َAfternoon Workshops
Accessing Language Through Blood Memory with Ceanna Wood & Jill Goranson
Ceanna Wood
Jill Goranson
Join Ceanna Wood & Jill Goranson in a one hour workshop that will explore voice, body and imagination through sound, movement and writing practices. Jill and Ceanna will lead you through practices that explore the natural world, the sounds that exist in it, and the knowledge stored in our bodies all with the intent to activate your blood memory. Participants are invited to write, move, and use their voice to whatever level feels comfortable for them.
Ceanna and Jill will also guide participants in creating their own Gratitude Bundles during the festival—a practice designed to help you connect with the natural world and reflect on what you are grateful for. Find Ceanna and Jill at the Wellness Table throughout the weekend to receive instructions and materials to make your bundle.
Deneh’Cho Thompson
Pedro Chamale
Working with Languages that you Don’t Speak with Pedro Chamale & Deneh’Cho Thompson
Pedro Chamale, founding Artistic Director of rice & beans theatre, and Deneh’Cho Thompson, Associate Professor at the University of Saskatchewan, both facilitate multilingual theatre and performance that includes language(s) that they do not speak.
This collaborative workshop explores principles and techniques that promote language learning, fluency, and inclusion in performance. Through the sharing of experiences and the testing of ideas, the collective of this workshop will develop and articulate ways of working that suit their own contexts. Methods that allow non-speakers to facilitate shared language proficiency have the potential to broaden the impact of language revitalization and reclamation efforts and to promote further inter-Nation-al knowledge sharing and exchange.
Join them for fun and games, and maybe we will all learn something new!
How far do you go (to make theatre in a minority language)? with Wessel De Vries
To direct the first play in the endangered Kven language, playwright and director Wessel de Vries traveled far away from home. Far above the polar circle (where it was cold an dark) rehearsals started at Kvääniteatteri, and a lot of big challenges had to be faced. What do you do if your actors don’t speak the minority language the play is in (because there are no living actors that can speak it)? How will you connect with the audience when the majority does not speak the language as well? How will you cope with the community that speaks the language (of for whom the language is vital) and has opinions about your play? How do you find the freedom to make a piece of art instead of only a piece of language emancipation?
All these questions will be discussed in this workshop: the obstacles, solutions, despair and hope. There might be a lot of challenges when you make theatre in a minority language. You have to go far. But most of the time it’s worth it. Because after the challenges we faced in Northern Norway, the artistic product was fulfilling: emancipatory, filled with language, and art at the same time.
