Studio Wachowicz/Fret

About studio

Studio WACHOWICZ/FRET is a creative tandem whose first completed work, Sheol/ שְׁאוֹל, was created in December 2021.

The artists focus on the interpenetration of theatre and performance art and on the complementarity of the two in each act on stage. Marked by hybridity and openness, the Studio’s works can be described with words such as performative installation, séance and action.

Their common denominator is sonority and exceptional focus on sound and vibrations associated with even the smallest of actions. Wachowicz and Fret regularly collaborate with artists for whom musical sensitivity is paramount in defining the interpersonal and the quintessentially human. The Studio often uses tools derived from the tragic tradition rather than the dramatic one, aiming at what the artists describe as intravenous Hearing of the World!

Jarosław Fret

Jarosław Fret is a founder and leader of Teatr ZAR, theatre director and actor.

He is Director of the Grotowski Institute, lecturer at the PWST National Academy of Theatre Arts in Kraków (Branch in Wrocław) and President of the Board of Curators of the European Capital of Culture Wrocław 2016 and Curator of its Theatre Programme. In 1999–2002 he organized a series of expeditions to Georgia, Armenia and Iran, conducting research into the oldest forms of religious music of Eastern Christianity. In the following years, together with members of Teatr ZAR, he led expeditions to Mount Athos in Greece, Sardinia, Corsica, Armenia, Turkey and Israel. He has directed four performance pieces with Teatr ZAR. Teatr ZAR’s Gospels of Childhood triptych has been seen in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Athens, Belgrade, Edinburgh, Florence, Madrid, Paris, Sibiu, Cairo, New Delhi and Seoul. In November 2013 he completed work on Armine, Sister, for which he developed an original musical dramaturgy and special stage architecture. He lectures and leads work sessions in Poland and abroad. His awards and honours include: Best New Music Theater for Teatr ZAR from Los Angeles Times (2009); Wrocław Theatre Prize for the Gospels of Childhood triptych (2010); the prestigious Total Theatre Award for Physical/Visual Theatre and the Herald Angel at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (2012). He has originated and coordinated numerous Polish and international projects of the Grotowski Institute, including the Grotowski Year 2009, Masters in Residence, the International Theatre Festival The World as a Place of Truth and the Theatre Olympics 2016 in Wrocław. His efforts led to the opening of new locations of the Grotowski Institute: Na Grobli Studio (2010) and Centre of Performing Arts (2019).

Workshop session FOUR CENTERS

BodyConstitution is a platform that enables conscious, coherent, and responsible bodywork by creating a “dictionary” of analysis and description of movement techniques and practices.

BodyConstitution is a modern combination of action and reflection to build a profound body culture.

FOUR CENTERS

Comprehensive sessions dedicated to the actor’s dramaturgy. The Change (meaning a situation that got disturbed), and the ability to recognise it, is the main and fundamental aspect of every drama. How an actor, a performer can work for readability of her/his own line of actions? How, by making a live stream of permanent movements, structurise them within their inner microdramaturgical potentiality? How to create a body/text with no recourse to a common body language? The session will confront two main practical ideas which are fundamentally connected in the actor’s craft: the Organic Field and the Dramatic Field, interwoven and depended on each other.

As particular tools, the four dramaturgical centres, understood as fields of redistribution of physical energy will be introduced:

the First Centre: the pelvis/coccyx
the Second Centre: the chest/shoulders
the Third Centre: the breath
and contact/perception as the Fourth Body Centre – all of them creating a unique organism/text for incorporated drama
The Voice: An Axis of Presence
Harmony. Body Chords as Inner Balance. Exploring the diverse body dynamics present in our everyday and stage lives.

Voice – the axis of presence

The work will oscillate between two opposing ideas: the Metre of a text and the Bios of the text. The point of departure for the session will be the premise that every text (as a structure) is ‘an Alien present in us’ and we need to allow it to get rooted in our body as if it was an entity with its autonomous motivations and desires.

The work will focus on:

voice as a foundation of human presence and the way towards a self-defining identity
practicing voice as a column of breath, an axis of presence
voice as a substance versus voice as an essence
voice as an oikos: a place where we live