Burjesta Theatre Workshop – Waiting for Godot Wed 13th June

7pm @ The Casa, Hope St, L’pool, £3/£2
‘Great Dramatists and Great Drama’ series

‘Forget all I said…there wasn’t a word of truth in it’

This Wednesday we look at Samuel Beckett’s absurdist masterpiece, ‘Waiting for Godot’, written in 1949. A meditation by two tramps on the meaning(lessness) of life, culture and history with knockabout gags and surreal humour, Beckett’s play is peerless and can be considered as the last great drama.

We’ll be studying it and performing extracts from it. All welcome from beginner to experienced actor.

You can read it here online – https://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Waiting-for-Godot.pdf

Burjesta Theatre Workshops – All My Sons, Arthur Miller  Wed 6th June

7pm @ The Casa, Hope St, L’pool, £3/£2
‘Great Dramatists & Great Drama’ Series

‘Sure, he was my son. But I think to him they were all my sons’

This week we’ll be looking at extracts from one of Arthur Miller’s lesser-known plays, ‘All My Sons’ which tells the story of faulty parts that are knowingly sent to the government for installation on planes flying in World War II leading to the deaths of dozens of service men. It looks at who is culpable and the morality behind ‘dog eat dog’ practices in business.

It leads us naturally to the question ‘what is required to make great art’? We’ll be seeking to come up with answers to this throughout the workshop.

All welcome from total beginner to experienced actors.

Burjesta Theatre Workshop – Macbeth, Shakespeare –  Wed 31st May

The Casa, Hope St, L’pool, 7pm, £3/£2
Great Dramatists and Great Drama Series

“I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er”

This week we look at one of Shakespeare’s’ most dynamic of plays, Macbeth. We’ll be looking at and acting out extracts from the last act, with passing reference to Richard III, with which the play has parallels. It is our contention that structural problems in Richard III (an early play of Shakespeare’s) weaken a fine play in the final act but by the time Shakespeare wrote Macbeth in his mature years he had resolved such problems making Macbeth a tour de force from start to finish.

All welcome beginner or experienced actor.

Burjesta Theatre Workshop – The Trojan Women, Euripides – 7pm, Wednesday 23rd May

‘Great Dramatists and Great Drama’ Series
@ The Casa, Hope St, L’pool

“Alas! Alas! Alas! Ilium is ablaze; the fire consumes the citadel, the roofs of our city, the tops of the walls!”

This week we will be studying and acting out elements of Euripides remarkable play, ‘The Trojan Women’ with a host of characters from Odysseus to Helen of Troy, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Cassandra and Hecuba and the gods, Athene and Poseidon it covers just about the entirety of the mythical Trojan War fought between the Greeks and the city of Troy (Ilium).

However it centres on the fate of the women of the royal household of Troy following the fall of Troy to the besieging Greeks as they await their fate by the shoreline to see who they will be be allocated to as slaves to be taken to Greece.

A play looking at sorrow, war and the destitute it easy to see why it is still much used in modern theatre (of late in reference to the refugee exodus from the Middle East and beyond to Europe). It is a wonderful play so come along and join us in the pursuit of what makes for great drama.

All welcome beginner or experienced – session costs £3/£2

You can read a translation of the play here – https://www.poetryintranslation.com/P…/Greek/TrojanWomen.php

Burjesta Theatre Workshop – Oedipus the King, Sophocles Wednesday 16th May

‘Great Dramatists & Great Drama’, £3/£2
7pm @ The Casa, Hope St, L’pool

“Time, which sees all things, has found you out.”

In this week’s session we look at the greatest of all Greek dramas, Sophocles’ ‘Oedipus the King’, which Aristotle thought best exemplified what tragedy should be. It tells the terrible story of the man who was fated to kill his father and marry his mother.

We’ll be examining what makes it such great drama, the ‘tricks’ Sophocles uses and how he sustains mood and tension. All welcome from total beginner to experienced actor.

For more info – info@burjesta-theatre.co.uk

Burjesta Theatre – The Oresteia, Aeschylus: Wednesday 9th May, 7pm

‘Great Dramatists & Great Drama’ Workshops
@ The Casa, Hope St, L’pool

‘the dead are killing the living’

This week we begin a new series of workshops with ‘The Oresteia’ by the Greek playwright, Aeschylus. It is the only existing trilogy from the classical Greek period, one of the earliest plays in the history of Western drama and a stunning, violent and bloody tale of revenge, justice, the movement from barbarism to civilisation and the subjugation of matriarchal society by a patriarchal one, centred around Homer’s mythical tale of the House of Atreus.

We will be focusing on the first of the three plays, ‘Agamemnon’ which looks at the return home of Agamemnon from the Trojan War and his murder by his wife Clytemnestra. The workshop will be focused on ‘beginnings’ and the building up of tension in preparation for the murder.

You can read any of the three plays here online –
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks07/0700021h.html

This is part of a series workshops which will trace the history of Western drama from its beginnings in Ancient Greece, through the Elizabethan period and on to modern theatre, looking at some of the great dramatists and their work. They are first and foremost acting workshops and everyone attending will be expected to participate. No prior knowledge of the plays is expected though you will get more from the workshop if you take the time to read the play before the workshop (see link above). Each workshops is a stand alone workshop and you do not have to have attended to previous workshops nor commit to future ones. They cost £3/£2 per session.

All are welcome from total beginners to experienced actors.
For more information – info@burjesta-theatre.co.uk

Regards
Burjesta

Burjesta Theatre Spring Production – Planning and Story-boarding Session 4th April, 7pm

The Casa, Hope Street, Liverpool

This Wednesday will be dedicated to getting our spring production up and running. It is the culmination of a series of devising workshops that were run earlier this year looking at the housing crisis in Britain today. We will be finalizing our planning and plotting the story. Rehearsals will begin the week following for a production at the end of May.

You can come along and express an interest in being part of the production even if you haven’t attended the devising theatre workshops.

Please note this is unpaid work.

Regards
Burjesta