Heading North To Poland and Teatru Arka: Blog 69

Dzien dobry!

Teatru Arka: The Temple. Dybuk - Jewish Legends

Good day yesterday.I travelled west to meet Rob Marshall from Nostairway Media at Teddington studios where his company is based. The strange weather was a bit taxing, with the mix of high winds, snow and sleet enough to disintegrate my umbrella! But it was a fruitful meeting and today we will bash the proposal back and forth for this online soap opera. I am looking forward to working with Rob, whose work I like a lot  - http://www.nostairway.com/

Turning now to the title of today's blog. Some of you may remember way back in January I became exercised by the fact that my Cinderella Blog http://broadwaypantocarolepluckrose.blogspot.co.uk/ was getting a high level of visits even though the project was finished. But more than that at least 70% were coming from Poland. I am still curious about this. I have spoken to a few Polish people about it including a lovely woman called Marta who does a mean holistic massage at the Zen Health Spa in Notting Hill. She told me without much hesitation that she believed Polish people would be reading it because of hope. Hope to come to the UK maybe to improve their lives economically, hope because we have the funding and resources (!) to make theatre in the UK and its virtually impossible to get funding now in Poland, a country well known for its experimental theatre and some of the greatest 20th century directors.

Marta's may be a helpful hypothesis, plus Pradeep's suggestion that it might be used as a case study by students. 

In any event it prompted me some weeks ago to further my conversation with my friend Maciej (was a fellow actor with me in Triple Action Theatre) in Wroclaw. After our great catch up SKYPE conversation I decided to book a trip to Poland, to see if I can get a feel for things there and get a sense of what's happening artistically and socially for myself.

Teatru Arka: Edyta Stein

I am so excited about the news I got yesterday from Maciej that I have been invited to lead a workshop at Teatru Arka  (love the synchronicity of this - a company with the same name as ours!). Indeed Maciej was off to see their new show last night at teatrarka.pl

I have yet to get more details of Arka's work. I hope to speak to Anna, their Artistic Director this week before I head over to Poland in early April. 

I will be leading a workshop called The Soulful Actor which will be a practical and physical exploration of the beginning of creating character through archetypes. I will invite actors to enter the imaginal space to work both on their own imaginative skills development and their emotional and spatial connection with each other in an ensemble.

This is an entirely new workshop project in which I hope to develop a laboratory approach to exploration of the actor's work outside the pressures of putting a show together. I know I have a lot to learn and I am very excited to use this opportunity to experiment with actors in Poland,  a country and theatre which very much influenced my professional career as a young actor in the eighties. 

Broccoli and Yoghurt soup

I also plan to run The Soulful Actor as a four-day laboratory programme for professional and emerging actors in the August Bank Holiday week at our studios at Arc, and will post more information about this when I get back from Poland. 

In the meantime, today is back to writing the soap opera proposal and making some nice broccoli and yoghurt soup inspired by Dorinda's last weekend.

Have a good Sunday.