Workshop Index

Aarne Neeme
From banquet to fast food

John Paul Fischbach
No 4th Wall: Directing Site-specific Theatre

Bronwyn Tweddle
The Long Arm of Coincidence: Creating a Physical Score for ‘Classic’ Playtexts

Peter Tulloch
Answers First

Aarne Neeme
From banquet to fast food

Aarne will be hosting a workshop based on the theatre director’s adjustment to the screen. He will analyse how an understanding of the notion of the moving camera and editing is developed. A Director in the theatre guides the attention of the audience. However, in screen work the story is told as montage. This whole process can be defined as learning the grammar of the camera. Aarne will also discuss some more practical aspects of screen work such as editing and time restraints.

Aarne began his professional career in 1963 at Emerald Hill in Sydney. He then attended the inaugural drama course at UNSW. He has held positions as Artistic Director of Octagon Theatre at the University of WA, Resident Director of Nimrod Street Theatre, Artistic Director of the National Theatre Perth, Artistic Director of Hunter Valley Theatre Company, Head of Theatre Department at WAAPA, Artistic Director of Hole In The Wall Theatre in Perth and Senior Fellow at the National University of Singapore. He has also worked as a freelance director and teacher of directing. Aarne’s television credits include: Blue Heelers, MDA, All Saints, Home and Away and Neighbours.

John Paul Fischbach
No 4th Wall: Directing Site-specific Theatre

This is an “on your feet” problem solving - exploration - demonstration. We will be working outdoors with 4 actors in a found space for an hour to explore the strengths and challenges of creating site specific work where the directors tools now include myth, ritual, spectacle, scale, environment, time of day, and audience. We will embrace the challenges of realism, the awkwardness of distance or closeness, the size and movement of the audience and some more mundane matters like budget pyrotechnics and public liability insurance.

Recently John Paul accepted the position of Artistic Director and the inaugural International Puppet Carnival was held this June. John Paul has a long history of directing theatre including events and festivals including the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles and most recently Artistic Director of Vertigo Mystery Theatre in Calgary. John Paul’s directing career runs the gamut from site-specific ritual theatre in a limestone quarry in the Canadian Rocky Mountains to full-scale grand opera in Chicago. He has lived and worked in the U.S., Denmark, England, and Canada. He keeps a very busy schedule directing, producing, teaching and designing and now writing. He just has written a children’s book about a little penguin on Philip Island that will be published this September.

Bronwyn Tweddle
The Long Arm of Coincidence: Creating a Physical Score for ‘Classic’ Playtexts

Since 2002 I have been developing a method for creating unexpected physical images for classic plays, using the body rather than the playtext as the starting point. Utilising a process of random association, a physical score is created for the whole play, which is later ‘justified’ by integration with the text. Through overcoming the opposition between the text and the imposed physicality, the director and actors discover the ‘rules of the game’ in the fictional world of the play. Random physical actions appear to supply a metaphorical subtext when ‘read’ against the words of the play. This method rids actors of cliché and opens up interpretive possibilities that would not have emerged if we’d begun with textual analysis. It also forces the audience to engage more actively in drawing meaning from the play. I will demonstrate this method with an example from Shakespeare, but I have also used it for other ‘heightened’ dramatic literature – Dürrenmatt’s The Visit, Wedekind’s Lulu, and Borchert’s Expressionist-influenced The Man Outside.

Bronwyn is a theatre director and dramaturg, who has been a lecturer in the Theatre Programme of Victoria University of Wellington since 2001. As a director, Bronwyn has produced her own bilingual adaptations of Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine (1996, Melbourne), Gertrude Stein’s Dr Faustus Lights the Lights (1998, Berlin), and the New Zealand premiere of Wolfgang Borchert’s The Man Outside (2002, Wellington). In 2005 she directed Peter Barnes’ adaptation of Frank Wedekind’s Lulu at the Fortune Theatre (Dunedin) and her January 2006 production of Heiner Müller’s Quartett (BATS Theatre, Wellington) toured to Allen Hall Theatre (Dunedin) in June. She is a core member of the teaching staff on the Masters of Theatre Arts in Directing taught by VUW and Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School. Bronwyn was dramaturg for the multi-award-winning Albert Speer at BATS Theatre (Wellington) in 2004 and for Democracy (2005) and The Underpants (2006) at Circa Theatre (Wellington). She has been an Executive Board member of Playmarket: New Zealand’s National Playwrights’ Agency and Script Development Service since 2002. Her research and teaching interests include: physical theatre methodologies; theories of acting and directing; and 20th century German-language performance.

Peter Tulloch
Answers First

This workshop offers a system of Director Preparation suitable for any theatre production. Any organisation problem has only two factors. Using a Gant Chart can collate all the concerns to be readily available and therefore answered before the question is asked. Using “The Wizard of Oz” script as an example the Gant chart will prepare the answers to Scenes, Musical Numbers, Choreography, Casting, Props, Sound, Lighting & Dome, Puppets and Projection cues. From this initial chart individual lists and rehearsal schedules are easily and accurately prepared.

Peter has been professionally involved in theatre productions as a director, designer, teacher, lecturer and actor in New Zealand and Australia since 1965. The list of 369 shows includes working on plays, opera, and music theatre. In 1970 as Artistic Director he founded Gateway Players in New Zealand. It was due to the success of this venture that Peter was invited by the Victorian Ministry for the Arts & the Melbourne Theatre Company, to further his work in Melbourne in 1977. This year, as Resident Director at Essential Theatre, he will direct Romeo and Juliet for the company’s “Shakespeare in the Vines” annual tour of vineyards around Australia.