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 ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT LABS

We create a safe, nurturing space for young theatre makers to grow… and we've found the best way to do this is to work together in residence in different locations across Dumfries and Galloway! Over several days we live together, eat together, and create together. Through ensemble building, skill development, and collaborative devising we generate new ideas and inspire each other.

Our Labs are run by our Artistic Director Sarah Rose Graber and different creative collaborators. Past labs have involved playwriting, puppetry, filmmaking, voiceover, spoken word, physical theatre, clowning, mime, music, and more.

The Labs are fully open access and inclusive.

 
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WHAT HAPPENS DURING A LAB?

When you arrive, you’ll get checked in and orientated into your accommodation - sometimes it’s a hotel, sometimes a B&B. You’ll meet everyone, eat together, and rest up for the busy days ahead.

When the lab kicks off, session days start with daily warm ups before engaging in ensemble building activities and then skills based workshops.

We’ll take what we learned and begin to develop new ideas into performance material. This can be initial explorations for a new show idea or putting our new skills into practice.

The final day culminates in an informal sharing for an invited audience and celebrating what we’ve accomplished together.

We always leave feeling energised, inspired, and creatively fulfilled!

 

Past labs have included:

Development for “How to Human”, a new piece exploring what makes us human and how we see and display our humanity.

The cohort wrote poems, worked in the recording studio to capture our voices to then create physical movement to accompany the audio piece. We also made solo audio journeys that audiences experienced one-on-one while wearing headphones. We played with making sound effects and learned how to create foley. And we also looked at using our voices together to create harmony and a full sonic experience through sound circles.

We created a physical theatre performance titled ‘Instructions for How to Get Around’.

The cohort worked with American artist Becky Baumwoll, Founding Artistic Director of Broken Box Mime Theatre to learn skills in physical theatre and mime.

We learned how to use our vocal skills with recording voiceover audio. Then we wrote scenes that were filmed and edited in various locations across Wigtown.

We created our outdoor walkabout production of ‘Bippity’. By learning skills in clowning and physical theatre, we took inspiration from the Merlin Trail in Dumfries and Galloway to build characters and ultimately develop a piece of pop up performance.

We explored various types of puppetry. We learned how to make paper puppets and found object puppets. Then we worked with light and shadow to develop shadow puppetry performances.