IT Sligo Green Week: Nature as a Storyteller

The Nature as Storyteller Project is a theatrical exploration of stories and relationships in the natural non-human world, and the conflict, reciprocity, harmony, and humour that comes from those relationships.

The natural world includes animals, stones, plants, wind, light and all naturally occurring (not through human influence) elements and organisms.

For many people in the world today, we have lost our ability to perceive our interconnection with the natural world. Through this project we can start to rebuild our trust in those feelings, intuitions, messages and moments that arise from time spent in nature, and discover ourselves as part of, and not separate from, the natural world.

The stories presented by artists through this project are not meant to be about nature, but rather from nature. We will redirect our relationship with environment from a cerebral, linguistic framework, to a more physical and visceral experience. By exploring movement techniques, workshop participants will experiment with how posture, form, rhythm, etc. can help begin to physically embody our relationship with the natural world.

WORKSHOP OUTLINE:

The workshop is facilitated by Susan Goodwillie in collaboration with ITS Green Campus and Houses on the Moon theatre company.

• Prior to the workshop, participants will be given a prompt and asked to spend time and write in nature. That will provide participants with inspiration to work on during the workshop.
• On the day of the workshop, participants will be guided through a series of games and movement exercises to develop a physical vocabulary to tell stories from the natural world. Using that physical vocabulary, participants will explore the characters, stories and relationships discovered during the writing exercise.
• At the end of the workshop, participants will present short original pieces that illuminate an untold story from the natural world.

This event will take place on campus at IT Sligo – details to follow nearer the time.

For more information contact greencampus@nullitsligo.ie. 

View or download the full IT Sligo Green Week Programme.