This fourth edition of Vértico’s July workshops, which began in 2020, is titled “Reconsidering training: presence + imagination.” These intensives were born out of a personal need to rethink education and research, as well as a tribute to and memory of the great teacher, director, and mentor Phillip Zarrilli, who passed away on April 28 of that same year.
This initiative keeps alive the feeling that motivates us to work together to explore new creative and intellectual avenues. To collectively create a positive identity that is creative and, most importantly, constructive with regard to the reality that surrounds us, to our artistic and professional experiences.
This training helps you to better understand the body-mind-imagination connection, find your psychological equilibrium, and assess your perceptual acuity. Reconcile and value your knowledge in an intelligent manner, taking into account the demands and sensibilities of the time period you are traveling through. Rebuild the confidence and support you require as a creator. Find yourself with an internal stability and optimal opening to both your own creativity and that of others. Training means also sharing projects, ideas, feelings, and presence. Dwelling a place where your attempts to determine the best course for your creative endeavors and evolution will be defined by sharing; where to investigate an “other” potential of being with others.
You will discover how the psychological foundations and movement sequences (yoga, taichi, and kalarippayattu) upon which Phillip Zarrilli bases his actor training intervene in your imagination. How they make it easier for images and Michael Chekhov’s creativity exercises and techniques to flow freely, consciously, and how to locate perception in your body and movement. Your research will develop using these two techniques.
I would like that this lab helps people to rethink what training means, what working on their imaginations involves, and adopt a fresh perspective on performance practice, this is, their “knowing how to do.” I believe it will awaken your curiosity about fresh ways to artistically recreate the world around you and reconsider your presence in a more creative and unique way.
Knowing how to imagine new worlds, discover new paths, think with the bodies, hear the voice of the “creative I”, and practice freedom will help you face the profession and life in a more humane and artistic manner; ultimately, in a more comprehensive way.