Patrick Stayer, a senor theatre major in the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film from Bellevue, Nebraska, spent part of his winter break in Carrara, Italy, attending the International Physical Theatre Conference and Laboratory.
The conference and laboratory are open to performers inspired by physical theatre, designed for experienced dancers, actors of physical theatre, contemporary circus performers, choreographers and directors. It includes intensive practical training, lectures and discussions with Russian theatre director and teacher Sergei Ostrenko.
Stayer received a scholarship from ArtUniverse to attend the conference and laboratory, and he also received a grant from the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film for his travel expenses.
“It was stressful, at times, because I was traveling by myself overseas for the first time,” he said. “But the experience with the conference and the lab training was good. I made a lot of strong connections.”
During the laboratory portion, Stayer and about 20 other people from around the world received hands-on training with Ostrenko. Participants came from South Africa, Thailand, U.S., Canada, China, Russia, Germany, England and other countries and represented all ages from high school to professionals.
“The first day, there was a lot on weight sharing and trust exercises and artistically moving through space without having access to knowing where you’re going to be,” Stayer said. “In the second day, we introduced text. We read some Shakespeare, which we talked about and analyzed, and then we incorporated some exercises to interpret the lines in a specific way with movement.”
They also worked with Meyerhold’s study of biomechanics.
“That being four steps consisting of the preparation for action, the action, the action coming to a halt and then the stillness following the halt,” Stayer said. “Everything in life follows that principal, and we touched on it during our exercises.”
During the subsequent conference, which an additional 30 people attended in addition to the 20 or so from the laboratory, various presenters gave lectures on a variety of subjects.
“There were people from all forms of art—visual artists like painters and graphic artists, actors, directors, a set designer from Thailand, composers, musicians and conductors of opera,” Stayer said.
Stayer said the overall experience helped him in ways he didn’t initially expect.
“The conference and lab didn’t teach me as much new material that I haven’t already been introduced to, which is a testament to our training program here [at UNL],” he said. “But I learned a lot from their program and how to market myself as a professional amongst people I don’t know. I’ve been in school and have adopted the identity of a student, but now that I’m in my last semester, having to go overseas and tell people what I do and how people react in different ways and having to market myself as a professional, was not something I had tried to do before.”
He also made great professional connections at the conference.
“Networking was probably the next best thing I learned,” Stayer said. “I met a lot of great people and am in close contact with many of them. I have the ability to reach them for professional opinions and artistic input on anything I’m working on.”
He said the participants inspired each other.
“That’s the thing I took back with me. Having that international perspective and that shift in cultural abstraction, of knowing how other people do it in other places,” Stayer said. “Removing the ideas of how you think things should be done based on where you come from, it really opens up what’s possible. There were so many things that I was never introduced to that I learned about just by talking to people who are working actors in the Philippines or Singapore or Taiwan. There are so many talented people that I want to be as good at what I do as they are at what they do, so being connected to them is probably the most valuable thing that I’ve taken.”
As part of the conference, Stayer got a tour of Carrara.
“Carrara was very interesting,” he said. “It’s known to be the city of marble. They have mountains covered in marble, so almost everything in the city is made of marble, and that’s where they export marble to all over the world. We learned about the history of the city and their industries.”
Stayer also took time before and after the conference to visit Florence and Rome.
“Traveling overseas now is no longer scary,” he said. “I had never been to a big city on my own, but Rome is probably the easiest city to get around.”
He is also looking forward to keeping up with his professional connections, including one woman in the Philippines who wants him to teach a stage combat workshop for her dance company.
“There are professional connections that I have now that I’m looking forward to keeping up on,” he said. “It was a wonderful experience. I grew a lot from it as a person and as a performer.”