INTERNATIONAL SUMMER WORKSHOPS
FOOTSBARN – LA CHAUSSEE

Footsbarn Travelling Theatre, an international theatre company, is organising eclectic and cosmopolitan courses centred on theatre, mime and graphic arts, from the 1st of July to the 23rd of August at their base in La Chaussée in the Auvergne.

Through their tours in Europe, Asia and Africa the company has absorbed a multitude of influences, encounters, techniques and artistic sensibilities. The company is always in motion, both on the road and in its productions, and this summer it has chosen to invite performers from varying backgrounds to enable it to pass on in its turn the fruit of its 38 years of life as a company. 
During this summer, la Chaussée, an old farm in the Allier, reconverted by Footsbarn, will become an ‘open house’ lending itself to personal and artistic exchanges.

 In July, Nola Rae, an English mime artist who has won international renown for her creative work and her teaching methods, will open the season.

In August, The Footsbarn team will follow the story of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, through a collection of workshops on masks, movement, the voice and improvisation.

Denis Charrett – Dykes, sign writer and graphic artist to Footsbarn, will share his experience of 30 years with the students.

Download the workshop dossier
Download the enrolment form

Contact : Caroline Tigeot
+ 33 (0)4 70 06 84 84 /+ 33 (0)6 86 55 26 66 caroline@footsbarn.com

Nola Rae teaches the art of timing, imagination and physical and mental articulation.
Concentrating on the physicality of the clown, the performer is taught to extend his/her armoury of performing skills by developing a liberating control of the body.
Rhythm and counter-rhythm is stressed and the powers of observation and creative imagination stimulated.
Text is cut down or eliminated and ideas are encouraged to be presented with renewed ingenuity. As with cartoonists, the student learns to attain the essence of an idea in as few lines as possible.
On a philosophical level the student experiments with what is possible and what is impossible to transfer into meaning on stage without relying on the voice.
Nola Rae hopes to give her students a renewed sense of their own special physical potential and to encourage them to let their bodies do the talking.

From August 1st to 16th 2009
Footsbarn Summer School
FOOTSBARN AND GUESTS

The Footsbarn summer school brings together people of different age groups, from different countries, and with differing experiences of theatre. They come to get hands-on experience of a multiple, nomadic art form and of interacting with others, both on stage and around the production. We offer a period of apprenticeship where you will be able to create and live theatre.

The theme of the workshop will be centered around a short story of the columbian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, A very old man with enormous wings.
As is the philosophy of the company, the workshop is open to all, young and old, language is no barrier and the theatrical background of the student is not a determining factor for acceptance in the group.
Footsbarn Theatre tells story using all the elements of the theatre, movement, voice, music, song, dance, mask and puppetry, with emphasis on the group or the chorus.
It is through image, character and situation that the story can be told. The text of either a written play, novel or poem, is the motor or stimulator of the process. The actors work to lift the words off the page and to breathe life into them, through improvisation and imagination.
The workshop will be concluded and celebrated by playing to the local people, “Footsbarn’s public”, the result of the groups work. The performance will be announced by a parade, a Footsbarn’s tradition !

From August 17th to 23rd 2009
Poster Design Workshops
Denis Charrett - Dykes

Denis Charrett - Dykes is the creator of numerous Footsbarn posters, paintings, lettering and the ornaments that can be seen at the entrance to our big top and on our lorries and caravans.
 
This summer he proposes to work on the picture of a show, chosen beforehand by each participant. The poster has to attract the spectator while being at the same time an accurate and positive image of the show.

These will be made on different materials (paper, wood, etc) and with different tools (chalk, pastel, paint, collage, pencil).