Prague Crossroads/St. Ann's

http://www.czecot.com/tourist-attraction/9462_st-anne-s-church-praha

 The Gothic church of St. Ann in Prague Old Town was built between 1313 and 1330 and it belonged to a Dominican convent. There are remains of Gothic wall paintings inside. It is registered on the UNESCO list as a part of the Prague Monument Reservation. There is a cultural centre at the present.

Close up satelitte image

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It stands at the foot of the Charles Bridge in the Old Town of Prague. The church maintains most of its timber roofing, a unique example of an original Gothic truss system. Wall paintings from that period also, remarkably, remain. Emperor Charles IV commissioned the interior decoration and it was carried out by members of his imperial court workshops, thought to include the Master Theodoric. Subsequent painted additions by Renaissance and baroque artists created a series of frescoes that reflect the flow of Czech artistic styles.

In 1782, St. Ann’s Church became one of many Catholic structures converted to secular use by the Emperor Joseph II as part of his reformation program. Over the last 200 years it was used as an industrial building that housed printing machinery and then as a warehouse. Three floors were installed within to tailor the church to its new function, blocking the vault from view, damaging murals, and disrupting the timber configuration from the 1730s. An unsound arch collapsed in the early 1880s and no reconstruction was attempted until 1989, when insensitive renovations removed pieces of the original Gothic truss.

St. Ann’s Church is a grand example of Prague Gothic architecture of the Luxembourg period. Because of the adaptive reuse solution, the church continues to represent its history while serving a positive, modern function. During the course of the project, the insensitive additions were removed, the murals were conserved, and both the interior and exterior were fully refurbished. With the aid of WMF, the church was transformed into a functioning community center, becoming a part of the Prague Crossroads Program to promote cultural dialogue. St. Ann’s is now the home of that organization and functions as a performance space. The 400 seated guests for concerts, lectures, and public forums can look up and see the original Gothic nave.

[refs]
http://www.prague-hotel.ws/st-anns-church.asp 
http://www.socialbuckets.com/Emperor-Joseph-II-51
http://2008.strunypodzimu.cz/en/concert-halls/prague-crossroads-st-anne-church.html
http://www.wmf.org/project/st-anns-church 
http://maps.google.co.nz/



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Theatre du Soleil Production Clips

 
Watch short clip from Les Ephemeres (2006-2009)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmRK7As7Vcs&feature=related 

shows improvisation acting and flexible staging

Another useful vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65sPTffOBrw&feature=related

shows exterior of building (and landscape) and behind the scenes footage of actors preparing for their show (the pre-performance) as well as part of actual show

Short clip from Soudain

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbN0uBvgFtQ&feature=related

shows asain influenced dance performance with lighting and choreography

Théâtre du Soleil

BEGINNINGS

The Theatre du Soleil is a Parisian avant-garde stage ensemble founded by a group of ten idealistic young students in 1964. Ariane Mnouchkine led the collective to become Theatre artist devoted to the pursuit of an intercultural form of performance utilising improvisation, masks and pantomime.

The company has tried to make oppositional interventions into popular culture by contesting the ways in which we are invited to live and represent ourselves in the political leadership of capitalism.

LOCATED

The Théâtre du Soleil is located in Cartoucherie, an old munitions factory complex in the Vincennes area of eastern Paris.

DIRECTOR

"Theatre is doubtless the most fragile of the arts, 

the theatre public is now really a very small group, but the theatre keeps reminding us of the possibility to collectively seek the histories of the people and to tell them [...] The contradictions, the battles of power, and the split in ourselves will always exist. I think the theatre best tells us of the enemy in ourselves. Yes, theatre is a grain of sand in the works."

- Ariane Mnouchkine

The company creates new theatrical works using a devising process based on utilising physical theatre and improvisation. Its main purpose, unchanged since 1968 is to inspire a new relationship between the theatre and the public and to be distinguished from theatre bougeois, creating a more popular, transcendental, universal form of theatre.

COMPANY PHILOSOPHY

The company built its process based on the concept of a theatre company as a tribe or a family, a community of equal citizens: everyone receives the same wages, and the workday follows a schedule to which all actors, musicians and production assistants rigorously accommodate. The final casting or distribution of roles for all productions is decided upon only after all the performers in a production improvise, practice and audition numerous (if not all the) roles.

No principal roles or lead actors are defined in it productions. Helene Cixous, a French feminist author-philosopher, has been associated with the company as it principal playwright since the late 1970s or early 80s, writing and scoring the vast majority of the company's recent productions through a collaborative process, which develops through the improvisational exercises of the performers during any 9 to 12 month rehearsal period for a production. this collaborative writing process lends itself to productions of extended length, sometimes ranging between 3 and 6 hours in duration.

STAGING
Although the Théâtre du Soleil is located in Cartoucherie, the companies productions are often performed in unconventional venues such as barns or gymnasiums, as Mnouchkine does not like being confined to a typical stage. She feels theatre cannot be restricted with the "fourth wall". While the official native stage of the company is a typical procenium/thrust stage, the theatre space is marked by specific communal (stage-right) devoted to the live orchestrations of the company's principal composer and solo musician Philippe Leotard, and a large open lobby or social space where audience and actors convene before, after and during intermissions of each show to get refreshments and engage in conversation.

When audiences enter a Mnouchkine production, they have the opportunity to peek through holes in the large, canvas curtain separating the audience space from the actor space, to observe the actors preparing (eg. putting on make-up, getting into costume, warming up, etc). Sometimes, the troupe develops ideas out of improvisational exercises

[Williams, D. (1999). Collaborative Theatre: The theatre du soleil sourcebook. London : Routledge]