Directing Now
Two weeks during the 2ed semester
Credits: 2
Ariel Ephraim Eshbal
Ariel Ephraim Eshbal (b. 1982, Tel Aviv) does performances. In Israel, he has worked with Tmuna Theatre, HaZira, Akko Festival, and presented works in other contexts such as the artTLV Biennale, "Loving Art" events, the Center for Contemporary Art, and musical venues such as Levontin 7 and Hateiva. Between 2008-2010, he was the artistic director of the Intimadance festival. Since 2011, Eshbal has been based in Germany, where he primarily collaborates with HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), Kampnagel (Hamburg), and FFT (Dusseldorf). His works have been presented at festivals and various contexts in Switzerland, Austria, Italy, the USA, France, and more. In addition to his work as a director, he also collaborates with other artists as a performer and dramaturge. He is a graduate of the School of Visual Theater, Jerusalem (2006), and holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy and history from Tel Aviv University (2010). Eshbal has received awards such as the Akko Festival Prize in 2003, grants from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation in 2003-2007, the Jerusalem Municipality and HaZira Prize in 2006, the Morasha Foundation Prize in 2007, and participated in the hospitality program for directors organized by the Goethe Institute and the International Theatre Institute (ITI) in 2011. Eshbal has taught at the School of Visual Theater, Bezalel, HfBK Academy of Arts in Dresden, UdK University of the Arts in Berlin, the Norwegian Theatre Academy (NTA), and Brown University in Rhode Island, USA.
The workshop will be dedicated to a critical examination of the role of the director in contemporary, post-dramatic theater. It will move through theory and praxis: engaging in discussions, reading texts, watching videos, listening to music, improvising, and learning to find our way into the complex role of director. The vocabulary used in our practice – including the terms quoting, stealing, borrowing, homage, reference, and cover version – is related to the idea of navigation, wandering, and context, more than simply indicating “creation” in an expressive or personal sense. Together, we will learn how to initiate the performative situation from unexpected starting points and practice sharpening our senses to achieve a high sensitivity to the dynamics of the theatrical playing field. We will learn various techniques of collecting and organizing materials, creating archives and translating them into different and diverse compositions, according to different logics. Over the two weeks of the workshop, we will go through a joint exploration, articulating parameters that will continue to be worked on towards individual directing project. Throughout the workshop, all students will experiment with composition and begin to find their own theatrical language.
