Most often, drama happens in buildings designed for this particular purpose, i.e. in theatres. But the history and evolution of theatre is full of genres and styles that were performed in the streets or on public squares where fiction merged with the reality of everyday life. In this workshop, we will also step out of the theatre. We will be looking for the unseen borders of Koper. We will move our theatrical creation from the controlled conditions inside a theatre hall into the real and unpredictable spaces of the streets and squares of Koper and we will use these as a starting point for drama situations.  What changes? What stays the same? What kinds of stories emerge from the narrow medieval streets and what kinds are created on the sea shore? How does place define the characters and their relationships? What is the relationship between the performers and the audience and what is the dividing line between them when theatre is moved from the “safe” shelter of the stage into the streets, squares or a natural environment?  Through a series of exercises and improvisations taking us to different, perhaps unexplored places and states, we will be looking at the relationships between individual/group, group/group, small/large, close/far, soft/loud etc. The goal of the workshop is to use collective collaboration to create a piece where the place/setting acts as a partner instead of just being a random visual frame.  Considering that each space is also conditioned with time, we will also deal with the time within the theatre performance, and given the fact that time is the worst place for an actor to get lost, we will check how important it is as a basic element of each performance. We will explore time on different levels - actual duration of the performance, time in which the performance is placed, imagined duration of a particular action or actions. We will explore the duration, ellipses, repetitions, simultaneity, we will slow down or accelerate time and play with time collage. We will create improvised scenes, stretch them out or shorten them, repeat, add, remove, measure them with a meter, stopwatch or with other measures for the time, and in all this time we will forget that one week for all this is simply not enough. 
 
 

Iva Milley

Iva Milley is a graduate of comparative literature, archaeology and theatre studies. She is a member of the drama studio ZeKaEm (Zagreb Youth Theatre). She also works as a drama teacher, actress and set designer. She writes plays for children and youth. She gives a number of theatre workshops focusing on acting and mime.