Roberto Magro: Dramaturgy workshop for circus artists

From 21st to 25th March 2022, a dramaturgy workshop for contemporary circus artists with renowned circus playwright, director, professor and artist Robert Magro will be organized in Split, Croatia.

The dramaturgy workshop will bring together between 10 and 15 contemporary circus artists from Croatia, the region and other European countries. Those artists who already have experience in creating circus productions and are eager for additional knowledge, which is not technical but creative, will be selected for this workshop.

The basis of the circus artists’ education is the flexibility of their vocabulary, which is poor in the number of figures compared to theatre and dance. Therefore, contemporary circus artists can be creative only if they know how to transform and make their vocabulary as flexible and diverse as possible through specific training. The characteristic of the circus artists is that they speak through metaphors and try to discover still unexplored parts of the human soul to provoke a new emotion which they convey to us with their technique. With the help of their physical fitness and skills, through manipulation, gesture, choreography or movement, in short, with the help of their whole bodies, the circus artists creates images that the audience is invited to experience, feel, decipher …

The workshop is free of charge for selected participants. Lunch is organized for participants, and travel and accommodation costs will be reimbursed to participants in full amount or partially (depending on the final budget of the activity).

The working language of the workshop is English.
Workshop participants are selected according to their CV and motivation letter via the form:
https: //forms.gle/uhiPSAcUvpJVi4qw5
The application deadline is March 1st, 2022 at noon.
The list of workshop participants will be published on March 8, 2022.

Workshop schedule: every day in two intervals — from 09:00 to 12:00 and from 13:00 to 16:00 / group and individual work. Lunch break from 12:00 to 13:00.

About the teacher:
Roberto Magro works as a circus playwright, director, professor and artist in various countries.
After graduating from prestigious Academie Fratellini, he was part of the collective “Les Oiseaux Fous” with which he travelled Europe before founding his own group “Rital Brocante”. His high affinity for knowledge transfer and reflection on artistic creation led him to become artistic director of the Flic Circus School in Turin between 2005 and 2011. He found a balance between his work as a pedagogue and the role of playwright and directed performances for many artists and collective. He created “Era, Sonnet for a clown” with the MagdaClan collective and participated in several artistic creations of contemporary circus collectives “eia”, “Psirc”, “Forman Brothers”, “Nos no Bambu”, “Circo no Ato” and many others. He is the initiator of the Brocante Festival. He settled in Barcelona in 2013 to take over the artistic direction of “La Central del Circ”, the centre for the development of contemporary circus in Catalonia, for two years. At the end of his mandate, he continued his journey and his work as a creator and pedagogue.

He teaches regularly in circus schools in Europe and Latin America. In 2016, he staged performances for several European schools: “Life” (Codarts, Rotterdam), “Dia” (Flic, Turin), “Un minuto” (ESAC, Brussels).
This workshop is part of “The National Circus Platform”, the first collaborative program platform in Croatia that brings together organizations in the contemporary circus sector. The platform responds to the challenges faced by organizations and artists working in the sector through various forms of program exchange and cooperation and the transfer of knowledge and experience among members. The platform is coordinated by ROOM 100 collective (Split), and the members are Cirkorama (Zagreb), Cirkultura (Samobor), Cirkus Kolektiv (Split), Čarobnjakov šešir (Pula), K.V.A.R.K. (Križevci), Prostor Plus (Rijeka) and the newly established Contemporary Circus Artists Association (Zagreb). The activities of the National Circus Platform are carried out with the financial support of the Kultura Nova Foundation.