2009 Sojourn Theatre Summer Institutes
for Adults working in Theatre, Education & Community settings
Our Tenth Year!
Devising Civic Theatre:
Performance, Social Practice, Participation & Dialogue
Workshop Leader: Michael Rohd
in Portland, Oregon (July 6-11)
at Lewis & Clark College
Housing Available
AND
A Three Day intensive June 26-28 in Washington DC
Imagination Theater- Bethesda, MD
No Housing Available
For the tenth straight summer, this 6 day workshop/training (3 days in DC) offers participants an opportunity to explore the techniques & strategies Sojourn Theatre artistic director Michael Rohd uses in collaborative work with groups in a variety of settings to:
- devise performance material
- build community through theatre-based civic engagement
- examine the potential of site-specific activity
- explore social & political issues through collaborative conceptual, improvisational & physical investigations
In Portland
July 6- July 10
9:30am- 4pm
Saturday July 11
9am-12 noon
&
optional evenings 6:30-9:30***
Fee: $450
In Washington DC
June 26 - 5-9pm
June 27,28 10am-5pm
Fee: $225
PORTLAND HOUSING and/or Academic Credit Possibilities at Lewis & Clark College-
For housing on campus (availability begins Sunday evening July 5) and/or continuing education information, contact Sally Earll at ccps@lclark.edu or 503.768.6040- NOT Sojourn Theatre. The college deals directly with both these aspects of the Institute.
***This summer's Portland institute meets as a training cohort during the day. In addition, the cohort will have the option of working with/observing Sojourn company members and guest artists each weekday evening as part of Sojourn's research/development for our upcoming multi-community site specific project/production On The Table***
Register early, space is limited.
For information or registration email sojourntheatre@aol.com.
In conjunction with this year's Portland Institute, Sojourn invites artists and designers looking to expand ways of examining performance-integrated multimedia strategies to join us for a partner set of workshops in development for On the Table. Contact us for more information.
More information on the workshop
'Civic theatre' aims to bring an adventurous theatricality to a focused interrogation of contemporary issues by offering spaces for civic engagement throughout the process of developing new performance- it's a porous series of events combining research, participatory activity, and studio (artist-focused) sessions that allow, invite and demand community members and community expertise into the dramaturgy before and after production in a variety of ways. This institute offers sequences of physical activity, solo to group work, and devising strategies that investigate the relationship between story, idea, perspective and fact.
Influences reflected during the workshop/training week include Ping Chong, John Malpede, Pina Bausch, Cornerstone Theater, Augusto Boal, ensemble theater practice, Dwight Conquergood, the growing field of site-responsive/social practice performance, Lynn Blom, Dorothy Heathcote, Living Stage & Paolo Freire.
Workshop Leader Bio
Michael Rohd is founding artistic director of Sojourn Theatre in Portland, Oregon, a 2005 recipient of Americans for the Arts' Animating Democracy Exemplar Award.. His work there as creator/director/performer includes BUILT (presented as part of Portland's TBA 2008 Festival) GOOD (2008 Portland Drammy, Outstanding Production of the Season) The War Project (2005 Drammy, Best ensemble) 7 Great Loves (five 2003 Drammy awards including Best Production and Best Director), and Witness Our Schools (9 months of Oregon and national touring). Rohd is a recipient of Theatre Communication Group's 2001 New Generations Grant, and their 2002 Extended Collaboration Grant with Atlanta's Alliance Theatre. An associate artist with Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles and an artistic associate with Ping Chong & Co in New York City, in Fall 2007 he began a two year Visiting Professorship at Northwestern University as the Ethel M Barber Chair in Theatre with a focus on Devising Performance & Civic Engagement. His work has been supported by Ford Foundation, the NEA, Rockefeller's MAP Fund, Doris Duke Foundation and Arts Councils in states around the nation including CA, OR, LA, NE & VA. Recent work includes a collaboration with the Connecticut State Legislature and the US election-themed large scale production The Race at Georgetown University, which used video and internet technology to bring a real-time chorus from around the world onto the stage as part of the show's cast. Current projects include creating Oregon Shakespeare Festival's first company devised, site-specific work, a new Sojourn piece to be staged simultaneously in multiple Oregon communities called On The Table, a multi-year project culminating in an original piece at Kansas City Rep, collaborating with Washington DC's Woolly mammoth Theater on a National Conference about Theatre and Democracy and a collaboration with The House Theater in Chicago called Wilson Wants it All. He is author of the internationally used book Theatre for Community, Conflict, and Dialogue, and has an MFA in Directing and Public Dialogue from Virginia Tech, where he studied with Bob Leonard.
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