TEACHERS' TRAINING COURSE TO TAKE PLACE IN MELBOURNE IN 2012

For PRIMARY AND Secondary School Educators

- Michelle Gosper, Lambton High School

Now in its 12th year, Zen Zen Zo's popular Teachers' Training Course provides a practical insight into the dynamic world of physical theatre.

The unique teachers' training experience aims to provide teachers with:

• an in-depth understanding of Physical Theatre
• an experience of "Viewpoints" as a Physical Theatre teaching tool
• a practical, artistic experience for teachers
• an opportunity to engage with Zen Zen Zo's unique approach to training

THIS COURSE FILLS FAST EVERY YEAR - BOOK SOON TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT!

Email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it to request for a 2012 Teachers' Training Course flier!

Dates: 23, 25, 26 May

Time: 7pm 

Venue: Redcliffe State High School

Cost:  Adults $12, Students $8

Purchase from Redcliffe State High School in person at the Administration building on the Eastern Campus OR phone 3897 1111 and pay by credit card. Tickets to be collected from Administration building Redcliffe SHS.  Suitable for 14 years and above.

Director: Drew der Kinderen

The classic tragedy of Medea is given powerful new relevance in this exciting physical adaptation. Medea has been cast aside by her ambitious husband Jason, and in order to make him suffer, she will do the unthinkable.  Innocent lives will pay the price for Medea’s uncontrollable need for revenge.  When passion overwhelms reason, can anyone escape unharmed?

Presented by the 2012 CAD Class of Redcilffe State High School, and Zen Zen Zo Physical Theatre.  

WINTER STOMP: Montville Training Retreat

This week-long physical theatre training intensive led by Training Centre Director Lynne Bradley and assisted by Company members will cover all of Zen Zen Zo’s core training systems including daily fitness sessions, the Suzuki Actor Training Method, the Viewpoints, Butoh and Composition. Each of these Methods are dynamic, internationally recognized approaches to making work for the stage.

Participants will be immersed in the art of physical theatre in a small group environment (14 max) and will receive regular feedback and guidance from the instructors. The course is carefully designed as a week-long journey of development - both personally and artistically. As well as exploring the possibilities of theatre craft in training, participants will also create a series of short pieces (or “Compositions”) that reflect and express an aspect of their own core beliefs as a person and artist. This provides an opportunity to put skills into practice and also to reflect on your core artistic worldview.

TERM 3 ENROLLMENTS NOW OPEN!

Click the links below for more information!

- Physical Actor Training (Brisbane)
- Physical Actor Training (Melbourne)
- Youth Physical Actor Training (Brisbane)

The Actor’s Dojo is the new overarching name for the Zen Zen Zo Training Centre weekly class program in Brisbane and Melbourne. It refers to both a physical place and a metaphorical space. It encompasses the ideals that Zen Zen Zo has long held to be of utmost importance in the artist’s life and journey, many of which were seeded during the company’s early years based in Japan (1993-1995). The concept behind The Actor’s Dojo has been developed by Zen Zen Zo Physical Theatre founder, Lynne Bradley, to acknowledge the company’s unique approach to actor training. Embracing the ideals of Western actor-training studios (such as the seminal Actor’s Studio in New York) and the Asian concept of the Dojo (the spiritual place for all physical training practices, including the Martial Arts), The Actor’s Dojo is a marriage of East and West.

Dojo means “the place of the Way”. It implies the context in which important personal and artistic journeys are played out and transformation occurs. Traditional Dojos are considered special or “sacred” places, where the training attends holistically to the body, mind and spirit simultaneously.

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The STAGES Program is an adjunct to the Actor’s Dojo: Weekly Classes. It is an optional tool for participants who enjoy working towards goals, and find benefit from more in-depth one-on-one feedback. The STAGES Program identifies the stages of development an artist goes through in their skills-acquisition journey, helping to make clear what qualities and skills are important to master at what phase of development. These skills are common to all the training methods offered by Zen Zen Zo, and by making them transparent the goal is to provide greater clarity for students as they navigate their way towards mastery.

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Please feel free to call the office/ This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it us if you would like to put your name on the waiting list.

