Ecole des Maîtres 2023

MARCIAL DI FONZO BO IS THE MASTER OF ECOLE 2023
International Touring Theatre Master class
XXXI edition: 28 August – 7 October 2023
workshop: Disparates
assistant: Marianne Ségol-Samoy


actors: Giuseppe Benvegna, Emma Bolcato, Michele De Paola, Elena Natucci (Italy); Fanny Blondeau, Simon Espalieu, Jules Puibaraud, Souâd Toughraï (Belgium); Hélène Bressiant, Julien Crampon, Alexis Gilot, Adil Mekki (France); Pedro Baptista, Mariana Magalhães, Carolina Lopes, Rui Maria Pêgo (Portugal)

project partners and art direction
CSS Teatro stabile di innovazione del Friuli Venezia Giulia, Piccolo Teatro di Milano - Teatro d’Europa (Italy), CREPA - Centre de Recherche et d’Expérimentation en Pédagogie Artistique (CFWB/Belgium), Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, TAGV - Teatro Académico de Gil Vicente (Portugal), Le Quai Centre Dramatique National Angers Pays de la Loire, Comédie, Centre dramatique national de Reims (France)

with the support of MiC Ministero della Cultura - Direzione Generale Spettacolo, Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia - Direzione centrale cultura, sport e solidarietà, Fondazione Friuli (Italy)
with the participation of ERPAC - Ente Regionale Patrimonio Culturale Friuli Venezia Giulia (Italy), Théâtre de Liège - Centre européen de création théâtrale et chorégraphique, Centre des Arts scéniques, Fédération Wallonie Bruxelles - Service général de la Création artistique, Wallonie-Bruxelles International, La Loterie Nationale (CFWB/Belgium), Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (France), Universidade de Coimbra (Portugal)

Ecole des Maîtres is an advanced theatre training project created by Franco Quadri in 1990
In 2023 the project reaches its thirty-first edition.
As a training project, Ecole des Maîtres aims to create a relationship between young actors who trained in European drama academies and theatre schools and are now working professionally, and celebrated international directors. The aim is to create a professional experience as an opportunity to compare practices and exchange skills related to performance methods and practice. It uses different texts, languages and artistic approaches as a starting point and operates through a travelling workshop program.

Leading the Ecole des Maîtres will be the French-Argentine actor and director Marcial Di Fonzo Bo.
During the Ecole, Marcial Di Fonzo Bo, in collaboration with the playwright and translator Marianne Ségol-Samoy, will work with the students on the text “A Midsummer Night's Dream” by William Shakespeare starting from a series of engravings by Francisco Goya, DISPARATES, which is also the title of this course.
 
DISPARATES
"Doing theatre means taking sides. Intervening. Being an actor.
It means having a predilection for pure movement, for unnecessary complexity, for irregularity, lightness and strangeness of language. It is also the pleasure of exploring the limits of one's own beliefs to avoid accumulating prejudices or received ideas - those of a master...
The work of the actor is in perpetual movement, contemporary authors force us to invent new forms of acting that question the codes of drama and the modes of representation.

École des Maîtres is a valuable research space.
For several weeks we will work in different languages, starting from different translations of A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare, a fertile ground for invention. For centuries Shakespeare's theatre has directly questioned reality, because it articulates the intimate and the political like no other.
In the Dream, the coexistence between night, the realm of ghosts and disorder, and day, the dimension of reality and order, has echoes of Los Disparates the incredible series of engravings by Francisco Goya that has haunted me since childhood.
Drawing on the Disasters of War, and part of the series of The Caprices, this work brings together the themes dear to the Spanish painter: the condemnation of the Catholic Church, the denunciation of war, the criticism of a conservative and moral society - like that of England two centuries earlier.

Disparates: "that produces a discordant effect due to the different constituent elements". In the past, this term was feminine. In modern usage the gender is undecided.
Based on this series of engravings, we will create a short story that relates to the characters and situations of the drama, looking for genuine poetics of complexity, to escape from traditionally rigid and linear paths: on the one hand the similarity to reality (realism), on the other the construction of a new parallel reality (the absurd).
Marianne Ségol-Samoy, translator and playwright, will accompany the work through different versions of the text, starting from the brand new French translation by the poet Olivier Cadiot and the English original.

We will work outdoors, in the woods, in the parks, by the sea… looking for natural light and the passage from day to night. As in the play, everyone will cross paths in this strange and rather magical forest, on a haunted summer night that resembles a dream."
Marcial Di Fonzo Bo

PROJECT CALENDAR FOR THE XXXI EDITION OF ECOLE DES MAÎTRES

Course calendar
28/08 – 08/09 France, Angers
09/09 – 12/09 Belgium, Liège
13/09 – 16/09 Italy, Milan
17/09 – 26/09 Italy, Udine
27/09 – 01/10 Portugal, Coimbra
02/10 – 04/10 Portugal, Lisbon
05/10 – 07/10 France, Reims

Public performances 2023
08/09, Parc Balzac - Angers, France
12/09, Parc Pré du Banneux - Liège, Belgium
16/09, Parco Trotter, Milan
26/09, Villa Manin di Passariano, Udine
30/09, Jardim da Sereia, Coimbra, Portugal
04/10, Grande Auditório da Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema - Lisbon, Portugal
07/10, La Comédie de Reims, Grande Salle - Reims, France