Storytelling and Adaptation Workshop

Mike Alfreds will be holding another Storytelling and Adaptation Workshop, based on the techniques he describes in his book, Then What Happens?, published by Nick Hern Books who are also the publishers of his book on acting and rehearsal process for plays, Different Every Night.

This workshop is open both to those who participated in the previous workshop and to those who will be joining for the first time. What we will be dealing with is applicable to Writers, Directors and Actors.

It deals with two disciplines: the actor as a multifaceted storyteller; and ways of transforming a piece of non-dramatic writing, intended to be read (novel, story, legend, biography, poem), into a viable theatre experience, intended to be performed.

The work takes the actors into new areas of performance experience in which they not only create characters, but also become hosts, narrators, commentators, critics, designers, stage hands, musicians, editor… In short, they take on all the functions required to create theatre, even some required for film. These techniques increase their flexibility, range of expressiveness and function. Actors who experience this way of working find it empowering.

The purpose is for an actor or actors, working in an essentially empty space, to discover the appropriate techniques to put an entire book onstage, being true to its spirit, but also to its language and conventions. The intention is not to turn the material into a conventional play, but to find fresh dramatic equivalents of the techniques and devices used by the writer, so that the material is transformed into a viable and fresh piece of theatre.

The workshop explores narrative points of view, tense, plot, structure, style of language, levels of characterisation, transitions, the dramatization of descriptive narration…

We will be using specific texts, so participants should have sufficient knowledge of English to be able to deal with possibly heightened and varying styles of language. You will be advised about what material to read. Also, it would be useful if participants could obtain a copy of Then What Happens? and had read at least Part One: Thoughtshops for Storytelling.

Please note that the workshop will be held for two separated weeks with a week in between for the participants to prepare material for the final sessions.