The Feast is a performance event in which one can choose how to take part: joining through singing, listening, dancing, or simply observing.
It is an invitation to a singing celebration that embraces people, in all their uniqueness, in the richness of the broader human expression of celebrating together. It aims toward creating context for possible openings, a space where coexistence is beyond the conventional, where the experiential and performative are the joint responsibility of both the performer and the spectator, moving organically towards the idea of festivity that the theater promoted in its origins.
Gently guided through songs of the Brazilian African Diaspora, participants are encouraged to allow the manifestation of a work of art that both embraces and goes beyond differences, to transform the quality of human encounter through the arts.
The Feast was born from the performance research developed by Graziele Sena da Silva over the last six years. In her work, the song of tradition is a way to establish a dialogue between a possible body-memory, recorded almost photographically in an ancient song, and its manifestations in the body-life of the present. In this sense, the song is approached as a vital potency, which carries ancestral knowledge and can act on the one who sings, expanding their sensitivity and the possibility of a contact with a human being's potential for social transformation.
Conceived and coordinated by Graziele Sena da Silva, this event is open to all, without any limitation.
Specifications
The creative work will be carried out through a workshop montagem, guided by Graziele Sena da Silva, an Afro-Brazilian actress, singer, director, dramaturge, community organizer, and acting instructor, who has honed her unique performance practice, as well as her approach to practice-based research and teaching, through a decade of rigorous training, research, and practice as a key member of the Open Program of the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, an international performance research center based in Italy and founded by the renowned Polish director Jerzy Grotowski. The work will feature two interconnected strands of action and creation, which will lead into the final public performance event of The Feast:

I. Workshop in preparation for the performance: “Doing the Fest 2022”
This workshop is open to actors, dancers, singers, and theater students interested in developing their craft through precise work on performative skills, including singing and dancing, and through an exploration of other elements of human behavior – which, together, form the basis of the actor’s craft – in the context of a celebration.
The workshop is also addressed to people who have no professional experience in the artistic field, but who are interested in working with elements of performance as possibilities that belong to human beings in their sociality, and through which it is possible to interact and to co-create contexts for a live and non-ordinary encounter.
During this period of work, the participants will work on songs from the African Diaspora and will have the opportunity to explore the complexity of an individual's behavior in a collective context. They will confront the dynamics of action and song and the effects of such dynamics in a collective situation, taking the opportunity to act intentionally in a way that can transform the quality of what happens in the rich context of meeting with others. Through this work, they will develop tools for interaction in a performative context, and also therefore be prepared to take an active part in The Feast, a public, participatory event, led by Graziele Sena, based on traditional songs of the Afro-Brazilian Diaspora.
The workshop will be held in English with translation if required.

II. Singing intervention “Harmonically Walking”
Gently guided through specific performative elements and traditional songs from the Brazilian African Diaspora, participants are encouraged to allow the manifestation of a non ordinary quality of attention in the process of a walk that is sung by multiple voices and is permeated along the way by various possibilities of movement in harmony with the urban space and its passersby.
This singing intervention in public spaces is an opportunity for participants to explore the co-manifestation of social mobilization and political action through the arts, in harmony with the urban space and its passersby. The performative intervention will in turn be open to participation by the passing public, who will be able to join the group, singing, walking, playing along, observing, or just noticing the group's passage.

Workflow Schedule

I. Workshop in preparation for the performance: “Doing the Feast 2022”
Dates: 19th and 20th August 2022 Time: 3pm to 7pm
Date: 21st August 2022
Time: 4pm to 6pm
Number of participants: Unlimited

II. Singing intervention “Harmonically Walking”
Date: 20th August 2022 Time: 6pm to 7pm
Number of participants: Unlimited

III. “The Feast”
Date: 21st August
Time: 6pm to 8pm
Number of participants: Unlimited

Want to participate in both workshops by Gabriele? Pay € 300 instead of € 350 for a whole week of inspiring, creative work.

Want to stay over? We can arrange that. Contact us on Whatsapp via +32 476 21 92 86.

KIDS ARE WELCOME TO JOIN IN !
0-11 years: € 0
12-18: € 75

please transfer the participation fee to the following account number with message "The Feast (your name)"
BE51 0013 1600 5262

Graziele Sena da Silva is an Afro-Brazilian theatre researcher, actress, singer, director, dramaturge, community organizer, and acting instructor. She was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. From 2012 to 2021 she was a key member of the Open Program of the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, based in Italy. She has dedicated the last decade of her artistic life and research to work on traditional songs, organic behavior, intentional physical action, and the exploration of human potential within the arts.
During this time, she has performed in theaters and festivals around the world, including at the Yale University Theater Studies Program in the United States, the Odeon Laboratory at the Olimpo Theater in Italy, the Diaghilev International Arts Festival in Russia, and the Théâtre de la Ville in France. She has facilitated workshops in universities and research centers worldwide, including at the Shanghai Theater Academy in China, ARTA-Association for Research and Traditions of the Actor in Paris in France, as well as at the Stella Adler Studio and Juilliard School in New York. She has also lectured at renowned educational institutions such as the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at New York University, the Centre for Drama Theater and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto, the Department of Acting and the Graduate Program in Performing Arts at the University of Rio de Janeiro, and the School of Fine Arts at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil.
For Graziele, theater – and more specifically the craft of the performer – is a place of convergence of one's most intimate personal imagination, desires, thoughts, intentions, emotions, and potentialities. It is a field where the human being can investigate another quality of attention and listening, other (non-ordinary) forms of human interaction, other ways of relating to oneself and to the world. For the past decade, in her work at the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards and after it, Graziele has been conducting an investigation of the personal and performative potential of work with traditional chants, exploring the rhythmed and creative roots and potentialities in the
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convergence of spontaneity and structure that is organic behavior. She has developed a systematic training that works with impulses, reactions, intentions, and physical actions, as an expression of the scenic presence of the performer. In her work, the song of tradition is a way to establish a dialogue between a possible body-memory, recorded almost photographically in an ancient song, and its manifestations in the body-life of the present. In this sense, the song is approached as a vital potency, which carries ancestral information and can act on the one who sings, expanding her sensitivity and the contact with a human being's innermost potential for creation.