Discover a powerful, inclusive approach to making theatre from real-life stories. Led by internationally acclaimed director Jana Svobodová, this immersive workshop introduces practical tools for blending biographical text, improvisation, and collective creation. Through the adapted lens of the Viewpoints technique and the practice of "extreme listening," you will learn how to build trust, conduct collaborative interviews, and transform authentic personal experiences into compelling stage action.
The experience is explicitly designed for a diverse mix of participants, welcoming theatre professionals, students, and community members with absolutely no prior stage experience. Whether you want to expand your professional practice or explore your own autobiographical stories, you will walk away with practical skills for facilitating community-engaged theatre, working across different experience levels, and amplifying voices that deserve to be heard.
Production Credits
Workshop Facilitator: Jana Svobodová
Archa-centre of Documentary Theatre
About the Artists
Jana Svobodová is a theatre director, dramaturg, lecturer, and founder of the International Summer School of Documentary Theatre. She works with individuals from diverse backgrounds, including refugees, Roma communities, inhabitants of South African townships, hip-hop artists, scientists, young people from East Naples, and women of various professions and nationalities.
Her recent projects, Those Who Speak for Themselves (2021), Perché non io? (2022), and Eight Short Compositions on the Lives of Ukrainians for a Western Audience (2023), interrogate issues of personal and collective freedom. Her work has been presented at festivals in the Czech Republic, as well as the US, Japan, South Africa, Germany, Austria, Poland, and Slovenia.
The performance Ordinary People (2018), which she co-directed with Chinese choreographer Wen Hui, was featured in the main program of the Festival d’Avignon 2019 and the Festival d’Automne à Paris 2019. Most recently, Eight Short Compositions on the Lives of Ukrainians for a Western Audience, a documentary project reflecting contemporary social realities, opened the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival 2026 in Vancouver.
- Venue: Rhodes Movement Room
- Location: Rhodes Theatre Complex
- Programme type: Curated Programme
- Genre: ArtTalk
- Duration: 3 hours
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Ages:
ALL AGES
- Language: English
