Devising Theatre with the Environment

Acting out Mushroom Language - Devising Theatre with the Environment: In this workshop, we will explore playful ways of devising performance material with an eco-curious focus.
Led by Ali Matthews
Using games, exercises and discussion foraged from Ali?s woodland walks, her conversations with inner-city mushroom farmers and off-grid back-to-the-landers, and her deep curiosity about the natural world. This workshop will introduce emerging artists to new theatre-making approaches. We?ll do some physical theatre games & somatic exercises, some drawing, some writing and some compositional improvisation. It will be playful, approachable, and a bit ridiculous ? in a good way.
You are asked to bring in something (an object, a piece of text, a photo, a piece of movement) that connects you to a particular British ecosystem such as your local park, an everyday river walk, a favourite woodland or wetland, a treasured place by the sea or in the mountains. Above all, your something should remind and connect you to this landscape and natural environment.
Nature is hilarious, terrifying, beautiful, and weird ? so let?s roll up our sleeves and work with it as material!
Ali Matthews is an artist working in performance, music and video based in Manchester, UK. She has created cabaret, one-to-one and end-on performances for venues as diverse as ArtsAdmin/Toynbee Studios, Chelsea Theatre, York Mediale, Project Arts Centre Dublin, Glogauir Studios Berlin, Lancaster Arts, Contact Theatre and Aberystwyth Arts Centre. Her gig theatre piece The Witching Way (created with Leo Burtin) premiered at the Royal Exchange in 2019 and toured to venues including Lancaster Arts and Square Chapel, Halifax. In 2019, she was selected as a Manchester International Festival Creative Lab artist. In 2021, she was a Ferment artist in residence at Dartington Arts in Devon. She received a Lancashire Arts Exchange commission in 2021 to redevelop her play for video, BOBBY, LUNCH IS DARKNESS, written in collaboration with an AI text chain generator. The Guardian has called her ?a bewitching performer whose songs cling and haunt? (for the ?Ballad of Isosceles?)
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