Training

Upcoming Training Opportunities

Fall Program for Interns: September 11 - December 11, 2010

Open Training: Sept 19, Sept 26 (alumni only), Oct 17, Oct 31 (alumni only), Nov 14; 2pm.

The Winter Intensive: January 2011

Spring Program for Interns: February - May 2011

The Summer Intensive: June 2011

Our Training Flyer

On Training

Chris Rohmann, The Valley Advocate: "A Collective Journey: Training at Double Edge is a Stretch"

Daniel Gerould, Editor, Slavic and Eastern European Performance,

Executive Director, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, CUNY:

The work at the Double Edge Theatre is built on research, study, and scholarship as well as on improvisation and subjective association. This work characteristically takes the form of a journey, both literal and figurative, enabling the performers to go to the sources of creativity within themselves. Double Edge is imbued with a special sensibility and unusual techniques of preparation and rehearsal in which the concept of work-in-progress transcends that of finished product, thereby permitting the company to become deeply involved in subjects of unusual complexity that require a long-term commitment.

David Chambers, Professor of Directing, Yale School of Drama:

In the spring of 2004 Stacy Klein, Carlos Uriona and other members of the Double Edge Theatre ensemble taught a series of workshops with our student directors at the Yale University School of Drama. I can use the following words to describe the work that was done: relentless, musical, wildly imaginative, bold, transformative, exhausting, exhilarating, sublime, earthy, sexy, fun, spiritual, whimsical, uncompromising.

As I observed our students on the floor, I was consistently struck by the sometimes slow, sometimes painful, but always visceral falling away of defenses and body habits. It was like watching skins being shed, thus psyches being changed, although no direct "psychological" or "therapeutic" techniques were ever involved. Instead the Double Edge work relies on a kind of earthy ritualism and gleeful athleticism sometimes coupled with a goofy peasant-like spiritual humor that can remind one of Chagall, Kandinsky, the theatre of Tadeusz Kantor and, of course, Gardzienice. But these Eastern European influences, the physical mixing of the sacred and the profane, so uncommon in American theatrical training, seems to have been adapted and transformed by Double Edge into something only they and their troupe possess.
In the final analysis, I have to say that not all of our students fully embraced all the work all the time - itˇ¦s not for the faint of heart and spirit. But all recognized the theatrical power and the human passion that was occurring in the room and the great majority of them, some sooner than others, allowed the experience to be fully transformative.

For all involved, it has brought a greater sense of the physical and expressive power of the actor/director, the muscularity of music in both rehearsal and performance, and how the human body, with rhythm and a highly charged subjectivism can create unforgettable theatrical imagery with ensemble musicality. It has freed our studentsˇ¦ work and given them permission to travel into formerly concealed or forbidden theatrical spaces.

from "Double Edge Theatre - The Practice"

by Susanne Schaup, 2005 Summer Intensive participant

originally featured in "The Open Page", published by Odin Teatret and the Magdalena Project

Read the whole article here

Anyone who signs up for a workshop or seminar with Double Edge Theatre knows they are in for hard work. It is not easy to keep up this kind of vigorous exercise for two hours or more at a time, stretching, running, jumping, balancing, straining every muscle of the body.

Why would anyone do this, exert him- or herself to the point of exhaustion? Why would one try to mount one of those giant wooden spools, which keep rolling away under one’s feet? A precarious balance is difficult to achieve. Why try to climb atop that large metal cylinder, another tool used in the Training, and walk on it as on a tightrope? Why get entangled in those bungee cords suspended from the ceiling, that look so easy and are so hard to handle with skill?

The daily Training, spelled with a capital T, is the foundation of everything that is done at Double Edge. It is structured in a way that hard physical exercise leads to more creative configurations, and individuals are joined in a living organism. The practitioners find their own physical expression and at the same time their place in an organic whole. Spontaneity does not preclude being part of a whole. There is a constant give and take, a movement of systole and diastole, an awareness of oneself and the rest of the group.

There is no doubt about the reality of this Training. It is an ongoing encounter with others, as bodies move together to the rhythms of music. A dialog is established as one body reacts to the physical expression of another and the group process, taking up cues, following the general movement, while creating one’s own statement. There is bonding in this mutual giving and receiving. There is trust. We develop a sense of identity by interacting with others, and this “other”, as we experience in the second week, can also be an inanimate object. It is for us to make it come alive, to transform a rag into something of beauty or fantasy. Whatever we do, we are encouraged to put our heart into it, to appropriate the act and make it our own. If authenticity is thus established in the interactions during Training, it will gradually transform our actions in “real life”, too.

In the Double Edge vision, the Training and the theatre itself are not separate from daily life. Training to be an artist, Stacy Klein says, does not require anyone to step outside the challenges of real life. They should be confronted squarely, and all the skills developed as an artist should be brought to bear on the demands of life, and vice versa. It is part of the larger vision of Double Edge Theatre to function as a “centre for the development of a living culture”. The key to it is the Training. If we really want to change the world, Stacy Klein says, we have to start with ourselves - to be more aware, more sincere, more authentic about our own lives. It is a holistic view, in which art and theatre are not seen as opposed to the real world.