Brú School

Brú School is a series of workshops with national and international theatre professionals

Brú School Site Specific with Rodrigo Pardo will take place in NUI Galway from August 31st to Sept 3rd. Expression of Interest: here

Brú Theatre are happy to announce Brú School Site Specific with Rodrigo Pardo this April.

Following Brú’s deep dive workshops in Physical Theatre, Embodied Voice, Mask Theatre and VR, the company are now turning their attention to the creation of Site Specific Theatre in Galway and are delighted to welcome Rodrigo Pardo from France to facilitate this 4 day deep dive. 

Site-specific theatre lands at the point where reality and fiction meet, inviting a shift of perception within the interaction of the audience, the performance and the location, giving audiences a momentary suspension of disbelief, a re-order of the common sense and a poetic layer surfing on top of daily life.

Rodrigo Pardo’s workshop offers an analysis of the reality-fiction duality in performing arts, sharing his own approach to the subject and his personal methodology for the creation of site-specific work through years of productions for institutions such as La Biennale di Venezia, In-situ European Network, Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires or Napoli Teatro Festival.

The workshop begins with a short performance that serves as a practical example of the kind of work that will be created and an introduction to what site-specific practice is. Participants are then guided to create short fictional scenes, choreographies or sound interventions in different points of the city chosen by them. On the last day of the workshop the whole group goes on a ‘tour’ across the city in which the scenes are watched and played by the group,  followed by an open discussion.

The workshop is open to all artists interested in creating their own work. The school, in partnership with the O’Donoghue Centre, will run 10am-5:30pm, Thursday- Sunday April 13th-16th. Fee:€100. Find on more baout Rodrigo here

Previous Brú School Workshops

Brú School: Embodied Voice, July 2022

Julianna Bloodgood is back in collaboration with Brú Theatre to offer this 3 day deep dive into the voice, following their work together on Gol last year. Brú School: Embodied Voice is an embodied approach to vocal training which utilizes somatic practices and vocal technique to bring about the awareness, awakening and activation of an authentic voice that is open and free, expressive and capable of communicating emotional truth. This work is focused around breath understanding and practice, as well as Release Work, a practice dedicated to the release of sound and emotions through physical sensations. Full body, full breath, full emotion, full potential. We will focus on creative explorations of the voice including resonators, extended vocal techniques with practical musical examples, exploration of text and song as well as vocal improvisation. 

Julianna Bloodgood, is a vocalist, multidisciplinary theatre maker, somatic practitioner and teacher. From 2009 - 2018 she worked with award winning and critically acclaimed Polish theatre company Song of the Goat Theatre (Teatr Pieśń Kozła) becoming a principal performer. She is a resident artist with Ireland’s Bru Theatre, New York based Theater MITU and Slovakian company Honey and Dust. Julianna is the co-founder of The Great Globe Foundation, a non-profit organization which utilizes the power of creativity to inspire and empower the individual voice and to help build bridges between people and communities. Her research with the body and voice has led to an in-depth and ongoing development of this connection which she calls Embodied Voice Practices. Julianna has a particular interest and research in the vocal practice of lamentation, giving shape and voice to our pain, which has become a through line in all of her work. She performs, teaches and researches globally.

Brú School: Mask Theatre 2022

Brú Theatre ran a 1 week deep dive into the world of Mask Theatre in the Town Hall Theatre, May 31st-June 4th. Facilitated by James Riordan and art.haus Berlin teacher Phillipa Hambly.

Throughout the Week participants explored:

• Basel Mask,

• Larval Mask and

• Neutral Mask

  We had a lot of fun and made a lot of great characters!

Brú School: Physical Theatre Foundations 2021

Brú ran a 2 week intensive Physical Theatre course in the Town Hall Theatre, Galway in Summer 2021. A fun and fast paced fortnight of intensive workshops diving into some practical techniques for making and performing physical theatre. Run by art.haus Berlin’s Philippa Hambly and Brú’s James Riordan

Week One looked into:

• Embodiment 

• Playfulness

• The poetry of the body

• Movement principals

  
  

  Week Two looked into: 

• Collaborative devising

• Building physical characters

• Writing from the body

The first week focused more on the dynamic space, movement, physicality, and play, while the second week looked more closely at ways of applying these principals to construction.

Across both weeks we drew on multiple physical languages including mask work, clown, and mime, and particpants were invited to bring the broad scope of their own practice into the room with you! 

The workshop draws on Jacques Lecoq based technique, and we would also like to acknowledge our teachers Amy Russell and Thomas Prattki - as well as countless other wonderful teachers who have inspired us.