Paul Dwyer 公開講座暨大師班Pants Theatre Production
Dr. Paul Dwyer is one of Australia’s leading practitioners of documentary, verbatim and other forms of ‘non-fiction theatre’. Since 2004, he has worked as a writer, dramaturg, performer and director on over a dozen works, produced or presented by organisations such as Sydney Opera House, Arts Centre Melbourne, Brisbane Festival, Sydney Festival, and the Origins Festival ( London Southbank ). Paul is also a Senior Lecturer and Chair of the Discipline of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Sydney. He will lead a public seminar and workshop on documentary theatre, with his award-winning performance lecture The Bougainville Photoplay Project as the finale of his visit.
1 ) Public Seminar
Truth and ‘Truth Effects’ in Documentary Theatre
In this seminar, illustrated with excerpts from video documentation of Paul’s performances and other artists’ productions, Paul emphasizes on the extent to which documentary theatre-makers are using many of the same techniques as writers and directors of fictional performances. Looking closely at a diverse range of performances, Paul will draw out what Janelle Reinelt sees as the critical tension in documentary work between a “realist epistemology” a “phenomenological engagement”.
2 ) Master Class：Staging the Texture of Texts in Documentary Theatre
In these workshop sessions, we will be exploring some of the general principles of creating documentary theatre work while focusing on the specific challenges posed by different types of documentary source material: ( i ) autobiographical stories, ( ii ) interviews, and ( iii ) ‘found’ archival materials. We will look at how to generate, edit and shape such materials into a performance text. There is just as much information to be found in the ‘texture’ of the source materials as there is in their ideational content. Indeed, the key to making beautiful, compelling, transformative documentary theatre is often to play with these textures until a form imposes itself on the social content of the work, rather than trying to bend the content too soon into a neatly organised argument.
Class Detail ( total 3 sessions ):
1st session: Sheung Wan Civic Centre (Exhibition hall)
2023.09.27｜7:30PM ~ 10:30PM
2nd session: Sheung Wan Civic Centre (Exhibition hall)
2023.09.28｜7:30PM ~ 10:30PM
3rd session: Wu Wu Theatre Hub*
2023.09.30｜2:00PM ~ 5:00PM
- There is a performance lecture (8:00PM-9:30PM) The Bougainville Photoplay Project, created and performed by Paul Dwyer at evening of 3rd class. Workshop participants who attend all 3 sessions can attend the performance lecture. (Quotas were reserved for workshop participants. No additional registration is needed.)
3 ) Performance Lecture: The Bougainville Photoplay Project^
^ Quota is full, no walk-in is allowed. Thank you for your support!
In this intimate “performance lecture”, Paul Dwyer retraces the journeys made by his father, Dr Allan Dwyer, to the region of Bougainville ( Papua New Guinea ) during the 1960s. Dr Dwyer ( Senior ) was at this time a world-renowned orthopaedic surgeon: the operations he performed in Bougainville helped dozens of children to recover from the crippling effects of polio. These personal stories, however, soon become entangled with the larger narrative of Australia’s colonial involvement in the region: the opening of the giant Panguna copper mine, environmental devastation and Bougainvillean resistance, a war that cost the lives of up to 20,000 people. Since 2004, Paul Dwyer has been making his own journeys to Bougainville, conducting research on the post war reconciliation process and following the impact of those long-forgotten encounters between his father and the Bougainvillean children.
“Pitched somewhere between cosy university tutorial and travelogue slide show, Dr Paul Dwyer's Bougainville Photoplay Project is an illustrated account of restorative justice in action. It is accessible, disarmingly funny and affecting.” Sydney Morning Herald
“Dr Paul Dwyer reinvents theatre.” Crikey
* Duration: 75 Minutes, with post-performance talk.