Vaulting, rolling, running, climbing, jumping, walking on stilts… Participants in our Street Theatre project have lately been turning the world into their playground. Parkour, stilts, dance and acrobatics training is part of the preparations for a street theatre performance that will be staged in Guimarães, Portugal, the European Capital of Culture 2012 in August, and later in Jenin.
Chris Keighley, a veteran of the UK parkour scene, and Mia Hansen, artistic co-director of the Street theatre project, recently joined forces to host a series of workshops focused on dynamic techniques of moving freely through our everyday environment. In these workshops, young members of The Freedom Theatre were joined by students from the Palestinian Circus School. Together they worked on improving both their physical strength and their ability to overcome obstacles and challenges in life.
– It has been a great way to focus and unleash some of the powerful energy of the students, to build up stamina and find a language as a group, explains Mia Hansen. We have explored creative ways of using these new skills, turning them into theatrical actions, relations between people and images.
Saber, one of The Freedom Theatre’s Acting School students, was particularly fascinated by parkour:
– When I play parkour I feel like someone has given me an injection of adrenaline, I feel something I can’t explain. (…) I feel my heart like pom pom pom…
Anas, also an Acting School student, preferred the dance training. – The dance was really amazing. It’s my favourite, because I imagine I’m dancing with birds.