TO REGAIN CONSCIOUSNESS

Workshop at La Boutonnière, Paris
> directed by Luca Giacomoni

For years, following Peter Brook’s advice, I carefully kept theatrical creation separate from what is commonly called “inner research.” You’ll see – he told me – with time and practice, these two dimensions will eventually come together naturally, without forcing anything. Today, this feels self-evident to me. There are not two distinct spaces, but a single movement in which one reality nourishes the other in both mysterious and tangible ways. Encountering the research of Jerzy Grotowski, through some of his former collaborators, made this continuity even more concrete, until it became evident to me that work on physical actions is inseparable from work on oneself.

From this perspective, something in theatre has shifted. It is no longer a matter of illustrating, or even representing, but of moving through states of presence in which action engages the whole being. Perhaps that is what it is, fundamentally: a passage. Not toward some spectacular elsewhere, but toward a place already known and yet forgotten. As though something within us had glimpsed Ithaca without ever truly reaching its shores – and had since continued learning the way back to its native land. These few days of workshop are part of this exploration: refining listening, re-engaging the body in action, and cultivating a more open attention to oneself. And perhaps recalling the profound necessity of the theatrical act: one of the rare moments in which the invisible can still become a concrete and shared experience.

Dates

From July 27 to 31, 2026
9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., at La Boutonnière
25 rue Popincourt, 75011 Paris

Fee / 520 euros per person
440 euros for students
and job seekers

Information and registration :
contact@centrehagiasophia.com

A DISCORDANT HARMONY

Workshop at UCLouvain, Brussels
> directed by Luca Giacomoni

Some time ago, a playwright friend told me about her experience in L’Aquila just after the earthquake that devastated the city. Amid the rubble, she said, everyone seemed instinctively to know what to do: some searched for survivors, others carried water, moved stones, welcomed the injured, or simply tried to remain present alongside those who were there. The gestures were different, as were the rhythms, yet everyone shared the same horizon and the same urgency. For a time, the usual hierarchies seemed suspended: no more fixed roles, no more clearly defined social categories, but rather a provisional community confronted with something greater than itself. And yet each human being remained irreducibly singular: with their own memory, history, identity, and way of acting.

Can theatre, this secular ritual, teach us something about this way of being together? If so, does the tragic chorus not designate precisely this discordant harmony – to borrow the expression of the philosopher Sophie Klimis – capable of allowing the individual and the collective to exist together? Over the course of these few days, we will seek this common space where differences are not erased but respond to one another. The work will draw on physical actions, voice, rhythm and collective composition – not in order to produce a form or a result, but to approach a state of openness and availability. For, as Plato reminds us in his final dialogue: “One who has not taken part in a chorus has not been educated.”

Dates

From October 5 to 10, 2026
UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles
43 Boulevard du Jardin Botanique
B-1000 Brussels

Workshop reserved for students
of UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles.
Limited to 15 participants

Information and registration :
sophie.klimis@uclouvain.be