In July 2011, The Ghost Road Company, with a Cultural Exchange Initiative grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and support from the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, engaged in a two-week residency with Warsaw’s Studium Teatralne. During this time, Ghost Road Artistic Director Katharine Noon, ensemble members Ronnie Clark, Christel Joy Johnson, Brian Weir, and Mark Seldis collaborated with Studium Teatralne’s Director and founder Piotr Borowski and four members of that ensemble. The residency began with Ghost Road showing some excerpts from the early workshops for its next piece, “The Bargain and the Butterfly” (shown here) and S/T showing excerpts from their latest work. After that an exchange of training and development techniques went on for two weeks, Mon-Sat 9am – 2pm. On the last day, an invited audience bore witness to a presentation of “Training” techniques and a composition piece created by both ensembles collaboratively, with Borowksi taking the lead on the training portion and Noon leading the composition portion, though both directors contributed to both parts. This video shows bits from Ghost Road’s initial presentation to S/T and introductions and clips from the final presentations.
This exchange gave Ghost Road the opportunity to further develop a physical language for both training and performance and gave Studium Teatralne members some new ways of looking at the development of new work.
Hear more from Katharine Noon about the residency on the LA Stage Times blog