The Organic Action, Redux – The Border Theatre

Learn to use action as the fundamental tool for creating a performance. Award-winning guest director Raul Valles returns to lead this 5-day workshop, which attempts to form a consciousness that allows participants to perceive theater as the art of the actor’s body in action, in a state of representation, discovered from the personal depths of each actor and put to the service of a scene. It shows the actor and his body as the only indispensable element for performance and for establishing a profound contact between the performer and his truth, and the audience and their experiences. It is through action that a performance acquires a structure, a flow, a rhythm and a tone all of which are indispensable elements of stage work.

The workshop is aimed at experienced actors. Please come in comfortable clothes and shoes. The workshop involves a lot of physical activities and each session is 4 hours in length. One participant chosen at random will receive a free copy of “Un estudio sobre el actor” (A Study About the Actor), written by Raul Valles and Inet Simental, a book about how they developed their own theatrical vision and techniques, including the topics covered in the workshop.

Topics

What is action?
What is organic action?
The three moments of the organic action (The moment before, The action, The moment after)
Where does organic action originate?
Creation of an organic action

About Raul Valles

Raúl Valles is an award-winning director, writer, playwright, theatrical researcher, and founding member of the former Teatro Necrotono group. His most recent shows include La Herencia de Edipo (The Inheritance of Oedipus), Madre Medea, Lemnos, Improv’, Bemorí and Santuario (Sanctuary).

La Herencia de Edipo participated in several national and international festivals throughout Mexico, including Zacatecas, Chihuahua, Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Durango. Valles won the Best Director award at the 2006 Chihuahua State Theatre Showcase and the play received the Official Selection of Mexico award by the UNESCO International Theater Institute. That same year, La Herencia de Edipo performed at the 9th International Theatre Festival in Tehran, Iran, winning the award for Best International Play. A year later, Valles was invited back to Tehran to direct Lemnos, a collaboration between Mexican and Iranian playwrights and actors. The play was presented at the 2008 Fadjr International Theater Festival.

While in Tehran, Valles conducted the workshop The Speaking Body and taught the course The Theatrical Action and its Origin at the University of Tehran and the Center for Acting Studies.

Valles has twice been awarded the David Alfaro Siqueiros scholarship by the state of Chihuahua as well as the PACMYC award. The latter, for his research into the rites, myths, dances and chants of the Rarámuri people that led to the creation of Bemorí.

In 2010, he developed Santuario, a show based on sacred texts, for the 6th Chihuahua International Festival.

Valles has taught numerous workshops and short courses at the Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua and his published books include: Hombres cosa hombres miedo, a collection of 5 plays; Un estudio sobre el actor (A Study About the Actor), a book of essays co-authored with Inet Simental; and his upcoming book, Rumbo a vacío, a collection of plays and part of the Official Selection of the 9th National Gathering of Young Playwrights, which took place in July of this year in Querétaro.

His articles and essays have been published in the journals Solar, Síntesis, in the Anuario de teatro 2007, and in Paso de Gato and Proceso.