Viewpoints, Suzuki, and Composition, led by Ellen Lauren and J.Ed Araiza

Ellen Lauren and J.Ed Araiza offer a weeklong intensive based upon the physical and creative practices they innovated for over thirty years as founding members of the SITI Company.

Each day begins with the study of Viewpoints and Suzuki Training while the afternoons consist of the study of Composition. The work is based upon the discoveries of the pioneering theater makers of SITI, Tadashi Suzuki and the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT), Anne Bogart, Mary Overlie, and Wendell Beavers. The sources of the materials come from investigations and practices in visual art making, music, choreography, somatic movement and vocal practice, and composition theory.

This workshop is valuable to performers and makers from all forms and traditions.

Learn more about each aspect of the training below.

Viewpoints

The Viewpoints technique grew out of the postmodern dance world. It was innovated by choreographer Mary Overlie who broke down the dominant issues performers deal with into six categories, the Six Viewpoints. Since that time, the SITI Company continued to research and explore her original work. The language of the Viewpoints allows the individual artist a way to practice observing the present moment with increasing sensitivity and to respond with greater range. The materials of the Viewpoints also allow a group of actors to function together spontaneously and intuitively and to generate bold, theatrical work quickly. The vocabulary develops flexibility, articulation, and strength of perception for both the individual and ensemble.

Suzuki Method of Actor Training

Developed by internationally acclaimed director Tadashi Suzuki and the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT), the Suzuki Method is an integrated body/voice training that seeks to restore the wholeness of the human body to the theatrical context and uncover the actor’s innate expressive abilities. The physical vocabulary is drawn from such diverse influences as ballet, martial arts, and global traditional theater practices. The training seeks to heighten the actor’s emotional and physical power and commitment to each moment on the stage. Attention is on control of the center of gravity, energy, and the breath while maintaining a rich inner concentration.

Composition

Composition is the study of creating theater works quickly in accordance with a set of prompts and requirements. The objective is to work with fundamental principles of collaborative theater making and performance, generating images and theatrical ideas quickly and testing possible approaches to a play or concept. Composition allows each artist to put into practice the skills learned in the morning training, while exploring the contemporary possibilities and historical problems of a given text.

About Ellen Lauren

Ellen Lauren was a founding member and co-artistic director, along with Anne Bogart, of the renowned SITI Company, based in New York City. For over thirty years she toured nationally and internationally as a leading performer in SITI’s original devised works, classic plays from the Western canon and collaborations with a number of artists including Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Martha Graham Dance Company, visual artist Ann Hamilton, Elizabeth Streb Extreme Action Dance, and New York City Opera among others.

As the head of SITI’s educational programming, she has taught at over three hundred schools, companies, universities, and festivals around the world. She also designed and taught the New York-based studios, SITI's bi-annual Conservatory, and SITI’s annual Training Intensive at Skidmore College each summer for over thirty years.

Ms. Lauren is an associate artist with the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT), led by Tadashi Suzuki based in Toga Mura Village, Japan. Since 1989 she has performed around the world with SCOT in Dionysus (Agave), Oedipus (Jocasta), Waiting for Romeo (Juliet), King Lear (Goneril), and Electra (Clytemnestra).

She regularly teaches on behalf of Tadashi Suzuki and SCOT at the Toga International Summer Training Camp, a program she attended as a student in 1981, and went on to lead beginning in 2006.

She is a founding member of the International Consortium on Suzuki Training and produced “Transformation through Training: 2017 International Symposium on SCOT and the Suzuki Training" at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. She produced SCOT’s last US performances of their world-renowned Trojan Women at the symposium.

Ms. Lauren has been an ongoing faculty member at the Juilliard School of Drama at Lincoln Center for over twenty-three years. She directed Iphigenia and Other Daughters (Juilliard Group 43), Trojan Women (Juilliard Group 47), and Oresteia (Group 53). In addition she directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the TFT MFA program at UCLA.

She was the first recipient of the Theatre Communications Group’s Fox Fellowship for Distinguished Achievement. She is published in American Theatre Magazine (“In Search of Stillness”).

Scott Cumming’s book, Remaking American Theater: Charles Mee, Anne Bogart and the SITI Company (Cambridge Studies in American Theatre and Drama), was published in 2010, and in 2018, Mr. Cummings released a chapter in his book Actors’ Actors (Palgrave MacMillan) about Ms. Lauren’s career and practice.

About J.Ed Araiza

J.Ed Araiza has a long and varied history working on multicultural, cross-disciplinary projects as a writer, director, and performer. He holds a BA in theater from Texas A&I University in Kingsville, Texas, and studied journalism at San Antonio College. Early in his career, Araiza was a member of El Teatro de La Esperanza Company and worked at the Los Angeles Actors Theatre and the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

Araiza was a principal actor and original member of the SITI Company, founded by Tadashi Suzuki and Anne Bogart. SITI Company was one of the world’s most important experimental theater ensembles. He is a proponent of Suzuki and Viewpoints training and for more than twenty years has performed in productions in major national and international venues. These include the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; the Olympic Arts Festival in Atlanta; the Brooklyn Academy of Music; Actors Theatre of Louisville; Los Angeles Theater Center; Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center; Harvard University’s American Repertory Theater; Scotland’s Edinburgh Festival; Germany’s Biennale Bonn festival; Japan’s Toga Festival; Ireland’s Dublin Theatre Festival; and Festival Le Standard Ideal, MC 93 Bobigny, in Paris.

As a playwright with seven original full-length plays produced, Araiza is a member of the Dramatist Guild, Austin Script Works, and NoPE (No Passport Required). He has directed sections of 365 Days/365 Plays at the Public Theater in New York; Voluspa for the National Theatre of Iceland; Savitri, Dancing in the Forest of Death for the META Theatre Festival in Delhi (nominated for best production and best director) and MEDEAstories, his original adaptation of the Euripides, with an international cast for the SITI Studio Theatre in New York. He has also written One Fine Day and Miss Julia, a powerplay.

Araiza has been a guest teacher at many universities including the Juilliard School, Yale School of Drama, SUNY Purchase, Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, Columbia University, New York University, Stanford University, National Theater Institute, Harvard University, University of Chicago, Pomona College, Vassar College and the University of Denver. He was artist-in-residence/guest faculty for three semesters over three years at St. Edward’s University in Austin Texas; and artist-in-residence/Coastal Studies Chair at Bowdoin College in Maine. He was also a guest lecturer in acting and performance at Ontario’s University of Windsor. Other international workshops he has led include those at the Singapore International Theatre Festival; South Korea’s Seoul Factory Theatre; the Norwegian Theatre Academy; the Icelandic Academy of the Arts; Festival Iberoamericano in Bogota, Columbia; and, most recently, a month-long residency at TEAK the Finnish Theatre Academy.