Workshops

FREE WORKSHOPS @ HULL TRUCK

CREATIVE COLLABORATION led by Selma Dimitrijevic
When: 2-6pm on Saturday 29th September
Where: HULL TRUCK THEATRE, Spring Street Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire HU2 8RW

A workshop for writers, directors, designers, actors, and anyone else interested in making theatre on how to introduce other creatives into the writing process from an early stage.
Suitable for students and professionals.

How to apply: Please email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or call on 01482 488223. Places are allocated on a first come first serve basis and are capped at 12 participants.

PLAYWRITING FOR MATURE WRITERS led by Sylvia Dow
*** ALL WORKSHOP PLACES HAVE NOW BEEN ALLOCATED ***
When: 2-4pm on Friday 2th September

A practical workshop on the techniques and processes of developing new plays, with a focus on how and where to start, collaboration with other artists and getting your work noticed.

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CREATIVE COLLABORATION led by Selma Dimitrijevic
When: 2-6pm on Thursday 6th September
Where: Tron Theatre, 63 Trongate, 
Glasgow, 
G1 5HB

What: A workshop for writers, directors, designers and actors on how to introduce other creatives into the writing process from an early stage. Suitable for students and professionals.

How to apply: Please send your name and contact details to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) with a short biography. Places are allocated on a first come first serve basis and are capped at 12 participants.

PLAYWRITING FOR MATURE WRITERS led by Selma Dimitrijevic and Sylvia Dow
When: 2-6pm on Friday 7th September
Where: Tron Theatre, 63 Trongate, 
Glasgow, 
G1 5HB

What: A practical workshop on the techniques and processes of developing new plays, with a focus on how and where to start, collaboration with other artists and getting your work noticed.

How to apply: Please send your name and contact details to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) with a short biography. Places are allocated on a first come first serve basis and are capped at 12 participants.

About playwright Sylvia Dow:

Born and educated in Edinburgh, Sylvia Dow has lived a life in thrall to the arts and to theatre in particular. Her theatre obsessed mother appointed her as play-going companion from a very early age, her father having proved a unsuitable partner for these outings - plays bored him to death and he often fell asleep ten minutes into the first act. So Sylvia was subject to a wide variety of theatrical experiences, some utterly unsuitable for a 7 year old, and fell head over heels in love with theatre, plays and actors, a love that has persisted all her life.

But despite training as an actor, and a working life spent entirely in the arts as teacher, education officer, arts bureaucrat, and consultant, the opportunity to work in a total theatre setting never arose.

At the age of 70 she took the decision to do something that would allow her to talk and think about theatre intensively. She signed up, a little nervously, for a Masters course in Dramaturgy and Playwriting at Glasgow University.

The outcomes of this decision were surprising. She discovered the heady feeling of liberation which writing can bring. She found that being over 70 could inform her work in terms of a long life lived, but did not have to define her work. And she found that people were interested in her voice, what she had to say. That this interest could lead to her first play being produced, directed, toured, was the biggest and best surprise of all.

Now that, at a late age, she can call herself a playwright, she continues to work at the craft currently working on a three-act play about the nature of belief.

About Selma Dimitrijevic:

Selma is a freelance writer and director and the Co-Artistic Director of Greyscale. Her work as a writer includes Gods Are Fallen And All Safety Gone, Night Time, Game Theory (co-written with Pamela Carter), A Time to Go, Broken, A Prayer, Harmless Creatures, Zatopek! (The Opera) and Extremely Brief and Violent.

Her directing work includes Tonight David Ireland will Lecture, Dance and Box by Sandy Grierson and Lorne Campbell (Oran Mor/Northern Stage), What would Judas Do? by Stewart Lee (Theatre Royal Bath/Northern Stage), Waterproof by Andy Duffy, An Incident at the Border by Kieran Lynn, (Oran Mor), Theatre Brothel (Hull Truck, Northern Stage, Almeida), Harmless Creatures (Hull Truck Theatre/Greyscale), Gods Are Fallen And All Safety Gone (Almeida Festival) and A Beginning, A Middle and an End by Sylvia Dow (Greyscale).

She is a lecturer at Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design and her plays have been produced in the UK, Croatia, Ukraine, Canada and Russia.

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GREYSCALE PLAY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME IN ASSOCIATION WITH TRIFORCE PROMOTIONS
(applications for GPDP are now closed)

A six month play development programme for theatre writers run by Selma Dimitrijevic, freelance writer and director and Co-Artistic Director of Greyscale.

The 2012 programme will run from 28 May to 3 December.

Working in small groups and individually, each participant will develop a new play through a structured series of workshops, meetings and one-on-one tuition. Participants will also be invited to observe four different Greyscale rehearsal processes to develop understanding of how the writer and the text develop in tandem with the rehearsal process.

The programme will include:
• 2 group meetings per month
• 1 one-on-one meeting per month (at the Bush theatre café in Shepherd’s Bush)
• Script notes, advice and support between the meetings
• Access to rehearsal rooms of 4 different Greyscale shows
• End-of-course session with both Artistic Directors of Greyscale on practical advice for getting the script noticed, developed and produced

During the programme Greyscale will be working on 4 new shows, each developed from a different writing approach and through a bespoke rehearsal process. All the participants will have access to two sessions for each of the rehearsals (all in London).

