Schweigman&

Schweigman& has been offering education & outreach programmes to universities and colleges since 2017. In the workshops students have the opportunity to get to know the working methods of the company in close-up; physicality, sensory, focused on the experiential, perception and the process of research. Not knowing makes space for creativity. Each workshop is specifically tailored for the group in close consultation with the university or college course leaders, according to the level and references of the students. All workshops are taught by an experience theatre studies teacher who regularly works with the Schweigman& company.

For whom?
All levels in college and university. We regularly provide workshops for art college courses (drama, dance, visual arts, music) as well as management studies courses or theatre studies.

“The workshop leader was fantastic. I wanted to fold her up and put her in my pocket and take her everywhere.”

– Jante Janssens, Utrecht University School of Management and Governance student.

Why?

• Students learn to appreciate each other in new ways.
• Students learn to be self-reliant and to trust each other.
• Students learn to respect and indicate their boundaries, they focus less on the rational and more on the physical, and to recognise when they feel intuitively a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’.
• Students discover that allowing yourself and daring to show vulnerability is also a strength.

Options

• Workshop accompanying Spectrum
• Physical and sensory theatre workshop

A physical theatre workshop, before or after the performance. Participants learn about Schweigman&’s physical and sensory methods. They receive the same training as the company’s own performers and are challenged as theatre-makers to create their own scenes using a phenomenon as starting point, á la Schweigman&.

Duration: 120 – 180 minutes
The workshop can take place on the day of the performance or in the week before, or in the week after.

• Mini theatre-making process

In this one-day course you get to know the phenomenological working method and we end with a presentation. The workshop can take place before or after the performance. We take a phenomenon – in this case the fall – and peel away its layers until we get to the very essence of its matter. This peeling process takes place through research in the studio and through collective philosophising about what we discover and experience. The physical and sensory experience determine the content and the process. There is no predetermined script. We continue as theatre-making participants, which means we have to create our own settings through improvisation assignments. Key to this creative process is that not knowing can be just as fruitful and that choices only become definitive at the end of the process.

Duration: a full day, exact times in consultation.

Dramaturgy workshop

Schweigman&’s work is focussed on the audience’s experience, through association and stimulating the sensory. An experience that you perceive with your whole body. How do we arrive at these choices? How do we achieve that experience through this process? How does the research contribute? In the workshop (principally designed for Drama and Theatre Studies students) we deal with both the themes of the performance as well as the process-driven issues. We discuss the dramaturgy of the audience’s experience. Workshops of a more theoretical form can also be given in consultation with course leaders, for example focussing on the creative process and philosophy; or indeed of a more practical form, for example by experimenting with creating a dramaturgy based on a physical and sensory experience.

Price
Following application

Specific ideas or requests?
Discuss the options with Anemone Oostvriesland, Project Manager Education & Outreach. Mail her at anemone@schweigman.org