Workshop Leaders

Alex Fradera

A psychologist and thinker who works with organisations, communities, and social structures, always searching for better ways to work and interact. A major source of insight is improvisational theatre, a discipline with a lot to teach about bringing things into existence. Alongside consultancy work with international clients, Alex is a trustee for Paxton Green Time Bank, a charity focused on co-production of wellbeing and health, a founding member of www.theuniversityproject.org.uk and has performed improvisation internationally.

He lives online at www.alexfradera.net

Alex Fradera will lead the workshop: "Improvisation for Dealing with Uncertainty" (Day 1 1.25 – 2.55)

How do we deal with the unknown – in our work, in our communities, in our lives? We can try and plan, predict and schedule our way through, but we're bound to be confounded - ever more so in these fluid times.

This highly interactive workshop offers a different mindset for dealing with uncertainty, creating and working together: improvisation. It focuses on playfulness and connection as a way  to ground us in the opportunities that exist at every moment.

Hannah Hull

Hannah is based in London, and work as an artist, outreach practitioner and researcher. She studied BA Fine Art and PGCert Innovation at Goldsmiths, University of London.

She creates methods for genuine and sustainable change, using art processes to innovate four key social areas: rehabilitation, regeneration, sustainability and education.

She leads an initiative called ART vs REHAB, which aims to collaboratively develop new, critical relationships between art and rehabilitation. Within her own outreach practice, she uses a conceptual art model with various groups of people, including individuals with mental health problems, addiction and the homeless.

Hannah also creates temporary public artworks and social interventions.   More

Hannah Hull will lead the workshop "Play Tactics: Situationist, Surrealist and Fluxist techniques" (Day 2 12.00 – 1.00)

Notions of play appear in several modern art movements, as a strategy for accessing the subconscious, or as a political tool concerned with notions of freedom.

In this workshop we will try out a range of art techniques for play, learning about their origins and intended social affect.

Maryjane Stevens

Maryjane Stevens is a dramaturg, performer and director. She co-directs Red Threaders Dramaturgy with colleague Gemma Williams, which specialises in devising, applied theatre and contemporary performance practice. She has spent many years using theatre and the arts in health education and public health research. Maryjane has a particular interest in mental health and well-being, and the creative approaches which can be used to ameliorate such conditions.

She is a performer/dramaturg with The Galloping Cuckoos and is a maker/performer on the AHRC funded, university of Kent run Imagining Autism project.

Maryjane currently co-facilitates the ‘Plays the Thing’ workshops at the Complex Cases Unit, Fulbourn Hospital, Cambridge, in collaboration with Escape Artists.

Maryjane Stevens will facilitate the workshop "Tools for Transition" (Day 2 10.20 – 12.00)

The Tools for Transition workshop will give the participants a flavour of the Escape Artists’ led ‘Plays the Thing’ workshops which are currently being run with a small group of participants at the Complex Cases Unit, Fulbourn Hospital, Cambridge. The Fulbourn sessions address community cohesion and alternative ways for collectives to work through social, environmental, health and well-being issues. The process involves mapping the development of a created community through play, drama, creative writing, photography and video, and focuses on characters, events, problems and solutions.

Dr Bruce Wall

In 1997 Dr. Bruce Wall founded the LONDON SHAKESPEARE WORKOUT (LSW) alongside Dame Dorothy Tutin.  LSW has been responsible for changing perceptions (theatrical and otherwise) in a vast array of locations from Britain's House of Lords to the United Nations; from London's West End to New York's Broadway; from Oxbridge to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (setting up a professional drama school in a London prison along the way); unlocking potential within global boardrooms and educational outlets (both 'inside' and 'out') in locales ranging from California to China.

November 2011 sees LSW's first programmes in India and 2012 dawns for LSW with a production involving young offenders in a Maltese prison performed in a professional theatre in Valletta; all leading to a documentary film for global distribution concerning the restorative legacy of literacy itself.

Bruce Wall will lead the workshop "London Shakespeare Workout"  (Day 1, 10.30 – 12.35):

The workshop will begin with warm up games developed by the London Shakespeare Workout (LSW) leading to work with especially devised texts (all provided) including The Shakespeare Insult Kit (never has insulting someone been so joyful) and other wholly interactive elements especially created for LSW by leading practitioners ranging from Peter Brook to Sir Jonathan Miller to Al Pacino. All will end in the creation of a 'new play' entirely out of Shakespeare. 

NO ADVANCE PREPARATION IS NECESSARY.  

Ansuman Biswas

Ansuman Biswas was born in India and trained in the UK. He now has an international practice encompassing music, film, live art, installation, writing and theatre. With expertise in a number of different fields, he has developed a dynamic interdisciplinary practice. A key theme in his work is the mapping of Vedic and Buddhist thought to modern debates in science and philosophy, which then find expression in video, music or performance.

Over the last few years his work has included directing Shakespeare in America, translating Tagore’s poetry from the Bengali, designing underwater sculptures in the Red Sea, living with wandering minstrels in India, being employed as an ornamental hermit in the English countryside, touring with Björk, spending three days blindfolded in an unknown place, travelling with shamans in the Gobi Desert, playing with Oasis, collaborating with neuroscientists in Arizona, living for a week with absolutely nothing but what spectators chose to give him, co-ordinating grassroots activists in Soweto, being sealed in a box for ten days with no food or light, staging a musical in a maximum security prison, re-designing Maidstone High Street, being a soloist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, bathing strangers, running seminars on democracy for monks in a Burmese monastery, being locked in a Gothic Tower alone for forty days and nights, and even flying on a real magic carpet in Star City, Moscow.

Ansuman is a trustee of Arts Catalyst, the science-art agency, and also Studio Upstairs, an organization working with the arts and mental health. He has shown visual and time-based art at Tate Modern, The South London Gallery, The Whitechapel Gallery, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, India International Centre, New Delhi, Yerba Buena Centre, San Francisco, and many other galleries and museums around the world. He has worked as a composer at the National Theatre, the Royal Opera House and London’s West End. He has also been artist-in-residence at the National Institute of Medical Research (London), at the Headlands Centre (San Francisco), at Portsmouth Cathedral, at Hewlett-Packard’s research labs in Bangalore, at the Guangdong Modern Dance Company (China), at The National Review of Live Art (Glasgow), and at NICA (Networking Initiatives in Culture and the Arts) Burma.

www.ansuman.com

Ansumas Biswas will lead the Warm-up Workshop (9.30 – 10.00 Day 1)

The voice is at the centre of democracy and storytelling. It enables us to be social. When the body is as strong, relaxed and open as the mind the voice that emerges is compelling. A group of voices joined together might be the most powerful force in the world.

In a conference on play the voice might be used to not only speak about the subject but to embody it. How might we open our speech to more playfulness?

This short workshop, to kick off the conference, will be an opportunity to prepare the voice for play, and the ears for hearing one another.