If I Can’t Dance and Stedelijk Museum are looking for practitioners and students of visual arts, theatre, dance, music, but also sports, management and other ‘performative disciplines’, to take part in an intensive two day Class of Masters with Matt Mullican on 22 and 23 January 2012 at Frascati Theatre in Amsterdam. Mullican is accompanied by master of dance Nicole Beutler, master of performance Suchan Kinoshita and master of theatre Joachim Robbrecht, who, each from their own discipline, share their knowledge on acting out a script with the masterclass participants.
In a performance practice that spans over thirty years, Mullican has continuously sought out forms of repetition, renewal and singularity. He abandoned an early attempt to work with actors to focus on a highly personal experience of personification in his hypnosis performances. This led to the formation of a character referred to as ‘That Person’, who in each of his performances displays recurring behavior such as singing, crying, making coffee and drawing. Following a large scale inventory of all actions and gestures carried out by That Person over the years (as part of Work in Residence at Hedah in 2010-2011), Mullican wants to investigate what happens when his work becomes a means for others to get into character.
This Class of Masters aims to practically think through questions of repetition and reproduction in performance and specifically examines how a person becomes a character. Participants become closely acquainted with Mullican’s way of thinking and the work method of his hypnosis performances. The class also offers a unique opportunity to work with experts from the fields of dance, performance and theatre. The participants will be divided into three groups, each led by a master from a specific discipline. The framework of the class departs from different scripts to work from; a set with props that are available at all times; and thematic concepts for each session.
During a two day programme that is partly open to an audience, masterclass students will work on acting out a series of scripts on stage. In short rehearsal sessions that will follow each other, each group tries out different scenarios with a certain script or prop, to demonstrate differences of approach. After each session Mullican and the other masters offer their comments. On the evening of the first day there will be a public conversation led by Vanessa Desclaux with hypnotist Veronica Fyland. On the second day, the three groups present their findings to the audience and theatre director Johan Simons, who will be offering his response.
Read biographies of Nicole Beutler, Vanessa Desclaux, Suchan Kinoshita, Joachim Robbrecht, Matt Mullican and Johan Simons here.
Applications
Send a biography and short motivation to masterclass@ificantdance.org before 9 January 2012. Participants pay EUR 25. Some experience in (public) performance is recommended, but not required.
Partners
This Class of Masters is part of the research project by Matt Mullican and Vanessa Desclaux for If I Can’t Dance’s programme Performance in Residence, and is a co-production of If I Can’t Dance and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. The masterclass is financially supported by the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture. With thanks to Frascati Theatre.