Warsaw - Poland

Report of meeting and workshop in Warsaw 16th November – 22nd November 2011

Wednesday 16 th - Sunday November 20th
Tutors and trainees attend the VI International Storytelling Art Festival, The Well of Stories 16–20 November 2011, Warsaw Theatre Institute,

Monday November 21st
10Am – 13pm Workshop
In this first meeting all trainers ad learners started the workshops. Each session of the workshop was ran by one/two trainers from one country country, while everybody else, including the other trainers acted as trainees during the session run by the colleagues.

A series of practical exercises to check the actual level of the new trainees and create a good atmosphere of team work had also been run.

Being one of the main focuses of the project the exploration of the possibilities for multicultural and multilingual storytelling projects, all trainers agreed on the fact that the main focus is to find the different ways of artistic translation method.
· Presentation of the Programme to the trainees
· Physical warm up focused on using body language run by Davide Bardi and Chiara Visca from the Italian group.
· Voice exercises run by Katarzyna Enemuo and Agnieszka Aysen Kaim.
· A story (a part of it) told by Michael Harvey by Welsh group, to be used as rough material for exercises focused on story construction and imaginative possibilities.
· The trainees are then divided into five smaller groups and asked to work on the next parts and the ending of the story.

This time the task is not to create a multilingual performance, but a simultaneous performance in several different languages, using rhythm, body language, music and other non-verbal means of communication as well. They are advised to concentrate on one specific session of the story or to create the story end, rather than on the whole story.

Lunch and the presentation of video material registered during Grundtvig workshops in Rome and multilingual storytelling workshops run by Greeks on the local level - the dvd presentation shown by Georgios Evgenikos from Greek group.

2pm – 5pm Workshop
· Round of feedback from the whole group
· Excercises on sharing the stage space (for the Teller and Translator), finding important points of the space and the comfortable distance.
· The trainees are working in couples, using a robe – which they can make shorter or longer, but to keep it straight – to create, feel and learn to use the common space of the stage and find the right distance for telling the particular story.
· Round feedback from the whole group about the last excercise

Tuesday November 22nd
10am – 1pm Workshop
· During the second day of workshops we focused on such elements of multilingual storytelling as physical and spiritual cooperation between the teller and the translator, rhythm and non-verbal parts of the story as well stories and creative translation
· The Italian group leads a warm up session run by Davide Bardi with the help of Chiara Visca, focusing on how to create and tell a short story with the only use of body language and “sound effects”.
· A group exercise for catching a “common rhythm”, based on nursery rhymes from different countries run by Beata Frankowska from the Polish group.
· Paola Balbi steps in and keep the ball rolling by suggesting a series of storytelling exercises to develop imagination in storytelling, basing on the idea of four Elements.
· Exercises on bilingual telling proposed by Welsh group
· Trainees work in couples to create a short performance on their own story, where one person is a teller – and tells the story in “non existing” language, and the other person translates it into English or other language.
· Another part of this work is finding common physical space and distance between the teller and the translator.
· The presentations are followed by a feedback session about the difficulties found in using different languages in the same performance and the question is raised whether it is better to translate or create a multilingual story.

2pm – 5pm Workshop
Workshop on translating meanings, symbols, wandering motifs, intercultural analogies and dichotomies. It was a reference to the task given in Rome - everyone who was going to Poland, was asked to think about a short story about one object they would take for a long journey far away from home, their country, their world. Stories of objects where pastes in a frame of Andersen’s story of the“Flying trunk”.

All the participants gathered in a circle and were asked to put their object in the box. Agnieszka Aysen Kaim by Polish group tied her eyes with the scarf and was bringing out objects from the box – so that the person that put it there will tell his or her story. Among objects there were: a Welsh horn, a shell, little river stones... Although this exercise was basically meant to be the work on creating the whole story basing just on one little thing, the effects of this work gone much further. The afternoon became a touching round of very diverse and very personal stories – which gave the participants the feeling not only of improving technical skills but finding a deep, personal contact one with each other.

After the last session everyone is asked to share with everyone some thoughts about the tools and skills learned during the workshop and to give some suggestion for the future meetings.

7pm – 21pm meeting – organizers / tutors
After the workshop the trainers and organizers meet again for a brief feed-back session and discussion about the following meeting and they decide to focus part of the work on experimenting several different ways of translating stories from one language to another and on the use of body language as a tool to facilitate international storytelling. One of UK group, learner, Sarah Randle prepared the list of points to be improved in future and the successful points of two day workshops in Warsaw).

All the dates for the following meetings are communicated and travel and accommodation details discussed.

A schedule for the next meeting and workshop in Sweden is planned and approved by everyone.-