. Please reach out if payment is a barrier. This work is meant to build community, not to create barriers.

5 sessions, Saturdays Jan 3, 10, 17, 24, & 31. 10am-12:30pm.

Payment tier suggestions: $75, $100, or $125 for the whole series.

BEN CAPP is a performance artist, director, and printmaker who has been working in the Grotowski lineage for over five years. He is the producer and director of devised works with the Minneapolis-based company Virginia Twins, and along with the collective Experience Cult Research Group he has hosted multiple long-form paratheatrical retreats and workshops. Primary influences include Steve Wangh, Raïna Von Waldenburg, and Antero Alli. Other influences include ideas and techniques from clown, contact improv, butoh, Stanislavsky, and the work of Carol Fox Prescott. Ben holds a BFA in Theater Arts from Carleton College.