“Everything Moves!”, the People’s Shakespeare Project’s inaugural adult theatre education workshop will commence at the Stone Independent School at 6:30 PM on Sunday, April 16 and continue each Sunday at the same time and location for the following four Sundays. The two-hour sessions will be led by Sena Taşkapılıoğlu.
We recently sat down with Sena to find out what students can expect from this exciting new class, which is open to theatre professionals or anyone interested in exploring the theatre more deeply.
TPSP: Where were you born and what is your background in the theatre?
Sena: I was born and raised in Ankara in Turkey. I went to school for acting there at a conservatory. Very conventional style acting. After that I moved to Instanbul, which is the art capital of Turkey. There I did a bunch of conventional theatre, but I was always looking for something different. I discovered improv while I was looking, and I did that for a while. And while I was doing that, I discovered clowning through a circus arts program at Bilgi University. After I discovered clowning, I dug through a bit more and I found out about Lecoq. I got trained with Giovannia Fusetti. He’s an Italian master, Lecoq’s personal student. After I got trained with a bunch of colleagues, we started a physical theatre and comedy school in Istanbul and that ran for five years until I moved to the United States. In-between we did a bunch of plays, and I taught in other places too, at conservatories and special workshops.
TPSP: Who was Jacques Lecoq, whose method you teach?
Sena: Jacques Lecoq was a French pedagogue who was actually coming from gymnastics. Very interesting. He switched into theatre in his later days. He was a person who was always fascinated by movement. The building where he started was actually a boxing studio that he turned into a school.
TPSP: Tell us about the People’s Shakespeare Project’s first adult education workshop, “Everything Moves”.
This workshop is about movement, and it comes from Lecoq-based theatre pedagogy. It’s about how to get inspiration through movement and how you can create play out of it. When you look at the movements of certain things, the movements of the world – I mean, like water, air, earth, fire, or materials – they are actually referring to some dramatic situations. They are transferrable. Coming from the movement and creating the dramatic situation will be the core of this workshop. It’s about how you project the story without having any tools basically. It’s all about the space and your body, and your relationship with the space and how you project things within your body. How to play with the air, the space, and turn it into the something. After we work on some techniques, we are going to turn to our mighty Shakespeare and get some help from his text.
To register for Sena’s workshop, click HERE.
