Dates: 28th - 30th October 2023
Times: 10:00am - 5:00pm (Sat & Sun); 6:00pm - 9:00pm (Mon)
Location: Omnibus Theatre, London
Cost: £160 / £130 Concession
The artist is constantly using their work to help people to 'see again', 'think again' and 'feel again'. Central to the artist's process is learning through experience, exploration and expression.
David Glass will lead an intensive introductory masterclass over a weekend and one evening in Ensemble & Chorus for theatre. This workshop will introduce participants to David Glass’s hugely practical approach to physical & ensemble theatre. It is rooted in the body, the principle that all life and expression grows out of movement, and that theatre is the imagination made manifest through the body and voice of the performer.
David Glass is an award-winning performer, director, teacher and creative thinker, having worked in 73 countries and taught more than 80,000 people, and is one of the UK’s most prominent Theatre Directors and principal founders of the UK Physical/ Visual, Devised, Ensemble and Applied theatre movements. As well as teaching masterclasses he continues to make work in some 18 countries around the world.
The ensemble section of the workshop focuses on experiencing the gradual stages of collective awareness and the powerful creation that can emerge from group work. Participants will learn how to balance simplicity and intensity, progressively engaging with new layers of response from restrictive to fully flexible. Throughout the workshop, there will be a focus on developing individual, partner, and collective awareness while building on the work of others in the group. Participants will explore the vivid influence of ensemble work on the individual creative process and vice versa.
For participants aged 18+ with some knowledge of theatre making – come prepared to move in comfortable clothing.
“David Glass is one of the world’s great theatre teachers. He is one of the most inspiring and creative teachers of performance skills that I have had the pleasure of working with.”
Mike Alfreds, Theatre Director
(RSC, National Theatre, The Globe, Founder of Shared Experience)
The David Glass Ensemble are delighted to receive an award from the Cultural Recovery Grant that will help us build our capacity to work with key theatre & arts organisations in Bristol, Bath, Exeter, Eastleigh & Hastings through our Lost Child Project.
We are one of 2,700 recipients to receive a grant from the Government’s £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund to help the organisation recover and reopen.
More than £300 million has been awarded to thousands of cultural organisations across the country, including the David Glass Ensemble in the latest round of support from the Culture Recovery Fund. After months of closures and cancellations to contain the virus and save lives, this funding will be a much-needed helping hand for organisations transitioning back to normal in the months ahead.
“David Glass’s Creative Practice is a unique and courageous exploration of the archetypal experience of being human.”
-Peter Brook, International Theatre Director
The Lost Child project began in 1997 when David Glass and his ensemble traveled across South America and Southeast Asia working with street children. Its aim is to use theatre and creative participation to give a voice to marginalised and vulnerable children and young people. The creative methodology focuses on supporting and expressing young people's imagination through group activity in a secure environment. The project has now been revived for this generation, actively operating in Hong Kong and the UK to empower young people through the power of the arts and the imagination.
During the year of the pandemic, the Ensemble has continued to strengthen our work in creating vibrant, relevant and powerful theatre for a world stage.
We launched the Elan Lost Child Project Festival in Hong Kong, which brought together 300+ participants through 11 hybrid online/on-site events.
With the National Theatre of Serbia, we presented “The Return”—the culmination of the AB Project about the killing of 77 young people in Utoya Island in 2001.
With the M.A. Theatre Laboratory at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, we created Margot Monroe’s Nibelungenlied, a comedy that deconstructs the Hollywood Dream Machine.
We have continued to conduct 8 creative practice and physical theatre workshops across Europe, both live and online.
“David Glass remains one of the pioneers and key figures of British and International Theatre.”
-John McGrath, Artistic Director of Manchester International Festival
This year, the Ensemble is strengthening the foundation for the Galapagos project, which aims to educate and empower children about the ongoing climate crisis through a visceral piece of theatre. For Galapagos, we are joined by partners across 13 countries including London International Mime Festival (LIMF) and the Point Eastleigh.
David Glass is currently devising his first solo in sixteen years called Silence, in conversation with Julian Crouch, Tom Morris and Mike Alfreds.
The Ensemble continues to build relationships and community to strengthen through this crisis.
By Joseph Lynch, Associate Artist & Trainer
As the last of the dust from the summer sun starts to settle and the weather warnings of flash floods and hard-core drizzle begin bombarding UK screens once again, David asks me to take a moment to reflect on my time with the Ensemble these past few months, on China and returning to the UK.
(more…)