therapy conversation conversation therapy
A workshop for talking, thinking and doing that uses conversation to generate performative material, drawing on language to shape action. Open to performers, dancers, visual artists and theatre makers who have an interest in working with text, we will practise the art of talking about nothing in order to talk about something through abstraction, obfuscation and potential revelation. We will look at techniques to generate material and work with improvisational structures to find out what makes a text interesting, how to juxtapose, how to disrupt, when to keep going, when to interrupt and how to self-edit. This approach is based on an interest in armchair psychoanalysis, unconscious desires, philosophy, pleasure and autobiographical fiction: the blurred lines between fact and fiction. It also comes from a place of wanting to make great entertainment.
is a performer, writer, director and dramaturg from Melbourne, Australia. She makes works that blend performance, art and anthropology to explore the fragility of the human condition with subversive humour. Lately she’s been collaborating with choreographers to make performances that combine text and dance.
Even though she has no training in dance whatsoever. She often uses performance to reflect critically on its place in theatres, to examine power relations, and to consider the relevance and social function of art itself. The starting process is often a written text or idea imagined responding to a self-generated impulse to tell a story or explore a form.