BRIDGES THEATRE PROJECT BRINGS PROS, STUDENTS TOGETHER
Mentorship a collaborative process that nourishes learner and mentor
If making theatre was something that could be taught (and learned) in classrooms, like algebra or the history of plumbing, there probably would be no need for the Bridges Theatre Project.
The arts, and artists, don’t work that way, though. And this fall, a network of theatre pros, including Catalyst Theatre and choreographer/director/playwright Amber Borotsik, have been demonstrating that, on location, by launching themselves into mentorships with students at Victoria School of the Arts.
Both Catalyst and Borotsik work in distinctively collaborative, highly original ways: that was the spirit of the mentoring invitation they got from Vic’s head “theatre educator” Greg Dowler-Coltman.
He describes Bridges thus: “Great arts learning, the opportunity to learn on the ground alongside and under the direction of those who do theatre on a daily professional basis. And connection to the world (the students) may one day enter professionally.”
You’ll get to see the results of this bridgework between the school and the professional community in performances Thursday, Nov. 26 through Saturday, Nov. 28 at Vic’s Eva O. Howard Theatre (tickets: 780-392-3534).
Six weeks ago, Borotsik, a bluechip collaborator and co-creator of entire movement festivals (Expanse), performance theatre companies (Windrow), and original physical theatre performance pieces (like Backwater), arrived at Vic to meet 46 Grade 11 kids. What she had in hand was a translation of Blood Wedding, a hot-blooded 1932 tragedy by the Spanish master, Federico Garcia Lorca. “The idea was a devised response to Blood Wedding, not a production,” she says. “Greg told me to have the same expectation as I would with any company.”
Suddenly, the students found themselves in a world of creative possibilities with no prescribed script. “I asked them to think about how to use limitation as a catalyst for creation.” Borotsik split her young collaborators into groups and asked them to devise “some way to carry a person that involved all bodies.”
“I started with the desire to give as many students as possible something to chew into, a framework,” says Borotsik. The young actors extrapolated from a play whose violent course is set in motion by a blood impulse. “They cut and pasted, they added stories of their own, they thought about acts that were impulsive and had consequences” in their own lives.
“The idea,” says Emma Wilmott, a Grade 11 acting student excited by Bridges, “was to take the themes and make something new.”
Seventy students ended up spending two months rehearsing with Catalyst artistic director Jonathan Christenson, choreographer Laura Krewski, and Catalyst’s frequent voice and singing coaches Betty Moulton and David Wilson. The goal? To create a Catalyst-style ensemble, in which the bold character-based choreography, the music and the stage imagery are inseparable.
“I’ve never done a rehearsal process like it,” says Wilmott. “So innovative, so amazing.”
Dowler-Coltman’s idea, he says, was “to expose students to a unique way of working.”
When they started, “I didn’t know any of the kids, their abilities, their experience. And they didn’t know me,” says Christenson. That’s changed, on both counts. “It’s good to see artists solving problems together, trying things, without the answers in advance. ... It makes artists real people.”
Krewski, who trained in classical ballet before discovering choreography, was intrigued by the way that “kids with no training in dance could start from the idea of a character” and be just as creative in movement as “dance kids.”
“It’s all about seeing movement through different eyes,” she says.
Mentorship is different than teaching, the professionals figure. Collaboration is at the heart of it. As Borotsik puts it, “we’re all in a jam together, creative partners in this. And that’s so fun.” What delighted her was “being curious with the students, and getting to this magic place where they could disagree with me. ‘Amber, No! Wouldn’t it be better to try this?’ Giving them a sense of ownership was so exciting.”
It’s good to see artists solving problems together, trying things, without the answers in advance. ... It makes artists real people.