A key member of top Polish theatre company Teatr Pieśń Kozła, Welsh theatre practitioner Ian Morgan has performed in some of the most important theatres in the world, including The Barbican, LA Live, the Sydney Opera House and The Royal Shakespeare Company. He has worked with Jerzy Grotowski, Thomas Richards, Meredith Monk, Thèâtre du Soleil, Guillermo Gomez-Peña and a host of other performance makers.
Closing the International Festival of the Arts today, 26 June, Ian shares a new work he’s creating, Fragments from the Clay. Speaking of it, he mentions the years he worked with Grotowski and Thomas Richard in Pontedera (1992/1995), in the Art as Vehicle project: “I was 22 then and I worked like I’d never worked before or again. I read all the books that are still important to me now and changed from the cellular level up. Sometimes I can’t remember who I was before this time. I lived in a flat in Pontedera and breathed in the life around me. Six years after I left Italy, my former landlord rang me up and asked if I’d left a suitcase in that old apartment off Corso Matteotti. At first I thought, no, and then I remembered the old blue suitcase my mother had sent me away with. I was always embarrassed by it. Unfortunately, I had also placed my notebooks, photos, special books and various other mementoes in that case and had simply left them there in a flurry of transitions to a new life.
“Then the suitcase was back in my hands, after six years. Suddenly, I had a glimpse back on myself, during a moment of my life in which I seemed to be in a state of ‘pure freedom.’ I still have the contents of the suitcase. A man in an open all-night café, on his way somewhere, has his whole life in a suitcase… is he a refugee, an archivist, a salesman, the victim of an accident, dead or dying?”
Texts informing the new work include: Pirandello’s L’uomo dal fiore in bocca, Chaiken’s The War in Heaven, Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, Paul Brok’s Into the Silent Land, Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida and texts Ian himself created.
The evening promises to be beautifully open and exciting, with sections from the new performance as well as phases where Ian will be “searching live with a collection of stimuli from a number of starting points” developing the performance further in front of the audience – a truly unique experience! “Is it all performance, already,” he asks, “… or is it process performed?”
A video presentation and talk/demo supplement the event, with video material relative to the initial work on his solo performance Fever, as well as extracts from Teatr Pieśń Kozła performances.
Performer Dramaturgy Seminar – and Future International Work
Ian Morgan will give a seminar over five evenings (27 June – 1 July) at ActionBase Studio. Going from exercise to creative flow is particular to Teatr Pieśń Kozła’s creative process. Certain elements offer a clear starting point and a constant support in the search for organic, unpremeditated action. Working in partnership with a specific text, the seminar explores the path from “play” of exercise towards dynamic and original theatre actions. The seminar also lays the foundations for an international programme John Schranz and Ian Morgan will start designing.
Booking for both events is from St. James Cavalier – also see www.actionbase-studio.org for how to get there.