Emergence of the invisible with Sarno and Goater

13.12.2021 0 Like 0 kommenttia

This practice session is part of the (Your) Room for ped­a­gog­i­cal de­vel­op­ment series on Saturday, December 18th, at 9:00-10:30am (Finnish time, UTC/GMT +2:00 hours). Participation on the sessions is free of charge.

Sign up to the online session by sending an e-mail to: nora.varga@uniarts.fi. You will receive a link to the session to your email.

This session led by Elina and Georgie is a playground between the sensing moving body and the material life of our surroundings. What is the shared breath between our own organism and other inhabitants in our environment – objects, things, other beings? How can the experiencing body’s perception be opened and tuned in a way to meet its own wisdom, the ‘call of things’ and their agency, as well the agency of the shared interaction? How is the body’s free exploration affected when sensing/touching/moving an inanimate body/structure/skeleton? What happens when these diverse bodies connect? How do they affect each other?Elina brings her theatre pedagogy research question of the “somatic puppet” together with Georgie’s approach to the materiality of the body in relation. They guide a practice space of curiosity and play for surprising encounters in your environment wherever you are. 

About Elina Sarno

During my theater pedagogy studies, I came up with a research question of “somatic puppet”, where the word “puppet” roughly being something outer which we animate or manipulate and the “somatic”, being something inner, unconscious, and not-controlled. Play with puppet/object/material/the inanimate, is a constant play between inner and outer, form and content. Our final  Artistic-pedagogical work “Patella – floating bone” which I co-directed with my classmate Georgina Goater was a movement exploration with the thought of bones and our inner structure. It was a play with our own, diverse bodies and also with the bodies of different objects and materials. In Patella’s group-based process we searched for ways of somatic puppeteering through various explorations and came up with a few exercises that we are happy to share in this room session together.

“I’m a mother. A matter. A child. A sister. A dog-owner. Dogfriend. Caretaker. Performer. Neighbor. Puppetry artist. Theater teacher. Ibd patient. Lover of floating. Wanna-be-gardener. Monomaniac. Scoutgirl. Researcher. Bug explorer. Slow. Stardust. Wind. Everything there is. Nothing. You.”
When I studied theater pedagogy we had an association task of listing to words saying “I’m…”. The shortlist above isn’t the same as it was then. And the next list will be different, for sure. Few words stay on the list and keep on following me, at least when it comes to the field of arts. Puppets and puppet theater have been there for a long time. Their ability to distance us from ourselves and give us the possibility to observe and witness is something to cherish.
Sharing the stage with an inanimate object/material puts us living beings in a different light (if the space/focus/time for that is given). How do we connect? How are we as inanimate/animate actants alive together? Our ever-changing humanity is always connected to them. Their physical presence can show it and teach us about it. My artistic interests are these days wonderfully intertwined with pedagogical and experimental directions. There’s no one without the other. Giving space for the invisible and for the unknown to emerge keeps on following.

Play with puppet/object/material/the inanimate, is a constant play between inner and outer, form and content. Our final  Artistic-pedagogical work “Patella – floating bone” which I co-directed with my classmate Georgina Goater was a movement exploration with the thought of bones and our inner structure. It was a play with our own, diverse bodies and also with the bodies of different objects and materials. In Patella’s group-based process we searched for ways of somatic puppeteering through various explorations and came up with a few exercises that we are happy to share in this room session together. Collaborating with fellow classmates in the Dance and Theatre Pedagogy programme at Theatre Academy is an option that is often chosen and practiced among the students.