This course is an opportunity for professional and non-professional actors and theatre makers to hone their devising skills, inhabit fantastical worlds and let their imaginations run wild. Participants should bring a folk story from the aural tradition of the culture that they belong to, or of another that they have a good knowledge of and are interested in exploring. In selecting stories please be encouraged to choose something fantastical that you cannot imagine being able to bring alive in a theatrical setting!

These stories will be used as the basis of the devising process. Mornings will comprise workshops in physical theatre skills including object puppetry, the tragic chorus, rhythm, the poetic body and trateau. The aim of the work is to be able to create extraordinary worlds with nothing but the bodies of a few actors and maybe a reclaimed object or two.

Afternoons will be used to share stories and begin devising around them. As themes emerge we will select material to create a new story of our own, or a series of shorter pieces. The work we produce will be presented in an informal sharing with participants of other courses at the end of the week.