
Lessons in Circus Dramaturgy
with Roberto Magro
Circus Factory are delighted to welcome international Circus Director Roberto Magro to Cork
for the first time this November as part of an exciting partnership between the National Circus Festival of Ireland, Circ Aire Mallorca and Belfast Community Circus developing the artform of circus and street arts in the Republic of Ireland.
Roberto Magro will offer a three day course on dramaturgy in Circus at Circus Factory 1st-3rd November 2022. Roberto trained at the Académie Fratellini, was the artistic director of Flic Circus School in Torino between 2005 and 2011. He was the artistic director of La Central del Circ 2013-2015 and is the president of The Jury Members of Circus Next and lives in Mallorca.
Dates & Times (12 hours lesson total)
Tuesday 1st November 2pm – 6pm
Wednesday 2nd November 2pm – 6pm
Thursday 3rd November 10am – 2pm
Location
Circus Factory, Centre Park Road, Cork
Price options:
These workshop are kindly supported by Arts Council Ireland allowing for affordable participation fees for high quality international circus workshops in Ireland.
Early Bird Registration available until Sunday 9th October.
3 Day Registration: Full: €70.00 / To avail of 25% Discount (student, no waged, low waged): Use discount code: 25MAGRO!
Regular Registration (after Sunday 9th October)
3 Day Registration: Full: €90.00 / To avail of 25% Discount (student, no waged, low waged): – Use discount code: 25MAGRO!
Single session places will be made available at a rate of €35 per day closer to the course date and if the course places have not filled up
Workshop Description:
Circus Practitioners from all disciplines are welcome to participate in this workshop including aerial arts, Chinese pole, cyr wheel, floor and partner acrobatics, manipulation skills and other diverse circus skills.
This workshop offers a unique opportunity to study the method of Roberto Magro which is based on expanding the performance vocabulary of circus artists through seven vectors (space, tempo, levels, dimensions, rhythm, texture, body lines) to encourage the creativity and innovation of artists working with and without circus props.
The basis of the Circus Artists Education is the flexibility of their vocabulary which is poor in the number of figures compared to theatre and dance. Therefore a contemporary circus can be creative only if it knows how to transform and make its vocabulary as flexible and diverse as possible through specific training. A characteristic of a circus artist is that they speak through metaphors and try to discover the still unexplored parts of the human soul to evoke a new emotion that they convey to us with their technique. With the help of physical fitness and skills, through manipulation, gesture, choreography or movement in short with the help of the whole body the circus artist creates images that the audience is invited to experience, feel and decipher.
ROBERTO MAGRO
Native from Frisanco, Friuli, and an inveterate nomad, he worked as an artist, dramaturge, teacher and circus director in various countries. Trained at the Académie Fratellini, he was part of Les Oiseaux Fous with whom he travelled around Europe before founding his own company Rital Brocante. His high affinity for transmission and reflection led him to become artistic director of Flic Circus School in Torino between 2005 and 2011. He found a balance between his work as a pedagogue and his role as a dramaturge and a director for many artists and companies.
He created Era Sonnet for a clown with the company MagdaClan and he has been part several artistic projects with the Choreographer Roberto Olivan, and other dance companies and with circus company like Eia, Psirc, Forman Brothers, Nos no Bambu, Circo no Ato, En DIciembre and many others. He works also in several community projects from 2009 to 2017 as the director of community performances (including people with mental health difficulties , dancers, and circus artists) in the Deltebre Dance Festival (Deltebre-,Spain). In 2016 he directed the show ”Baldosas Amarillas” with people from the Psychiatric centre “Perre Jauma”, Barcelona. Magro is the instigator of FESTIVAL BROCANTE held every summer since 2007 in his home region, which brings together around 200 established artists as well as young artists freshly graduated from Circus, dance, theatre and music in an approach of encounter and creation with the local people.
He settled in Barcelona in 2013 to take the artistic direction of La Central del Circ for two years. At the end of his term, he continued the road and his work as a creator and a pedagogue. He became the president of The Jury Members of Circus Next, a European platform for circus authors and he started his career as lecture around the world. He regularly teaches in schools and creative centres in Europe and in Latin America; the last 3 years, he staged performances by several European circus schools: Life (Codarts, Rotterdam), Dia (Flic, Turin), Un minuto (ESAC, Brussels), My Name is Wallek (Codarts, Rotterdam), Before the rain (I.N.A.C. Famalicao) 8 Rooms (National Circus Schools of Rio De Janeiro), Elle (Codarts, Rotterdam), Stories (National Circus School of Rio de Janeiro) The Last Dinner (Faktoria,Choreographic Center of Research, Pamplona) In 2018 he create his company and the show ‘Silenzio’ coproduced by the Theatre Mercats de Las Flores in Barcelona.