Workshops
Each afternoon, workshops of various artistic disciplines are held on the themes of the day, which are determined by the performances in the morning. All artists* are invited to work together and to give the europefiction participants* exciting artistic impulses for shaping European coexistence.
A choir – singing and composing (german, english) Anna Luca Mohrhenn. (GER / SWE)
The man just opened his mouth, which meant that all kinds of secret doors in his body gave way. He did not sing so much as let his soul free.” Ray Bradbury
“Article 1 /Freedom Equality Fraternity/
All men are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are gifted with reason and conscience and should meet one another in the spirit of brotherhood.” Every day anew, we want to deal with one of the five main topics, sing, write and discuss together.
No previous knowledge necessary!
Anna Luca Mohrhenn was already enthusiastic about music when she was a child. Both parents are musicians, the house was always full of sounds. Early on she took piano lessons, followed by classical Gesan as a child Anna Luca Mohrhenn became enthusiastic about music. Both parents are musicians, the house was always full of sounds. She took piano lessons at an early age, followed by classical singing lessons. Her love for the piano was great and complicated at the same time. As a teenager she began to search for a freer and more immediate form of expression and discovered her voice and songwriting for herself. During her jazz singing studies at the Hogeschool vor de kunsten in Arnhem (Netherlands) she was “discovered” by the producers of the internationally successful Nu-Jazz project Club des Belugas on the Internet and toured the world as singer and songwriter of the 11-person Nu-Jazz formation between lectures at the music academy. Six albums and collaborations with other artists of the renowned Nu-Jazz label “ChinChin Records” followed. Besides her own projects she has been working successfully as a songwriter for years. She wrote music for feature films and commercials and works as a lecturer and studio singer.
2- Moving bodies – urban dance
3- Circus – Chinese pole Ricardo Paz (POR), André Garcia (POR)
This workshops are two workshops working together: The aims to develope body consciousness throughout exercises using movement, acrobatics, breakdance and circus technics and it’s vocabulary as agent for creative exploration. With a diverse set of base steps and movement insights capable of making the participants understand and feel what is to travel from top to bottom both bodies and space, inverted and spinning positions on breakdance, developing strenght and dinamic control throughout the warmups, and discovering new capabilities by learning circus skills such as the Chinese Pole and acrobatic technics, that will make the participants have the tools to develope and create a body story to be told to the audience. This workshop will connect the themes of this festival by bringing together two types of performing arts, circus and breakdance to express the need of comunication of those who by choice or not needed to express and talk about diferent point of views and needs of living within our cultures and societies. The objectif will be to present an exercise where all this different stimulus give birth to choreography that can convey a certain idea or feeling connected to each days theme.
Ricardo Paz, born 1987 in Angola, is a Portuguese performer dancer and actor specialized in circus arts on the discipline of chinese pole acrobatics and contemporary dance or acro-dance. He studied in CNAC- Centre Nacional des Arts du Cirque, the Superior Consevatory of Circus Arts in Chalons-en-Champagne, France. He had currently been working as a freelance performer for different contemporary projects within dance, theatre and circus companies, mostly in France, Belgium and Germany. He had been collaborating with Consol Theater, since 2019 with workshops to the amateur actors group teaching movement and acrobatics. His passion for people, different cultures, and movement as véhicule of comunication, led him to share knowledge through a giving and learning process, teaching in projects such as schools, professional companies or individuals, and non professional institutions. He believes that comunicating arts through movement can make the dialogue reach there where words can be insufficient or misinterpretated, specially if the issues are different cultures and human communication.
André Garcia (32) currently lives in Lisbon where he is a breakdance teacher since 2011, with a degree in Product Design from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Lisbon, activity that he exerts in parallel with the artistic Interests. In hip hop found its way of expression, graffiti and b-boying became his way of telling the world that he can, he is capable and does everything that others do, the fact that he has no forearm never made him feel different , but more curious, creative, analytic and used to adapt facing obstacles. His curiosity about dance and movement in general took him to experiment a big diversity of movement forms such as trampolins, gimnastics, capoeira, classical, contemporary and street dance classes, diving and so on. Teacher, designer, mentor, friend, beloved son, beloved brother, and, above all, an inspiration to those around him.
