Afshin Khorshid Bakhtari
Theater Week Poland
Honaronline Theatre Service reports: Theater Week Poland in cooperation with the Department of Performing Arts, the Embassy of Poland and the Secretariat of the thirty-fourth Fajr International Theater Festival commences today. In this program during a week, theater Poland has a plan to introduce various training programs for artists and drama students in the form of lectures and training workshops.
Afshin Khorshid Bakhtari the supervisor of workshops and lectures in the provides full explaination about theatre in Poland as well as details of the plans for this week.
The importance of theater in Poland cannot be denied. Considering the fact that you have plenty of information about the position of theatre in Poland, could you please provide us with some information?
As you mentioned, the Polish theater holds a special place in the contemporary theater around the world. The Polish theatre has introduced a great number of artists and scholars in this field, that have been able to affect drama. Intellectual and dynamic theater means producing performances that is in search of reality and truth. . Poland’s Great scholars such as " Adam Mickiewicz" in the '50s until "Grotowski" and "Contour" have played a significant role in this field.
Poland is a country in which drama is of great importance and its contemporary theatre has been active in the world stage. It has presented well known figures in the world of drama. There is basically no need to prove how great and advanced theater is in Poland, a country in which in spite of the fact that its prominent figures no longer exist, their ideas have survived.
The workshops are hold earlier this year, what are the advantages of that in your opinion?
The festival coincided with intesive workshops. Most of the time due to compression of the groups and actors during the festival, many of its audience prefered not to attend these workshops. Based on this procedure and according to the secretary of the festival doctor Asadi, we came to the conclusioin that workshops had to be held earlier than the festival.
Why are the workshops held for a particular target audience and professionals?
Yes, holding a workshop is not a complicated task however we should have a goal for it. In many cases people can participate in them in spite of the fact that it might not have a clear result for them in the end. So we decided to have a specialized audience and specific groups. In fact, if the workshops are considered as a cultural commodity we must deliver it to its particular audience. This coincided with the Poland theatre week. Artists and the Embassy of Poland announced that they were ready to co-operate with us. All staff members have tried hard to make this event happen. The capacity of workshops is limited, which means that participants should be selected carefully. For instance, if someone is not familiart with music, sound workshop would not be appropriate for him/her. Registration is done and a large number of experts participated in it. In addition, university lecturers are also present since they are our target audience.
Is there any specific plan to to create a bridge between the artists and instructors?
Continuity plays a significant role here, by taking short-term specialization courses it would not be possible for the audience to understand the concept and the perspectives cannot be achieved. Polish friends were already in the country. One of the workshops held by Tehran University, previously was held in Iran, now set to coincide with the week theater workshops. The specific audience is the students. However this is not on our agenda and we are only active in this event as a secretary of the festival for one period. I hope if there is a possibility later this activity could go on. The ultimate goal would be taking advantage of this short opportunity and move forward with greater depth.
Are these workshops based on specific needs assessment conducted ? What topics will be discussed in it?
Body, speech and audio devices are the essential tools in the hands of actors. In the theater world today as well as in Iran performances are leaning more toward works that are considered physical theatre. In this category it would be exteremely important to be able to express emotions and feelings in a physical sense. Theatrical body axis and the role of the physical skills and physical expression that is important. As it applies to voice, vocal capabilities and reaching new frontiers of expression is also important. It is not of course only limited to saying dialogues, but characters that can sound a lot like effects, background audio and undertake new statement. The body is not designed to carry the weight but it also should be able to host different things that occur in the real world.
Our Workshop titled "resurrected body" focuses on balance in different areas in our body. It would help the actor to explore his body. A strong relationship exists between performers around the world. To reach new horizons of different techniques, instructors consider reaching a consensus that last year we experienced at the Fajr Festival.