|
Standing Ovation for Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama students at International Macedonia Festival |
Drama students from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama represented Wales and the UK at the international Festival Skomrahi 2008 at Skopje, Macedonia this Easter.The initial link between the festival and RWCMD was made by Kevin Lewis, Artistic Director of Theatre Iolo, who also teaches at RWCMD. Kevin and David Adams, Project Director, began working on the Identity Exchange project over a year ago, an innovative collaborative arts project between Wales and countries in southern Europe who share the desire to explore their national identities through theatre. The nine second year drama students and one post-graduate design student from RWCMD performed ‘Love’s Labours Lost’ and received a standing ovation. It was the first time they had ever performed to a public audience. “The audience were crowding in the aisles in order to catch the only English language piece and our students were treated to a standing ovation that drowned out the last bars of the final song. As we filed into the dining room that night, students and staff once more rose to their feet to applaud,” recounts a delighted Marilyn Le Conte, Senior Lecturer in Acting at RWCMD, who accompanied the students. She continues, “Stylistically, our approach to telling the dramatic story was very different to the work of other schools, which was one of the points of the festival – to learn more about other countries’ approaches to actor training.” Skomrahi (which means ‘travelling players’), the international performance festival, is now in its 17th year and was the brainchild of Professor Danco Cevreski, the Dean of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts at Skopje. The festival’s aim has been to bring together smaller disenfranchised European countries and to heighten their profile while sharing their artistic experiences. This year the festival welcomed 14 countries including Serbia, Kosovo, Uganda and Croatia as well as Wales. The festival programme included not only theatre performance but film and animation screenings by the attending students, and workshops from the visiting lecturers including Marilyn Le Conte, and Kevin Lewis. Skomrahi is funded by the Austrian Development Cooperation along with many partnership funds. It is hoped that in the current economic climate the wonderful experience of sharing practice for young theatre professionals will continue to thrive. After his first visit to Skopje where Kevin met a number of artists from the Balkans, Kevin says “there is a real feeling that theatre is at the centre of peoples’ lives and that theatre has a real impact on society. This festival gives young people the opportunity to exchange ideas and begin to understand how theatre is experienced in the Balkan countries”. For more information contact: Helen Dunning Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, 029 20 391317, helen.dunning@rwcmd.ac.uk or Wendy Yorke Theatr Iolo 029 20 613782, info@theatriolo.com |
| RWCMD web site: www.rwcmd.ac.uk |
| e-mail: helen.dunning@rwcmd.ac.uk |
Tuesday, April 22, 2008 |
Older news
stories have been carefully archived.
2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999