Workshop in Milan
I expect that most of you must be exhausted. After years and years of experimentalism, post-modernism, post-iconoclastic theater rhetoric, you all must feel that our fantastic forum has finally fallen apart.
Well, you’re not alone.
When I started working with Samuel Beckett (face to face), in 1984 in Paris, he too felt this way. I was 33 years old then and the New York off off Broadway scene was fresh, thriving and blossoming. We had groups like the Mabou Mines, Richard Foreman, The Wooster Group, Bob Wilson and countless others (only to mention 5 city blocks on Second Avenue, between East 10th Street and East 4th Street).
Now, decades later, and after having worked in more than 17 countries, written 84 plays, staged 20 ‘modern’ operas, 13 ‘traditional operas’ and worked with the best of the best (like Julian Beck, Philip Glass, Heiner Müller and so on…), I sit here in despair, thinking of what to do in order to recuperate this ‘freshness’. From the emails I receive and from mere intuition, I feel that everyone is just as lost – and / or regurgitating old material.
Here’s the question: “as an artist, WHAT IS IT THAT YOU HAVE TO SAY?”
This is the crucial point. Many people just want to ‘express themselves’ as if our profession were a mere occupational therapy. But it’s not. It’s a talent and it’s a talent mixed with a fantastic control of the emotional system, capable of being steps ahead of the rest of humanity, capable of seeing what the others cannot see. No, it’s not clairvoyance and neither is it a crystal ball: it’s ART.
“as an artist, WHAT IS IT THAT YOU HAVE TO SAY?”
In order to do my workshop, I will ask you this over and over again. No, you don’t need to have a ‘mission’. But you need to have a cause.
It is also IMPERATIVE that you know as much as possible about my work. After all, I don’t teach the generics of theater. I teach the Theater of Gerald Thomas, this one that has, up to now been taught through five books and in so many post graduate courses around the world.
Here’s a link I would like you to see:
As for the rest, there are hundreds of videos of my productions online on:
And welcome to the world of risk taking !
LOVE
Gerald Thomas
For dates, places and submission of bios / CVs , please contact :
info@giuliovalentini.it
ADDRESS of the theater in Milan
TACteatro
– Saturday 4 June 2016 time 11h-18h
– Sunday 5 June 2016 hours 11h-18h
– Saturday 11 June 2016 hours 11h-18h
– Sunday 12 June 2016 hours 11h-18h
– Saturday 18 June 2016 hours 11h-18h
– Sunday 19 June 2016 hours 11h-18h
Gerald Thomas Blog 