IGNITE! 2017 Festival Workshops & Panel Series

IGNITE! Festival of Emerging Artists invites you to the free Workshops & Panel Series on June 10, 2017 at the Pumphouse Theatre.

The workshops focus on professional skill-building for an arts career and the panel consists of emerging and established artists engaging in a meaningful dialogue about an arts profession between generations.

There is limited space for each workshop and the panel – reserve a spot ASAP by signing up here: 

Light refreshments at the beginning and free lunch starting at 2pm will be be provided. The schedule as well as full descriptions for the workshops and panel are below.

For the full 2017 IGNITE! Festival lineup, please visit: www.sagetheatre.com

WORKSHOP & PANEL SERIES SCHEDULE

Saturday, June 10th 2017

Time Activity Location
12:00 – 12:15p Registration with Coffee & Refreshments Pumphouse Theatre
12:15 – 2:00p Workshops Part I
Financial Organization as an Artist, presented by RBC Pumphouse Theatre:

Joyce Doolittle

The Creative Practice: Dancing Movement Into Meaning 

With Tania Alvarado

Pumphouse Theatre:

Victor Mitchell

Creating for Unconventional and Intimate Space with Louise Casemore MicroMech

1950 10 Ave SW

2:00 – 2:30p Lunch provided Pumphouse Theatre
2:30 – 3:30p Panel: The Kids Are Alright: A Conversation Between Emerging and Established Artists Pumphouse Theatre
4:00 – 6:00p Workshops Part II
How to Develop New Work Without Killing It with Karen Hines Pumphouse Theatre:

Victor Mitchell

Proposal & Grant Writing with Eric Moschopedis Pumphouse Theatre

Joyce Doolittle

 

WORKSHOPS PART I: 12:15 – 2:00 PM

Financial Organization as an Artist, presented by RBC

Guests from RBC will present on how to manage finances, taxes and budget as a self-employed artist and/or a sole proprietor.

The Creative Practice: Dancing Movement Into Meaning with Tania Alvarado
This workshop will lead participants through a short creative process, exploring inventive tools to develop movement concepts and to build a flexible choreographic framework. The process will guide participants to be dynamic decision makers as they collaborate to find artistic context through the layering of ideas. The workshop will embrace participants of different artistic perspectives and levels of experience.

About the Facilitator:

Tania Alvarado is a contemporary dance artist and teacher from Alberta where she has been actively developing her artistic voice to establish a growing body of work. While in Edmonton, Tania has worked extensively with the Brian Webb Dance Company. Her choreography has been presented at the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa, at Montreal’s Tangente, the Dancing on the Edge Festival in Vancouver, at the Stream of Dance Festival in Regina, at Toronto’s Dancemakers , the Alberta Scene in Ottawa, in the “Marathon” at the Festival de Nouvelle Danse in Montreal and at Le Groupe Dance Lab in Ottawa after a three week residence. She has been part of two Banff Centre for the Arts creative residencies, and continued to pursue studies in contemporary dance and body work across North America and in Europe. Her choreography has been commissioned by the National Arts Centre and she has performed her solo work in the U.S. and throughout Europe with Bancs d’Essai Internationaux.

Tania’s most current professional work Hereafter has toured through the Prairie Dance Circuit, which included performances in Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Regina. Hereafter was also presented at DOTE Festival in Vancouver and at the 2014 Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa. While in Calgary, Tania has been creating choreography for the University of Calgary – Dance Division, W & M Dance 2 and Surge Co.

Creating for Unconventional & Intimate Space with Louise Casemore

From the Artistic Director of Defiance Theatre, which has been making weird things in places they don’t belong since Y2K was a thing used unironically in conversation, comes a workshop about elbowing your work into places outside of the norm.

In the world of theatre making, traditional theatre spaces are becoming increasingly out of reach.

Rental venues are expensive and in short supply –

Too big for emerging artists to realistically fill –

Too small to create the work that we want.

In addition to availability problems, the audience is changing.

Traditional plays are boring –

Not all stories belong in a theatre –

Short attention spans from 24/7 entertainment. Netflix binge and no chill.

So what do we do? Well – we get creative.

Unconventional space can be defined as anywhere theatre does not traditionally occur – in a bar, school classroom, alleyway, lobby of a movie theatre, abandoned department store, haunted mine shaft.

Intimate space can be defined as anything that tears down the walls of traditional performance – small, close, lack of fourth wall, absent of anything that can create distance between the audience and the piece.

The workshop will address these ideas from two perspectives: Producer-Brain and Artistic-Brain.

