Introductory course in the praxis of conceptualization
Katuaq, The Nuuk House of Culture
February 18 – 23, 2008
The background
Since 1996, Jonna Beha Oulund has led a talent development project, Dramatiker Vaeksthus (Playwright’s Greenhouse) arranged by The Coalition for Children’s and Youth Theatre and Oddshered Theatre School. At the annual Children’s Theatre Festival in Denmark, Jonna Beha Oulund met Benedikte Schmidt, an actress and at the time president of the Greenland Actor’s Union KAISKA. Benedikte Schmidt expressed an opinion the Greenland had an enormous need to develop native playwrights. It was decided that Jonna Beha Oulund would send a proposal for a workshop.
In September the decision to hold a playwriting course arranged by Oddshered Theatre School in Denmark in collaboration with KAISKA , Greenlands Actor’s Union was taken.
The course was designed by Jane Rasch, artistic director and head of educational programs for the Playwright’s Greenhouse since 2000. Jane Rasch was responsible for the artistic and educational aspects of the workshop while Jana Beha Oulund would shoulder the practical aspects of the course and serve as a sounding board for Jane’s ideas.
The course was held in Katuaq, Greenland’s House of Culture in Nuuk between the 18th and 23rd of February.
The course charted the road from an idea for a play to a finished manuscript. The idea was, that keeping in mind the theatre and storytelling traditions of Greenland, to explore the different ways to develop the participants own conceptually based projects for the theatre. The course would also argue for playwriting as an art form in which the written word lends meaning to action, relationships, environment, and communication (with an imagined audience).
The target group was actors, playwrights, journalists, authors and academics of whom all desired to write for the theatre. Participants did not need previous playwriting experience to attend. The course included a wealth of practical writing exercises, drama and theatre theory and illustrations in the form of film clips. The writing exercises were inspired both by theatre and dramatic theory and by Greenlandic literature and art. Each exercise was concluded with the introduction of a dramatic concept and illustrated a stage in the development of the manuscript.
Before the start of the course, each participant was sent five ideas, in the form of short stories, articles, paintings or inner monologues. Inspired by these suggestions, the participants themselves developed through a progressive system of exercises, their own associations to the materials. The exercises included theory of creative process, chaos and logic, associations and chains of associations, room and landscape, action, character development, objects and symbols, episodes and sequences, frustration, conflict, the circle of conflict, dialogue and ways of speaking, perspective and shifting perspective, creation myths and legends, poems and sayings, rough outlines and outlines.
The participants were actors, playwrights, academics and one representative from amateur theatre.
Even though a six-day workshop is extremely craving and intensive, the participants were able to develop concepts and individualize them, to make them personal. This enabled an imaginative fantasy capable of creating different poetic universes. Behind the concrete was always a suggestion of something metaphorical or mystical; supernatural, with roots in magic. Participants were able to portray the larger picture in the smaller, to shift rhetorically between high and low styles, between comic and serious and between visual and audio images. The project included an examination of both linear and circular dramaturgy, spiral and braided dramaturgy and elements of story telling, songs and illusion breaking.
Jane Rasch
Concluding comments
“ I know nothing, only that life continually places me in the way of powers that are larger then my self.” (a quote from a book based on interviews with Greenlandic hunters)
There is no doubt that the workshop was on many levels a success, also from the perspective of the course leaders in as much as we were inspired by this meeting with persons exhibiting a desire and a courage to learn. Writing drama is an intensely personal act, and this course demanded much in the way of discipline and sheer stamina. We were met by a formidable courage and zeal in approach to each new and difficult task we proposed. It is plainly clear that the Greenlandic theatre has need of education and continuing education, so that the “old hands” can receive new inspiration and opposition, and younger talents a taste for theatre. Therefore it seems appropriate to encourage cooperation around guest performances, which can be complemented with workshops or master classes by members of visiting theatres and in this way make the most of resources available. Another suggestion would be to make it possible for Greenlandic theatre artists and playwrights to do courses in Denmark, one could also suggest allowing for example, two theatre professionals each year the opportunity to attend the large Festival for Children and Youth Theatre where it s possible to see any of 400 performances and meet, formally and well as informally, fellow colleagues in the theatre.
Jonna Beha Oulund