Learning the Local Moves: British Drama Students Visit Georgia

MA Ensemble Theatre students from Rose Bruford College in London have come to Georgia on a study expedition. Niamh Dowling, Head of the School of Performance at Rose Bruford College, and an international group of 12 students, will be travelling with MA Ensemble Programme Director Gabriel Gawin (who performed recently in ‘Songs of Lear’ with Teatr Piesn Kozla at festival in Tbilisi).

The group will be based in Telavi and then briefly visit Tbilisi at the end of July. The expedition is part of the practical research of the College’s MA students and involves traveling to visit remote, indigenous and rural cultures in order to learn songs, musical material and dance. This serves as the start point for the performance or research work of the MA students.

While in Georgia the group will meet Archil Medolishvili, song teacher, Mikheil Jidalishvili, dance teacher, and ensemble “Keselo” (directed by Revaz Orbetishvili) from the village of Zemo Alvani.

Performer training is the principle dynamic of the MA Ensemble Theatre program which focuses on the development and mastery of performance art through rigorous voice, body and mind training.

Expeditions involve daily periods of physical and vocal training, research, living and experiencing other cultures, rituals and landscapes. On returning home, the students will begin project-specific physical training, starting from the rituals, music and dances learned on the expedition and continuing for months and sometimes years afterwards in the rehearsal room. Material collected during an expedition serves as a point of departure for new exercises, which delve into deep inter-connections between music, movement, voice and song, stories, rituals and text.

From Georgia the group will travel to Gdansk to perform at the Gdansk International Shakespeare Festival. The group will be in Tbilisi on July 30th and will have an open work session.

Rose Bruford College works with partners around the globe to deliver world-leading training in performance and technical theatre. The MA Ensemble Theatre team works worldwide with partner institutions on student and staff exchanges, collaborative projects and wider research initiatives.

Katie Ruth Davies