Blue Sky
An invitation into the studio.
Below are selected video excerpts from a "blue sky" research laboratory, experimenting with improvisation-based performance practice, exploring embodiment as knowledge on a personal and social level. We observe this knowledge as and through the relations of imagination and movement, drawing on exercises and theory from various performance and embodied practices and psychoanalysis. (Click here for more information, including essays and bibliography.)
Essays
Bibliography
The process is informed by practitioners such as Eugenio Barba, Jerzy Grotowski, Mary Starks Whitehouse, Michael Chekhov, and Sanford Meisner; and the psychoanalytic theory of Donald Winnicott and Carl G. Jung.
The methodology at the catalogue's heart is informed by the rigorous theory of embodied research developed by Ben Spatz; and the "The Songwork Catalogue", by Nazlıhan Eda Erçin, Agnieszka Mendel, and Ben Spatz.
Barba, Eugenio, and Nicola Savarese. A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology: The Secret Art of the Performer. Routledge, 2005.
Chekhov, Michael. To the Actor: On the Technique of Acting. Routledge, 2002.
Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a Poor Theatre. Ed. Eugenio Barba. Routledge, 2002.
Jung, Carl G. Jung on Active Imagination. Ed. Joan Chodorow, Princeton University Press, 1997.
Meisner, Sanford, and Dennis Longwell. Sanford Meisner on Acting. Vintage; 1st Edition, 1987.
Erçin, Nazlıhan Eda, Agnieszka Mendel, and Ben Spatz. "Songwork Catalogue." Urban Research Theater {www.urbanresearchtheater.com}, 2020.
Spatz, Ben. Making a Laboratory: Dynamic Configurations with Transversal Video. Advanced Methods, 2020.
Spatz, Ben. What a Body Can Do: Technique as Knowledge, Practice as Research. Routledge, 2015.
Whitehouse, Mary Starks, et al. Authentic Movement: Essays by Mary Starks Whitehouse, Janet Adler and Joan Chodorow. Ed. Patrizia Pallaro, Jessica Kingsley, 1999.
Winnicott, Donald Woods. Playing and Reality. Tavistock, 1971.