The Actor’s Atelier as part of BodyConstitution combines practice and reflection to build a deep body culture of the actor’s and performer’s work. The project centres on complex holistic, physical and vocal training, its problems and self-study; on opening up to new sources of theatre work; and on an innovative methodology of the actor’s work focused on his/her self-development with particular emphasis on self-diagnosis and the ability to communicate the actor’s processes. One of the main premises of the project is a belief that the creative development of artistic work methods is possible mainly through the constant confrontation of learned techniques with the experience, richness and variety of methods developed by teachers and artists from other traditions and cultures. One of the central objectives of BodyConstitution, which forms the base of the Actor’s Atelier, is to show and combine the binarity present in the actor’s practice: from body objectification to body subjectification, from ‘having a body’ to ‘being a body’. We would also like BodyConstitution to become a programme that aims to build a practical heuristics of the body (body as a way) and a practical hermeneutics of the body (body as the gift of tongues).

The Actor’s Atelier starts with the premise that your body is your Constitution. How do we rework the ‘sources’ both in training and in working on the actor’s material that we recast into scene material so that it can later become integrated into performance?