About the Facilitator:

Louise Casemore is a producer, writer, performer, and scrappy creative renegade currently based in Alberta. She received her post-secondary training as one of the final graduates of Keyano College’s conservatory Drama program in Fort McMurray, and has worked relentlessly across the arts industry ever since.

In addition to her current position as Artistic Associate for Ghost River Theatre, Louise is the Artistic Director for the independent company Defiance Theatre, which is committed to the development of new Canadian theatre and bridging the gap between emerging and established artists. Through Defiance and on her own, Louise has been involved in over a dozen world premieres and counting.

THE PANEL: 2:30 – 3:30 PM

The Kids Are Alright: A Conversation Between Emerging and Established Artists

We always hear the rhetoric about how we are making changes for the next generation of artists… but has anyone asked what the next generation wants? This panel is a long table composed of emerging and established artists from multiple disciplines, and will encourage a dialogue between generations in an attempt to move away from the conventional mentor/mentee relationship. The panel aims to allow these artists to come together to address issues and concerns that face us all, as well as to collectively share their hopes, and dreams regarding Calgary’s artistic landscape.

Panelists:

Makram Ayache  
Ann Connors
Karen Hines
Ivanna Ihekwoaba
Davinder Malhi
Eric Moschopedis
Chantal Wall
Shari Wattling

 

WORKSHOPS PART II: 4:00 – 6:00 PM

How to Develop New Work Without Killing It with Karen Hines

A virtual walk through basic phases of production (creation, dramaturgy, design, rehearsal, tech, run, critics and beyond) will provide the afternoon’s structure for this theatre focused workshop.

Specific problems will be parsed: How do you find the right dramaturge? The right director? How do you dramaturge a play with no words? When do readings help or hinder a script? Collaboration: Is it okay to fight? How do you survive criticism?

In a brief 2 hours, we will step through a field of land mines that can emerge: accidents, egos, fear, voicelessness, doubt … but all to get us through to the other side where fearlessness, originality, joy and transcendence are not abstracts, but the very real rewards of a thoughtful approach.

Bring a notebook. There will be writing exercises. There will be diagrams.

And bring your questions: a significant part of this workshop will be reserved for them.

About the Facilitator:

Karen Hines is an award-winning writer, performer and director, and a two-time finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama. Her highly theatrical stage plays, including Drama: Pilot Episode; Citizen Pochsy; Hello…Hello; Oh baby and Pochsy’s Lips, have been published by Coach House Books and presented across Canada, in America and Germany.

Karen is a Second City alumna, a Dora Award-winning performer (Pochsy) and a Gemini-nominated actor (The Newsroom). She moved to Calgary in 2009 since which time she has been Alberta Theatre Projects’ Playwright in Residence (2009-12), written Western and National Magazine Award-winning articles, written and directed a trilogy of internationally prize-winning short films and has had three new plays produced and published. The newest, All the Little Animals I Have Eaten premiered at the 2017 High performance Rodeo, MainStage, and she just closed an extended and sold-out run of her solo Crawlspace at Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre. She is currently writing two new plays.

Proposal and Grant Writing with Eric Moschopedis

Artists often describe the proposal or grant writing process as agonizing and tedious. That’s because it is! If you want to be a professional artist who creates, produces, or tours theatre works, writing applications will become your primary effort (cynical, but true!). Writing is difficult and requires as much dedication to skill development as any other part of an artist’s practice. Learning to write strong applications will may be the difference between a long or short career.

This hands-on workshop will lead participants through the proposal and grant writing process. Participants will learn the basics of proposal/grant writing: how to read an application, how to structure an application for easy reading, budgeting, and understanding the importance of support material. Participants will leave the workshop with the essential skills necessary to write a strong, informative, and compelling application.

This workshop is ideal for artists in the early stages of their creative practice.

About the Facilitator:

Eric Moschopedis is an award winning interdisciplinary visual artist, facilitator, and community organizer. He creates community-specific, relational, and participatory works that invite audiences to become active agents in the creation of community.

Throughout the last eight years, he has developed a collaborative practice with Mia Rushton that operates in both a gallery and post-gallery context. His projects, workshops, artist talks, and lectures have been presented in formal and DIY festivals, galleries, and post-secondary institutions throughout North America and in Europe. Eric has sat on numerous selection committees, funding juries, and written hundreds of applications.

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The Workshops & Panel Series was funded by Rosza Foundation.

*Treaty 7 Land*

The IGNITE! Festival acknowledge this event takes place on the land of the Treaty 7 People, The Blackfoot from Kainai, Blood, Siksika, and Peigan, The Sarcee from Tsu’tina and Eden Valley, and the Stoney Nakoda people from Morley. We are all treaty people, visitors to this land and we give thanks to the people who came before and keep this land for us and all our future generations.