Spring at The Bridge Theatre
PLAY Workshops, our Artistic Director on Lungs, plus immersive training opportunities
Focus on: PLAY Workshop
This April, we are launching our brand new PLAY Workshop. Just like our Musical Theatre Workshop, you will get ten sessions in which to experiment, learn, grow and play, all under the expert guidance of professional British actor, Henry Regan.
Henry trained at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in London and now lives in Antwerp. He is an experience actor and has worked on several UK tours, including the hit musical, Blood Brothers, and the Ibsen play A Doll’s House. Henry is currently working in London at the Polka Theatre and will have just finished his latest production in time for this Workshop.
So, let yourselves be transported for a few hours on your Monday evenings to a space where you can express yourself in a non-judgemental setting, where you can explore your physicality, and where you can meet a wonderful group of like-minded theatre explorers.
Our PLAY Workshop is just one of four different Workshops that we have on offer this spring. Check out our website for more details on our ACT, MT, and SING Workshops.
Lungs: Edward’s view
The Artistic Director of The Bridge Theatre, Edward McMillan, gives us an enticing taste of what you can expect from our upcoming production of Lungs.
I chose Lungs as The Bridge Theatre’s second full production for two reasons.
First, it is a fantastic piece of drama: intimate, relatable, funny. We can all imagine being the couple we see presented on stage. The playwright, Duncan Macmillan, pushes their universality by not actually giving them names: the characters are simply presented as ‘W’ and ‘M’. This play could happen anywhere in the world and these people could be anyone, even you or me.
Second, the play is explicitly dealing with sustainability issues, which is the most important issue facing our planet today, in my opinion. But what I particularly like is that it deals with such issues from a very personal and human perspective. It does not prescribe behaviour, rather makes us interrogate our own choices more deeply. Although Duncan wrote this play over ten years ago, the themes it explores only become more relevant as we surpass 8 billion people and warm beyond 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
Fascinatingly, and without revealing too much about our production, Macmillan begins his play with the following stage direction:
“This play is written to be performed on a bare stage. There is no scenery, no furniture, no props and no mime. There are no costume changes. Light and sound should not be used to indicate a change in time or place.”
Although fantastic from the perspective of sustainability, artistically this instructed absence poses challenges. What does it mean to have no scenery? If we are not to indicate changes in time or place, what other techniques can we employ so that the audience feels the shifts in the narrative? As we go through the creation process, the creative team are balancing this instruction and its conscious minimalism with the ambition to develop a visually and acoustically involving performance in our unique space at Reset.
I’m really excited to bring this phenomenal play to Brussels for the first time and I can’t wait to share more details with you soon!
Bring theatre to your workplace
We believe in the power of immersive learning, which allows participants to learn through personal experience and process not only intellectually but also emotionally. Such learning resonates with us more deeply and stays with us much longer than a typical classroom training where knowledge transfer is mostly limited to the transmission of information.
And that is why we provide a range of workplace training opportunities in which our professional actors engage your team as never before.
From a more interactive and fun way to build team esprit to trying out techniques to make your workplace more inclusive, our immersive learning opportunities are a great way to broach both serious and lighter topics.
Want to know more? You’ll find details of the training we currently offer on our website. Or get in touch with us directly to see how we can help you!