Open Session: Practitioners Book Club
Monday 5th October
7.00 – 9.00pm
This is the second session of the Practitioners Book Club, but new sign ups are more than welcome! The book club, led by Joe Gilmour-Rees aims to bring people together to learn from some of the key texts by theatre practitioners, that might have been on your reading list but you've never got round to! The club is open to anyone interested in acting, directing and theatre-making, with any level of experience.
The book club offer members:
- Motivation - for texts that they had wanted to read for a long time, perhaps have been sitting on the shelf untouched, they finally have that extra push to sit down and read in manageable chunks.
- Enhanced learning - the chance to discuss and ask questions with other members of the book club, so you increase understanding of key techniques, before applying them to your own process.
- Opportunity to connect and make friends with others in a peer to peer project
Ahead of the session, you will be asked to read a section of the text (as indicated below), which will then be discussed as a group. It will be a relaxed and informal way of processing what we've read. It will be a way of deepening our understanding of the text together, making us more ready to apply the techniques. It is not a “masterclass” workshop, but a way of learning together with peers.
Our text for this second session will be “Why Is That So Funny?” by John Wright. John Wright is a well-respected teacher and practitioner of physical comedy, and founded theatre companies Trestle and Told By An Idiot.
The chapters we will focus on for the discussion are the Introduction and Part One: The Gentle Art of Playfulness. You can read more of the text if you like but these chapters will be the focus of the session.
You can buy the text from Nick Hern Books who are offering a discount with the code: YVDIRECTORS30
https://www.nickhernbooks.co.uk/why-is-that-so-funny
Or for digital / second hand copies:
If you have barriers, financial or otherwise, to accessing the text, contact Joe on joe@joegr.co.uk
Please confirm you are attending this session by clicking the sign-up button above.
Closed captions will be available for this session via Otter AI and details on how to use this will be provided on the day.
We will ensure that access provision is in place for all participants. Please let us know if you have any access requirements using the space on the sign up form so we can get appropriate provision in place.
Zoom details can be found below:
https://zoom.us/j/98359155027?pwd=VmRIU2NYdFNFU0IrM3ludnBJT2E5Zz09
Meeting ID: 983 5915 5027 Passcode: 369813
Open Session is an initiative for directors, designers or producers on the Genesis Network to run a one-off session, discussion, or initiative.
This is a peer-led session that is not curated by the Young Vic.
Joe Gilmour-Rees is a theatre director making work in Manchester. He also runs podcast Manchester’s Big Theatre Podcast, providing in depth interviews with the city’s creatives. If you have any questions, feel free to email Joe on joe@joegr.co.uk