No. 8 From text to concept
European School of Lighting Design:
Amsterdam, 13th-16th March of 2015
The four day international workshop “From Text to Concept” took place in Amsterdam under guidance of Petra Ardai.
The participants of the workshop had a look at one of the world’s most famous, most played, most puzzling and most dull theatre work that is at the same time inevitably a masterpiece. Samuel Beckett’s: Waiting for Godot.
Is it possible to stage this over intellectualized and absurd piece in such a way that it becomes of sensory experience of time, space and human characters so that we, the audience of 2015, can relate to it? Can we find a new form, new timing, new visual storytelling that sweeps off the dust from this theatre text?
The workshop submission was by invitation. This workshop was a part of the European Lighting School program.
European Lighting School (ELS) offers hand-on training courses for technicians working in the lighting industry. The ELS project is spread among 3 partners in 3 countries: Institute of Lighting Design, Prague, Czech Republic, institute Lichtontwerpen (ILO), Amsterdam, Netherlands and Antena, Bátovce, Slovakia.
Participants
Tomáš Morávek
Segolene le Contellec
Onřej Růžička
Mike Evers
Martin Mulík
Katarína Ďuricová
Ján Ptačin
František Fabián
Bas Peeters
Andrea Dröes
Tutor
Petra Ardai
Petra Ardai (H, NL) is a theatre maker, writer, and performer. She is an artistic leader of the Amsterdam and Budapest based theatre group Space. Space makes theatre documentaries, looking to emulate the documentary on stage. Instead of bringing reality into the theatre, Space expands theatre towards reality by involving the public space in the performances. Petra Ardai considers herself as a contemporary storyteller: image, sound, text are equal dramaturgical elements, which she always incorporates in her work.
Petra Ardai studied at the Amsterdam School of the Arts, at the Dartington College of Arts Totnes UK and at DasArts, De Amsterdamse School/Advanced Research in Theatre and Dance Studies.
Apart of writing and teaching, she worked on numerous performances in the Netherlands and abroad: Laika (2002), deworldwideheroshow 1,2,3,4,5,6, an interactive game at different locations, for different age-groups (2002-2004), All that you forgot, an interactive theatrical trajectory (2003), Pure Medium en Beach, installations (2004). Her latest work is a series of exploratory operations on gender identity: The Shapeshifters, society of the third sex, on European identity: The Place Where We Belong, society Europe and about religion/belief and identity: Design God, society of consolation. H.I.B; a Berlin – Budapest – Amsterdam project about historical amnesia an interactive sensory travel though the city, through urban heritage, based on Heiner Müller‘s Hamletmachine. The Cloud: a guided tour in the historical museum of the present (2009), Pig Bank of homeless dreams, a live crowdfounding event (2011), Remember The Good Times, a living heritage museum app at several industrial heritage sites (2012- 2015) and the newest project: STATS, your daily portion of truth, an installation in the public space with time based statistics (2014-2015).
She worked on numerous performances in collaboration with others: theatre makers, musicians, video artists, journalists and scientists. Among them: Edit Kaldor, Eszter Csákányi, Chris Keulenmans, Eszter Babarczy, andcompany&co, Rober Steijn, The Sympthoms, Adrienne Hód, Rozi Szeleczki, Moniek Merx, Dirk Groeneveld.
Petra Ardai worked together with Dutch and international co-producers: Produktiehuis [Frascati], De Brakke Grond, Tolhuistuin, Bellevue Amsterdam, Festival aan de Werf, Utrecht, Oerol,Terschelling, Over het Ij Festival Amsterdam, FFT Düsseldorf, Trafo, Workshop Foundation, Sziget Fesztival Budapest, Aktionsbank,Sophiensaele, Hau, Heiner Müller Fundation Berlin, Rotterdamse Schouwburg, Festival De Keuze Rotterdam, Kaaitheatre Brussels, etc.
