Seminar was held in Petrozavodsk
The seminar on how to create a baby theatre was held on November 8-12, 2018 in Petrozavodsk, the Republic of Karelia. The moderators of the seminar were the Director of the puppet theater, Ph.D. in art history, art director of the Summer Laboratory of the Figurative Theater Anna Ivanova-Brashinskaya (St. Petersburg, Russia), stage artist and actress Sasha Polyakova (Paris, France) and movement designer Alexander Kozin (Petrozavodsk, Russia).
The seminar-laboratory was aimed at studying the process of creating a performance for babies. The working group of the seminar consisted of ten people with a very different theatrical background: five of them were from Russia and five were from Finland. Classes on body-work, work with the object, contact improvisation were organized during the seminar. The participants received theoretical knowledge on the baby theater, stage space and object design, and the psychology of children's perception. A soft cube with a 20-centimeters side became the minimum and sufficient object. Each participant presented the object as a baby theater project, half of the projects were taken into development and brought to the final show.
In the final questionnaire of the seminar-laboratory on the methodology of creating a baby-theater, one of the participants of this living process wrote: "I thank you for creating the opportunity to get (live through) the experience and opportunity to search, research + express yourself as well as for the comfortable feeling of "freedom" in the process. Finally, I know what “a laboratory" (real one) is from my own experience! Thank you for covering the information, revealing the situation in theatrical puppet experience of colleagues. For inspiration. For non-standard (for me) choice of an object for work that is aesthetically interesting. "
Indeed, the seminar was a profound rethinking of the theater foundations in general and a vivid practical experience of stage existence for each participant. The skills, knowledge and connections received will be used by participants in their future professional activities. The methodological material of the seminar-laboratory will become the basis for developing new educational programs and theatrical offer. In spring the Puppet Theater of the Republic of Karelia will present the first baby performance to the audience as the result of work under the seminar-laboratory. The staging group is the same: Anna Ivanova-Brashinskaya as a director, the Sasha Polyakova as a stage artist and Alexander Kozin as a movement designer.