4- HOW TO BE A CHICK* – GENDER PERFORMANCE – (german, english) Gianna Pargätzi, Franziska Heitkötter – CHICKS* free performance collective (GER)
Girls have barbies and pink ribbons and PollyPocket; boys have explorer sets, matchbox cars and knight castles. Women have makeup and high heels and flowers; men have dumbbells and chic carts and remote control. Blah, blah, blah! We encounter gender stereotypes again and again – even in the theatre. In the workshop we try to find a way of dealing with the clichés and requirements that we are supposed to fulfil because of our gender. What does it mean for me to be a “man” or a “woman” in our society? Which images are we confronted with? What role models do we have? What discrimination do we experience? What touches and influences us, what doesn’t? We want to describe social power relations on stage. How would we want to stage ourselves if we could be everything?CHICKS* free performance collective unite diverse young people, experts* and interdisciplinary artists* in the idea of a queerfeminist network. In intensive research processes, CHICKS* search for what they have in common in their different life realities, for what they want to get rid of. CHICKS* question social images of gender, sexuality and power. In their performances, they combine interactive and installative encounter formats with an image theatre of objects and atmospheres. Gianna Pargätzi is part of the artistic management team of CHICKS*. She is a director, scenographer and performer. Franziska Heitkötter is a performer and artistic assistant at CHICKS*.
5 – Discussing europe (german, english) – culture of debating Georg Blokus, Myriam Zekagh- School of political hope (GER)
You want to learn how to use your personal life experiences, emotions, and stories for the collective struggle for a new Europe – and not feeling powerless in the face of the current state of Europe and the debates in talk-shows, with friends in school and at family dinners? The School of Political Hope is an art organization founded by artists, activists, and cultural producers who aim to give back the power of the arts into the hands of the people to bring up real change by the means of personal stories, collective work, and creative actions. This workshop aims to share storytelling skills and techniques on how to smash the destructive authoritarian debate on Europe which is being hold between the extremes of the right-wing and the political center.
If we want to connect the struggles of youngsters, refugees, women, migrants, workers, and climate rebels, we have to share the personal stories of our allday struggles, the experiences of injustice, grief, and anger, the hopes and the courage to act from the bottom-up for a new Europe. This workshop will introduce techniques for collective storytelling. Together we will share our daily life stories on the daily changing topics. In the end we will brainstorm and try out models for creative action (i. e. theatrical choir speeches, social media influencer videos, etc.) based on our collective stories and the emotional values which let us fight for freedom, justice and equality.
Please be prepared to share your personal stories and engage in a debate on the differences and commonalities of your life experiences with others to develop a final collective action which expresses our common struggle and opens the doors to a politics of our real lives and a more free, just and equal debate on Europe.
Georg Blokus, born 1987 near Gdansk, is a psychologist who lives and works as a theatre director and dramaturg in Cologne. He produces long-term artistic projects spanning across activist theatre, political intervention and action art. He was the artistic educational director of the Youth Academy of the Arts of the World from 2014 to 2016. In 2017, he initiated the School of Political Hope with artist and activist friends from Cologne and Europe. The School of Political Hope is a translocal, transdisciplinary and transformative art organization which combines arts, education and activism. For the School of Political Hope Georg is touring around Europe to educate progressive activists, organizations, and parties in storytelling techniques and community organising for a new Europe.
Myriam Zekagh is a freelance consultant specialized in project design and management.
She currently contributes to public policy, evaluation and research projects in developing countries. Through her several years of project management experience, she has acquired solid thematic expertise on conflict resolution, community-driven development projects and participatory dialogue at the local level. She notably spent over four years conducting similar work in North African countries, in support to local civil society organisations and local authorities. Myriam has worked with various clients including EU, US and international agencies. She holds an MA from Sciences Po Lille (France) and a BA from the University of Kent (UK) in International Relations, with a specialization in international development and conflict resolution. Since 2019 Myriam is part of the School of Political Hope to foster transnational community organising and knowledge production for a new Europe. She speaks fluent French and English and has a good command of German.
6 – Graffiti – street art (italian, arabic, english) Youness Nazli (I)
After a a full immersion lesson with audio-video materials about the general history of the graffiti/street-art movement from his roots to the development through the decades until the contemporary scene Youness will dive into the day`s topic and show how he works on a topic, how to translate it from an idea to a figurative form, from a sketch to a mural. Then the workshop moves to a wall to work together on a mural that represents the topics of the festival. Dirty clothes and shoes are needed!
Youness Nazli lives in Reggio Emilia, northern Italy. He started doing graffiti in 1998 so it’s more than 20 years that he is painting in the urban context, in the first decade only as a graffiti writer in the traditional way but since 2008 he started a new path with a lot more researches and painting outside of the traditional graffiti but always using lot of different techniques from stickers and paste ups to big walls painted with sticks and rollers and he is continuously working in different personal researches. Since 2011 Youness started to work as an educator using street art and art in general as a method of education and socialization in different contexts, private and public. He truly believes in the power of this method where he can translate his experiences as an artist and as an educator in a new way to see things and believes that his urban art projects as community work as an aggregator.
7 – Express your sound – musical improvisation (german, english) Dora Osterloh (GER)
In the improvisation workshop the participants learn a creative and free way of musical expression on their instruments.
The starting point is the five annual themes of the festival.
In playful exercises and jointly conceived ad-hoc compositions, the musicians try their hand at improvisation and let these experiences flow into the encounter with the participants of the other workshops during the evening rituals.
