PHYSICAL STORYTELLING AM 12.12. IN HAMBURG

Bring your body, your voice, your imagination. This workshop is about using yourself in space to be everything and anything. Don’t worry about getting stuffed with text. You will be made familiar with basic techniques used in physical storytelling and perform a story with other participants using nothing but your – and their – physique.

The workshop focuses on the body as the primary means to enact character, emotions, and locations as well as for narrative advancement. Voice becomes the origin of the character itself. Participants are reminded of their own physicality and shown techniques to put it to use, hands out of pockets, arms unfolded. Unhindered by a director's demands or choking on indigestible lumps of text material, actors are given the opportunity to discover their own bodily creativity. The workshop is suitable for actors, improvisors, comedic performers and everyone else interested in the art of storytelling. You are welcome with whatever level of experience you bring along.

Participants will be working on the story of Little Red Riding Hood, but do bring to the workshop as many fairy tales as possible. The workshop will be in English.

12.12., 10am-4pm (10:00-16:00 Uhr)

Make sure you go to see Mbene's intriguing and bitterly funny solo performance The Story of a Tiger at LICHTHOF Theater on the same day. Workshop participants get 50% discount on the regular entrance fee: http://lichthof-theater.de/event-reader/events/the-story-of-a-tiger-370.html

ABOUT MBENE MWAMBENE
He was born Geoffrey Mbunga Mbene to Malawian parents (both late) in a copper mine township of Mindolo, Kitwe in Zambia. He moved to Malawi in 1997. He considers his English name a stain of colonialism. Mbene is a theatre performer, journalist, poet, dancer, singer and HIV/AIDS facilitator. His professional acting life has revolved around doing interactive theatre for disadvantaged communities and performing innovative theatre pieces for local and international audiences. He is Project Officer for Nanzikambe Arts, doing weekly drama sessions, life skills training, assertive skills training and leadership skills training the structurally disadvantaged. Mbene was also the first African to be hired to co-conduct a Theatre of the Oppressed workshop at Jakomini Prison in Austria with Thokozani Kapiri (Malawi) and Philipp Hamedl (Austria). He has appeared in numerous stage productions an TV series.

Currently, he is looking at enhancing his artistic experience through sharing his skills with other artists and so seeing how other artists go about doing their work in practice. Seeking to explore different cultural approaches and aspects to theater, he is keen to meet seasoned and upcoming artists from across the world. In a conducive, enabling and interactive environment, he wishes to share techniques and experiences in all kinds of theatre work, and explore the ways in which diverse cultural interaction can inform approaches to the theater.

Mbene is on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mbenem.mwambene

Photo (c) Johannes Dietschi / ZHdK