Elaine Weryshko – Revolt in a Post-Britney Era
Part of The Swallow-a-Workshop Series: Round 1
August 6, 2018 – 6:00-10:00 pm
Community Room at Eau Claire Market (200 Barclay Parade SW)
Register here, for all of Round 1 or for individual sessions!
E-mail info@swallowabicycle.com or call 403.710.0093 for further information.
What has happened to Theatre as revolt? In Western Canada, we have a problem in the dedication to traditional realism and giving into the fear of dwindling audience members, creating a climate of safe and comfortable productions. Too many companies blame the audience and their limited attention spans for dropping ticket sales. I don’t think the audience has lost the desire for live performance; I think theatre companies lost audiences’ trust many years ago.
Where is the fire and how do we search for it? Where is the courage to attack the imagination? Where is the artistic bravery to stand strong in the bold, to risk in the unknown and encourage the uncomfortable?
I call this era the New Authentic, or the Post-Britney; the princess’ crown has been snatched and burnt, we’ve seen all the dirty laundry and none of that glitter is gold! The rise of technology and social media has given birth to a whole new culture of what we value as true and outstanding. We are so tired of being lied to. If you’re going to produce a play with all the same 4th wall conventions, with floating heads on great costumes and a director that should have been a filmmaker, then I’m just going stay at home and watch it on Netflix, in my underwear.
This workshop is a conversation and a challenge as to why theatre-making in Western Canada is so behind the game…..
What is revolt as theatre?
What does it mean to attack the imagination?
What are audiences bored of? What are they interested in?
What is RISK?
There will be required pre-reading in order to participate in this conversation, to be posted here shortly.
Register here, for all of Round 1 or for individual sessions! E-mail info@swallowabicycle.com or call 403.710.0093 for further information.
About Elaine Weryshko
Elaine Weryshko is an independent theatre artist who believes in the strange bonding power that is contained in the unabashed freedom of live action. She has spent many years training at schools around the globe in Clown, Bouffon and Mask and champions a great passion for contemporary movement devising as fundamental in storytelling. She writes, produces, designs and performs large scale theatre shows across Alberta in unconventional spaces. Her work is regarded as entertaining, grotesque, messy and meta-theatre. Her most recent success is her Greek chorus tragedy The COWS that was presented during Theatre Junction’s NEXT STAGES in 2018. She is currently very proud of a new projected titled to the AWE that she co-curates with Pam Tzeng that looks to focus on highlighting contemporary performance makers in Calgary that dare to risk. Her work is inspired through a visceral live honesty to keep pushing genres of spectacle and intimate, personal and political, viewer and participant through non-traditional physical theatre and dance. Ultimately, as an artist, she wants audiences to be provoked and forced to examine their role in the presentation. They must determine their place as supporters, mockers posers or subjects. Her work combines text, music and choreography to build scenes that set up ideas, images and relationships – and then destroy them.