Dora Osterloh is an improviser, singer, composer and music teacher living in Berlin. As a member of the KIM Ensemble, she will also be performing live at Europefiction’s closing event on the Saturday of the festival.
8- Clothes create perspectives – fashion and costumes Eva Gronbach (GER)
9- Urban interventions, leaving traces – construction (dutch, german, english) Krista Burger (NL), Naamloozz (NL)
This workshop will be an exploration of the space around us. Every human being has a unique way to experience and react to the city but to often we are on our way and don’t let us distract to interact with that city. In our workshop we will take time to stroll to see where we could be inspired and intervene. To express our vision, expectations, critics or colorful output in the camp and its direct surrounding, the streets of Gelsenkirchen. We invite you to reimagine that space, a former industrial terrain.
Every day we will use a different set of artistic tools to express ourselves and make these interventions.
The Dutch artist Krista Burger studied at the Design Academy in Eindhoven, where she graduated in Industrial Design, Department ‘Man and Leisure’. Based on telling through images, her work often explores questions of public/private space design and consciously draws on the everyday. The medium ranges from drawing, live video, performance and installations to graphics and illustration. Under the name “Powerplant” Krista Burger, together with the artist Nina Thibo, created various ‘live cinema performances’ for 10 years, with performances in the Netherlands and Germany. Working cooperations such as image improvisations with musicians, projects with the design office “Anschlaege”, as well as regular music theatre performances under the name “Koschka und Heimprofi” led her to Germany, Holland, France and Austria. At the Hagen Theatre she already took part in the opera “Lola rennt” and “Tschick” (picture design/projections), as well as in the children’s play Prinz Sternschnuppe (set design/picture design) and the youth theatre project pottfiction.
10 On Stage! – acting
Attila Ack (HUN), Enrico Montalbani (I), Nathan Powell (GB), Noémie Besace (FR), Jasper Vaillant (NL)
At the special request of the Project Council, the kaleidoscope of workshop offers will be supplemented daily by an acting workshop by directors from the European twin cities. Different acting techniques and methods will be introduced in different ways.
a) Collective playing
The hungarian director is offering an improvisation based creation method to the participants of the workshop. The base of this method is free, energetic, collective playing. We will be loud and quiet, monstrous and beautiful, frightful and gentle at the same time. It will be the play of extremities. At the end of the process a real wonder may happen: an honest, shared moment from which theatre can born.
Attila Ack (Budapest) works as a drama teacher since 2010. Since 2016 he engages in theatre pedagogy and the writing of youth plays. His two most important professional bases are the Nemes Nagy Ágnes Művészeti Szakgimnázium and the Kolibri Theatre. Whith his work he is always looking for ways to ask questions about the things of the world through play.
b) Emotion – the base and the opposites
The workshop is structured in two parts.
The first part will propose basic exercises: placement in the space, vertical (neutral posture), exercises based on trust, exercises focused on the metamorphosis of the body.
The aim of this section is to prepare a good work environment in order to allow participants feel comfortable and available to follow or propose suggestions.
The work will focus on the coexistence of many bodies in the same space, on the emotional impact their expressions could originate, on the synchrony of small gestures and the creation of great choral movements.
In the second part of the workshop the group will work on opposites and on their balance. These two proposals will be explored through theatre and movement improvisations.
Enrico Montalbani is a workshop leader, actor, set designer, illustrator, author and graphic designer. He started collaborating with La Baracca in 1994, and since 2010 he directs and coordinates the theatrical group “Icaro” in Medicina.
c) Truthful performing
An acting workshop exploring how we are able to give the most truthful performances.
We will help enable participants to respond intuitively, truthfully and spontaneously, using a variety of techniques and influences from practitioners such as Mike Alfreds and Meisner.
Nathan Powell is a Writer and Director, making new work that invites people into
the theatre with open arms and a smile. He aims to make work that feels
accessible to people that are not regular theatre goers, whilst giving regular
theatre goers an exciting night of something new.IV.
d) Discovering Tales
From the tales of different countries, participants will be invited to create their own tale defending a point of view by mixing different languages (foreign languages, body language) and different techniques (videos, music, singing). We propose you to discover the other, and to discover you with a possible public, through the sharing of your cultural background and your chosen means of expression, from a methodology developed by the company La Transplanisphère within various European projects.
Noémie Besace (Paris) is actress, pedagogue and project manager in the artistic company La Transplanisphère. she was a dancer in a company, Temps Danse, during all my teenage (classical, contemporary, modern jazz, street dance, ballroom dance, french cancan, cabaret …) She was trained to actor in 2 major Parisian schools. She works as a professional actress since 2009 and she directs some theater and video workshops to young people. She is also taking part in European projects dealing with interculturality and the construction of identity.
e) Jasper Vaillant (Rotterdam) (dutch, english)