These two and a half hour acting classes will take place in the gorgeous Old Museum in Brisbane on Tuesday nights from 7-9.30pm during four x 4-week terms in 2012. Each term will feature a different Industry Leader, offering their wisdom and experience in practical workshop-style Acting Masterclasses. Term 1 saw newly appointed Zen Zen Zo Artistic Director Michael Futcher lead the classes, and Term 2 will feature Margi Brown Ash. 

The Masterclasses will take 14 emerging and experienced actors on an exploration of their acting process from first contact with the script through to performance. Through improvisation, actors' exercises and text-work, participants will be challenged to develop their spontaneity, imagination, vocal/physical expressiveness, sense of truth and emotional power. 

Don’t miss this wonderful opportunity to steal the secrets from the Masters!

Merlynn Tong joined the Zen Zen Zo Training Centre as Education Manager at the beginning of 2012.  She completed the Company Internship Program in 2011, after moving from Perth where she'd completed a BA in English and Creative Arts at Murdoch University and was the Validictorian of her year.  Prior to that, Merlynn was a Marketing Executive in Singapore making a lot of money.  She decided to throw it all in and follow her Bliss, and has ended up at the Zen Den for her sins... 

1. Age: 24 in Australia (25 in Singapore).

2. Year you started training/working with Zen Zen Zo: 2011 (stalking started in 2009).

3. Favourite Zen Zen Zo show: Zeitgeist - I watched a 5-minute clip on youtube at least 50 times in a row.

4. Best piece of advice you were ever given: “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” It may be clichéd today but the 14-year-old me really drew strength from this one!

5. Favourite physical training/sport to get fit: Gym Gym Gym. Weights Weights Weights.

6. Current obsession: The relationship (and stark potential for alchemy) between well- crafted interior design, glorious food and the performing body.

7. Zen Zen Zo Nickname: Lynne calls me Big M. Krystal calls me Merynne,

8. First job: Burger King (Hungry Jacks) doing everything.

9. Favourite food: Roadside Hawker Food in Singapore AND French Food AND Cheese AND Dark Chocolate AND Simple Aglio Olio AND Cake AND Peking duck AND…

10. Favourite drink: Avocado Juice drizzled with XO Brandy (you can get this in an old hawker centre in Singapore).

11. What’s on your iPod: Bohemian Rhapsody on replay.

12. What book are you currently reading: The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas.

13. Favourite film director: Wong Kar-Wai.

14. Best ZZZ memory: After a late night at Cabaret washing “Moistees” (a.k.a cast underwear), ironing, sniffing undies, vacuuming, mopping and helping to undress and dress actors (whoop!), Emma, Alana and I found a sock in my hair (to puff it up) and realized that it was stuffed with endless toilet paper. The sock was also dirty and smelt like feet. It was 1am in QPAC after a 16-hour day and we were laughing so hard that we were reduced to 3 convulsing piles on the ground. Good times.

15. Most exciting plan for 2012: Going to Japan to dance with Dairakudakan and possibly also going to Singapore to meet my family whom I haven’t seen in 2 years!

16. Life Motto: “Live with passion, joy, courage and love and good things will come to you in the end” (I’ve got this symbol tattooed on my back!)

“….a production of flippant elegance, with the lush beauty, multiple layers and irony you would get if Peter Greenaway were to direct an Indian movie…” Sue Gough (The Bulletin)

Vikram and the Vampire marks the beginning of Michael Futcher and Helen Howard’s directorship of Zen Zen Zo’s Performance Company.

Adapted from the award-winning production of The King and the Corpse, Vikram and the Vampire is a magical night of comedy, horror and dynamic physical theatre which celebrates the art of storytelling and ensemble playing.

UNSPEAKABLE ACTS OF PRIVACY

Who: Lynne Bradley (Director) and Katehrine Wilkinson (our all American Teaching-Artist and Assistant Director)

Where do YOU draw the line?  Would you be on a Reality TV show, where you swap privacy for fame?  Do you Twitter about what you had for lunch or your latest fight with your partner?  What have you disclosed on your Facebook page – about your family, your sex life, your sins?  

