Castello di Petroro Drama Residence

COURSES FOR PROFESSIONAL ACTORS - 2018

 

The Castello di Petroro drama residence is launching a series of courses open to professional actors, with the aim of improving awareness and technique on stage.

The courses will concentrate in particular on the delicate passage from improvisation to written text. In an age in which verbal discourse has lost its central role in the theatre in favour of other expressive channels, it is easy to forget that on stage a word can be action in itself. In the art of theatre this has become one of the greatest challenges.

 

Although with different declinations, the method adopted in these courses derives from the Russian school of acting, particularly the principles that inspired the work of Stanislavsky, which he passed on to Maria Knebel and which today we appreciate thanks to the teaching of Anatoly Vasiliev.

Through improvisation and study technique, the course explores the relation between the written text and the text on stage, according to the principle whereby the craft of acting transforms literature into an entirely different artwork when performed, freeing up the written text from its immutable essence into something unique and with a life of its own. This approach to the text places action at the centre, with the actor acting in control of the role rather than vice versa. The feeling is playful and light-hearted, combining both freedom and rigour, without resorting to representative solutions.