FANTASY INTERVENTIONS

Workshop
Outside in Dublin 1 & Project Arts Centre
By Ant Hampton
FANTASY INTERVENTIONS
A workshop on imagination and writing for site-specific theatre and live urban interventions led by Ant Hampton.
Open to artists and practitioners from a wide variety of backgrounds – theatre makers, actors and directors, as well as choreographers, stage-designers, architects, poets and writers of many kinds.
Rather than try and enable or kick-start any actual project, the workshop will concern itself with the initial stages of imagination and conception. A designer or architect will often create sketches or models that somehow embody the essence of a project while willfully exceeding many ‘real world’ limitations (financial, structural, political, aesthetic, etc). Such sketches can often be considered valuable work in their own right, both for the artist and others.
What kind of ‘sketches’ can assist us in conceiving performance work for locations outside theatre buildings?
What sort of imagination is required for this kind of performance? How can we –
    achieve it?
    hold onto it?
    express it?
Do we have to balance fantasy with feasibility? To what extent are they separable?
Where would the audience be? Who would they be, where would they come from?
What would they see or think?
With a focus on observation, imagination and writing, and involving walks in the city, discussion, film and photography, the workshop is an exploratory three days culminating in a series of short ‘still or moving’ slideshow presentations.
On day one, Ant Hampton presents the group with an array of different approaches to the idea of the unrealised event, drawing on fragments of his own work as well as that of a wide variety of artists, designers, writers, film-makers and more. From this, he leads the group through some simple exercises in observation and fictional overlay: ‘what is there’ / ‘what isn’t there’.
On day two, the group walks through chosen areas of the city, discussing together with Ant the various potential inherent in those spaces. Each participant will end up by choosing a space and writing a scenario for it.
On day three those scenarios are presented. The writers have a choice: either they bring their audience to the sites themselves, and describe ‘what happens’ in their imagined performance, there in situ, or they film beforehand (cameras provided) and present their work back at Project Arts Centre using video projection.
HOW TO APPLY
If you are interested in participating in the workshop please email us and tell us a bit about yourself and why you would like to take part. Applications are welcomed from individuals working in Ireland and Northern Ireland and should be sent to info@projectartscentre.ie with Fantasy Interventions in the subject line, no later than Thursday 14 July.
Places are limited to 10.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Theatre maker, writer and director, Ant Hampton (1975) founded  Rotozaza in 1998, a project which has explored the use of instructions given to unrehearsed ‘guest’ performers, both on stage and, more recently, within more intimate structures sustained and played-out by the audience themselves (Autoteatro). Between 1999 and 2009 Rotozaza was a partnership with Silvia Mercuriali; since then, Ant and Silvia have been making work independently, and in collaboration with other artists. Ant has recently worked with Glen Neath, Joji Koyama, Isambard Khroustaliov, Tim Etchells and Gert-Jan Stam to create the work detailed here.
Other solo projects include an ongoing exploration of ‘live portraiture’ with Greg as The Other People (La Otra Gente): structured encounters with people from non-theatrical milieu. He was head dramaturg for ‘Projected Scenarios’ at Manifesta7 European Biennial for Contemporary Art, Sud Tirol, Italy and has contributed to projects by Jerome Bel and Forced Entertainment. He collaborated with Tim Etchells for the 2009 ‘fantasy-protest’ programme of live-art for the ICA, ‘True Riches’.