UNSPEAKABLE ACTS OF PRIVACY explores this thorny divide between our public and private lives in the 21st century.  Performed in Public and Private spaces around the grounds of the University of Queensland, the show utilises the contrasting mediums of large-scale Physical Theatre spectacle AND Intimate Theatre, which employs One-On-One small-scale experiences for the audience members and has become the theatre du jour at so many recent international festivals.  Directed by Zen Zen Zo Physical Theatre founder Lynne Bradley, working with drama students from the University of Queensland, this production will explore the edges of what theatre is and can be.  Exciting, thought-provoking, shocking, edgy, enjoyable, confronting…what will your experience be?  We look forward to meeting you (one-on-one:) and finding out. 

Dates:  Wed 16 - Sat 19 May (Anywhere Theatre Festival)

Times: 7pm & 8.15pm  Cost:  $20 / $15 Conc. 

Venue:  University of Queensland (meet at the Pizza Cafe next to the Schonell Theatre). 

Bring:  Good walking shoes, a torch, your courage...

LIGHTNING IN A KETTLE

Players: Alana Hoggart (2011 Company Intern and Office Admin Extraordinaire), Soonufat Supramaniam (Incoming 2012 Intern!) + a whole lot of participants who have been training with us!

Lightning in a Kettle is a Butoh performance, exploring the notion of what childhood means.  In this creative development we are exploring why aren’t there any colourful balloons in adult life? What do we leave behind? Where did our instinctual curiosity, energy, and simplistic wonder of the everyday go?  In the performance we dance the darkness of our childhood fears, and the light of a child’s unyielding capacity to love.  The “Dragon Keep” playground evokes a sense of magic, we are inviting the audience to be drawn back to a time of innocent wonder and sensory exploration. 

Dates: Thu 10th to Sat 12th @ 7:00pm

Tickets: FREE! DONATIONS WELCOME.

Place: New Farm Park Playground (“Dragon’s Keep”) | Closest Street: Binkenba Cr, New Farm |

THE OXFORD GIRL

Players: James Halloran, Indigo Pixie and Hannah Farrelley (Youh Ambassadors!) + Xani Kennedy (Past Comapany Intern!)

The Oxford Girl is a physical and aural exploration of a tragic, twisted and true love story, through contemporary theatre styles such as Butoh dance and Physical theatre.  A modern adaptation that brings to life the legend of the Oxford girl and the Cruel Miller, dating back to the 1600’s. 

Dates: Sat 11th, Fri 18th & Sat 19th @ 4:00pm

Tickets: $10/$7

Place: The banks of the creek, Woolcock Park (Glenrosa Rd entrance), Red Hill 

'MERICA

All American Players!: Earl Kim (Senior Teaching-Artist, Performer, Fight Choreographer plus much much much more...!), Katherine Wilkinson (Senior Teaching-Artist!), Morgan Rose (Directing Intern 2010!)

Welcome to America. You know it well, whether you want to or not. Now experience it LIVE! IN COLOR! AWESOME! 

Created by two borderline ex-pat Americans, Merica is a solo performance STARRING: LADY GAGA! KATHARINE HEPBURN! MISS PIGGY! ANDY WARHOL! and G.W. BUSH! EXTREME pop, USA style.

American culture has bulldozed the world. We’re all drowning in Jennifer Aniston. This means we all actually have something in common (for better or for worse).  American popular culture has shaped us. It’s a part of our identity. We all sing the songs and quote the movies regardless of what passport we hold. 

In 2011, Morgan Rose and Earl Kim, two Americans living abroad, set out to create THE MOST AMERICAN SHOW EVER. The result is Merica, a fast-paced mash-up of American pop-culture references: a scene from Law and Order: SVU where Detective Olivia Benson is played by Katherine Hepburn and Detective Elliot Stabler is played by Michelangelo, the Party Dude—all of whom are played by Earl Kim. Before the show, audiences are asked to choose from a menu of American pop culture icons. Their choices make an appearance in the show.

Dates: Fri 11 to Sun 13 May @ 7:00pm 

Tickets: $12

Place: The Red Box.Level 2, State Library of Queensland

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