Retreat leader Phil Smith writes:
"What I'll be bringing to the workshop is a set of practices that generate writing from different kinds of walking and exploration: pilgrimage, detective work, sensory heightening, the 'drift' or dérive, algorithmic and structured walking. Given the theme of "scribbling" I'll also be looking at various kinds of 'automatic' writing and offering some experiments in moving between cerebral and sensual ways of writing. We'll be using the landscape of Dartmoor, and taking associational and direct inspiration from its multiple layers of available meaning: geological, industrial, sacred."
•••
Phil Smith is a writer-performer, particularly generating scripts and stories in relation to exploratory journeying. Substantial works have included The Crab Walks, Crab Steps Aside, A Man About The House (with Simon Persighetti, for the National Trust property at A la Ronde) and Escaped From The History Hut (with Anoushka Athique and Katie Etheridge). He is a member of the Wrights & Sites collective.
Last year Phil walked 200 miles following a route walked a hundred years before by an acorn-planting Manchester engineer with an ecological conscience - Charles Hurst - I was looking for his 100 year oak trees. I then wrote a play based on the two journeys, called 'In Search of Pontiflunk', which was performed and toured to venues along the route by leading middle-scale community touring company, New Perspectives Theatre Company.
Phil has a portfolio of over 100 professionally produced theatre / music-theatre scripts and libretti including productions for St Petersburg State Comedy Theatre, Theater Am Sozialamt (Munich), Teatro Dionisio (Heredia) and Opera North. I'm a founding member and company dramaturg for TNT (Munich) which is the largest producing theatre of English-language theatre outside the anglophone countries. Our shows are either adaptations - for example, Paul Auster's Moon Palace, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 - which I co-write or classic texts for the productions for which I prepare/edit the text and co-prepare with the director (Paul Stebbings) the production approach.
The workshop is aimed at people who work with words or with narrative , in whatever form. If the group so wishes it, we will work with radio forms and spoken narratives. You will have access to the AHA studio and we will be setting up a workspace at Bellever with access to appropriate software and hardware. However, people often bring their own laptops and recording kit, and AHA provides lots of additional recording kit so that you can experiment with various microphones and so on. Please also feel free to bring along some of your previous work as there will be an opportunity to share this with the group.
Aune Head Arts is acclaimed for ensuring that workshops are pitched at the right level for the group of people in attendance. We don't work to a pre-prepared script like many others but instead shape the workshop to the needs of every person in the room. Unlike many of our workshops and retreats, which are aimed at professional artists, this workshop/retreat is for anyone! If you're at all unsure about whether this workshop is suitable for you, please don't hesitate to contact us.
If you would like to attend the workshop but are unable to be resident, there will be a limited number of non-residential places available. You can indicate this as an option when you book online.
Unfortunately, due to lower than anticipated response, this event has been cancelled for this year, but may be offered again in the future.
return to main page
go home |
