Imagine Spring Residency: Imagination and the Body of the Actor

Irwin Hall Auditorium, Beirut campus

The Imagine Workshop and Concert Series (IWCS) is organizing a workshop on Imagination and the Body of the Actor by French actress, author and director Camille Brunel, as part of its Spring 2020 Residency: From Far Away. 

Participants are required to come with a prepared dialogue or monologue of their choice and with a comfortable outfit. 

The workshop is free and open to the public.

Synopsis:

“I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.” - Brook, Peter, The Empty Space. Penguin (2008).

The imagination is an organ, a muscle which needs to be trained and can therefore become limitless. Imagination propels thought, articulates sensations, generates action. The workshop will be exploring the imagination and how it empowers the actor’s body on stage to inhabit the space, respond to stimulation and create fiction. The workshop will propose different types of training (relaxation, presence, open concentration, connexion) and offer tools to investigate a dramatic text.

Bio:

Camille Brunel worked in performing arts for 20 years as an actress, author and director. She is currently project manager at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts, which focuses on architecture urban planning, design as well as cinema, visual arts and fashion.

Brunel also teaches theatrical artistic practice for professionals, adults, teachers and children at the French Institute and Saint Joseph University.

She co-founded Collectif Kahraba, a theater company in Beirut which has produced numerous shows with the support of the French Institute and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.