Paper Meditation Workshops in Cape Town

Workshops created especially for performers, teachers, therapists, business people, health workers and communicators from every walk of life…

In our everyday environment, surrounded by objects, we forget their primitive magical functions. We are often not able to gain a deeper insight into the world of matter, nor appreciate its inherent beauty. In the same way, we are often not able to find the beauty and magic inside ourselves.

These workshops are for everyone searching for their lost childhood creativity. The methods of work will help discover freedom, joy and spontaneity using individual and group creative processes. This introduction into the world of paper and objects is aimed at all those who feel that they have unrealized creative potential, having barriers obstructing their creative journey.

What is the process of this type of animation?
This is breathing life into objects, which we thought were without life. It is like the taming of matter – like putting new significance into it. One doesn’t have to be a puppeteer to be able to “give life” to objects! To have a real meeting with the objects, we need silence, deep interior listening to ourselves and the matter and we don’t need any special skills.
What is the language of object motion?

In the exercises, we start with the sense of touch - in feeling the object and the space surrounding it and demonstrating the meaning of “thinking with hands”. The participants of the workshop will learn to extract the rhythm, energy and breath from the object; discovering its structure, sound and motion.

Paper Meditation
The discovery of the brown paper and its movement potential. Paper is a mystery – it’s a medium which we can shape freely, without restriction and it can contain everything. Individual work in the darkness that gives individual intimacy, will develop into group work creating short theatrical pieces animating the brown paper.

Theatre of Objects
The discovery of animation possibilities using everyday, unusual and recycled objects will be used to create short scenarios. The poetry of object theatre is the poetry of the metaphor: where all characters are performed by the object.

Exercises with Animation (manipulation)
Together we will learn the secrets of animation and manipulation in a theatrical context. Together with the techniques that were explored before: theatre of paper and the theatre of objects – the aim of the work will be to create longer pieces of theatre using the other elements of theatre magic – lights, sound, voice and breath work.

The first workshop in Cape Town take place on Sunday 26 February at the SA Jewish Museum. For bookings contact Natacha on telephone : 021- 465 1546 and the second workshop will take place in association with the Bonfire Theatre Company at the Distix Cafe in District Six (Cape Town) on Sunday 12 March. For more information, contact Lesley on 082-828.5917

As the news mounts up...

So many apologies for the lack of postings in the past weeks! I am remaining here in South Africa in the short term due to personal commitments, where I shall be conducting a series of lectures and workshops starting tonight (Wednesday 22 February) with a lecture presentation on Puppetry as a Weapon of Mass Distraction: The relevance of the puppet in our society today.

We will reflect on role the puppet has played, through the centuries, as a socio-political tool, a powerful medium for mass communication and a visual metaphor never ceases to surprise people. During George W Bush’s re-inauguration campaign in 2004, puppetry was banned in the United States.

In September 2005, an American puppeteer-activist for the Greenpeace movement, Scott Parkin was deported from Australia because it was discovered that he had been involved in protest theatre in the United States against Exxon Mobile. In the UK, in October 2005, a British puppeteer, also performing Punch and Judy in the streets of Kent, was told to remove the Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein characters from his seaside performance!

In this lecture-presentation, Gary Friedman will give an insight into the uses of puppetry as a socio-political tool and its appeal to the masses, without any barriers of race, age, sex, culture, or language. He will show extracts of his international puppetry work in education and development over the past twenty years in Africa, Canada, Australia, Europe the Eastern Arctic and the South Pacific. The lecture will take place at 7.30pm at the Cape Town Holocaust Centre in the Gardens. For more information and bookings, telephone Natacha: 021- 465 1546