Shows include:

June - ‘Gods Are Fallen And All Safety Gone’,  Greyscale production of an existing text to be presented at the Almeida festival in July 2012, written and directed by Selma Dimitrijevic.
July -  ‘Ballroom’, new Greyscale show for Autumn 2012, written for an actor and two dancers and developed in association with RashDash.
July - ‘Me and Mr C’, improvised show by Garry Kitching, for Edinburgh festival 2012 co-directed by Greyscale’s Co-Artistic Directors.
September - ‘First Date’, new Greyscale show,  written by David Ireland and directed by Lorne Campbell.

Through the programme all participants will have the opportunity to focus on:

a) Examining the form and finding the best structure for each of their ideas
b) Finding ways to allow the subconscious to generate material and then sharpening technical ability to edit that material,
c) Finding and establishing their own process and practice
d) Advice and introduction to working with other artists, finding and collaborating with other theatre makers,
e) Practical advice on how to get this particular script noticed, developed and produced.

Group meetings will be held on Monday evenings (exact times will depend on the group availability) and one on one meetings will be arranged individually and will be held at the Bush Theatre Café (7 Uxbridge Road London, W12 8LJ).

Between the meetings each participant will write in their own time and receive script notes and advice on their work.

Programme leader:

Selma Dimitrijevic is a freelance writer and director.

Her plays have been produced in UK, Croatia, Ukraine, Canada and Russia and the opera Zatopek!, based on Selma’s libretto, and composed by Emily Howard, will premier this July in Liverpool, London and Prague as part of 2012 Cultural Olympiad.
As a writer and a director Selma has worked with theatres such as The Traverse, The Tron, Stellar Quines, 7:84, Oran Mor, Northern Stage, Almeida, Hull Truck, Liverpool Everyman, Theatre Royal Bath, Praktika Theatre Moscow, Theatre na Podole Kiev and Exit Theatre Zagreb.
Work as a translator includes plays and novels by authors such as Robert Holman, Enda Walsh, David Harrower, Susan Sontag, Dave Eggers, Salman Rushdie, Roddy Doyle, James Kelman, Zadie Smith, Monica Ali, Irvine Welsh and Barry Gifford.

As a dramaturg Selma has worked with the Tron Theatre, Croatian National Theatre and National Theatre of Scotland Workshop.

Programme Fee: £360 + VAT (The fee can be paid in three instalments on 21st May, 6th August and 5th November).

TO APPLY:

Please email us your Name, Address, Phone Number and a short CV/Writing/Theatre experience on .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

 

“I thoroughly enjoyed having the opportunity to work with Selma to develop my play. As a fellow writer, I felt that she had a crucial understanding of everyone’s different approaches to playwriting and processes, and perhaps more importantly that she was respectful of these differences. Her reading is careful and her comments thoughtful and effective. I know that my script would have never gotten to where it is now without her guidance and the inspiration she sparked in me every time we met to discuss my work. ”  Andrea Beca, Artistic Director, Cowardly Kiss Theatre

“Writing a play is famously a lonely business, so having an experienced dramaturgical ‘third eye’ on the play development is something I would recommend to any aspiring playwright. Having these conversations, and having that support, has been a hugely important to me in growing my skills as a playwright, and in allowing the writing to open up and flourish.” Sylvia Dow, Freelance Writer

 

INFORMATION ON ALL GREYSCALE WORKSHOPS
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The Greyscale ensemble has a wide and varied skillset and we are happy to offer workshops in any of our fields of expertise. These are some examples of workshops we have offered in the past but if you would like something a little more bespoke, get in touch and we will do our best to help.

Collaborative Commissioning

A workshop for writers, directors, designers and actors on how to introduce other creatives into the writing process at an early stage. Suitable for students and professionals. Min four hours, Max 2 Days. 18+

Building to Interaction

Practical workshop on interaction between the stage and the auditorium. Using Greyscale and contemporary British work this workshop explores how an audience can be activated and cast within a production. Suitable for students and professionals 18+

Developing New Writing

Practical Workshop on techniques and process of developing new plays. Focussed on the role of the director and the actor. Suitable for Students and Professionals min four hours max 1 day. 18+

Devising, starting points

Practical workshop about the generation of material in a devising process. Suitable for schools, students and professionals 14+

Writing Workshop

Playwriting workshop, led by Selma Dimitrijevic. Practical workshop on playwriting and different approaches to writing for the stage. Suitable for schools, students and professionals 14+

Translation workshop

Translation workshop, led by Selma Dimitrijevic. Practical workshop on translation of Plays. Suitable for students and professionals. 18+

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Comments from workshop participants:

"Greyscale's workshops take students on an original journey; their work pushes the performer out standard experience and into a performance world of extremes and startling brilliance."

"Greyscale's workshops explore the plethora of techniques behind perspective story telling with clarity and illuminate startling and challenging aspects of their work. Their approach is hugely stimulating and very usable in practice."

"Greyscale is the most innovative company around demystifying the postmodern fusion of distancing techniques and profound emotional experience through perspective storytelling"

Photo by Idil Sukan