Song of the Goat Theatre/
TEATR PIEŚŃ KOZŁA
Song of the Goat Theatre is a multi-award winning company recognized as one of Europe’s most innovative training-based theatre companies
A distinctive element of the company’s practice and training is the need and search for connection and openness as the root of authentic experience. The work always seeks to integrate movement, voice, song and text, creating a performance that has an inherent musicality and connects with the audience on a sensory level. Current works include Songs of Lear and Return to the Voice. In addition to their training and performance programs, the company also oversees the BRAVE Festival in Wroclaw, Poland, an annual festival celebrating global ethnographic cultural and performance practices. (www.piesnkozla.pl)
Grzegorz Bral
A theatre director, who developed his own acting method called the Bral Acting Method, Grzegorz is President of Song of the Goat Association and co-founder and artistic director of Song of the Goat Theatre. He also serves as artistic director of Brave Festival - Against Cultural Exile, Brave Kids and Brave Together; director of the project “Let’s plant a forest”; president of Bral Foundation. Since the 1990s, he has been working for the charity organization ROKPA International. In 2013, he established his own theatre school in London - Bral School of Acting.
Grzegorz Bral has received numerous awards for his outstanding artistic activities. His awards list includes the Honorary Order of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, SCOTSMAN FRINGE FIRST 2004 and HERALD ANGEL 2004 (for the play entitled Chronicles - a lamentation). In 2009, his theatre team was nominated for the XII European Theatre Prize in New Theatrical Realities category. During Fringe Festival 2012 in Edinburgh, the play Songs of Lear directed by Grzegorz Bral received Fringe First, the oldest and most prestigious award of the festival.
SONG OF THE GOAT THEATRE, under the direction of Grzegorz Bral, is a theater company whose international acclaim stems from its ongoing training and innovation of its own practice. Their work features rigorous and visceral physical staging, haunting vocal and instrumental scores, and interpretations and deconstructions of classic texts.
Performances are deeply rooted in archaic and modern musicality that speaks to viewers with its sensuality. Current repertoire includes Songs of Lear, Anty-Gone, Hamlet –A Commentary, and their newest works, Apocrypha, Titus Andronicus, and The Warrior(based on The Trojan Women).
Songs of Lear
Songs of Lear had its international premiere during the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh in August 2012, where it received three prestigious awards: Scotsman Fringe First, Herald Archangel, and Musical Theatre Matters Special Award. Songs of Lear was also enlisted on the very top of The List, winning the first place in the ranking of all theatre performances during the festival.
Songs of Lear is a non-linear dramatic music event and is performed as a choral song cycle, revealing the subtle energies and rhythms that govern Shakespeare’s tragedy. The ensemble members have chosen crucial scenes from King Lear to weave a story out of gestures, words and music. Each song is a starting point for another ‘dramatic poem.’ Here the music becomes character, relationships and events. This intimate and emotionally compelling hybrid event will resonate with classical music, world music and theater lovers alike.
Creative Team
Grzegorz Bral, Director
Jean-Claude Acquaviva & Maciej Richly, Composers
Kasper Kuszewski, Preparation of Songs
Waldemar Trzaska, Sound Designer
Julianna Bloodgood, Performer
Monika Dryl, Performer
Rafal Habel, Performer
Henry McGrath, Performer
Ana Maria Almargo, Performer
Kevin Chan, Performer
Gabriel Gawin, Sound Designer
Jenny Kaatz, Performer
Kacper Kuszewski, Performer
Lukas Wojcik, Performer
Maciej Rychly, Musician
Performance History
September 15-18 at Chicago Shakespeare Theater - Buy Tickets
September 23 and 24 at The Clarice Smith Center at the University of Maryland
September 28-October 1 at BAM 2016 Next Wave Festival
Tour Locations Announcement Coming Soon
Available for Fall 2016 US Tour Bookings, masterclasses and workshops.
Hamlet,
A Commentary
HAMLET, A COMMENTARY is a theatrical experiment and a vibrant reflection of Shakespeare’s drama. It is two months before the proper play’s plot—on the night when the old king was murdered. The night turns into a Shakespearean vigil, similar to pagan festivals in honor of the spirits of the dead. The play features a mix of Shakespeare’s characters and original voices created specifically for this original work. Using polyphonic song structure, the text is given a melody and 14 actors interpret the characters, events and emotions through sounds.
Island
ISLAND is a mediation told in the form of twelve polyphonic musical poems with dance. In this interpretation, Shakespeare’s THE TEMPEST exists only in the imagination of a demented Prospero who, chained in his prison, is a man alone with his desires, obsessions and longings. Prospero's imagination is poetic and magnetic, his narrative illogical, suggestive, and not easily described. He creates all the characters that surround him; he is all of them at once. An ensemble of 19 performers reveal the interior of the mad mind of a lonely old man. ISLAND is directed by Grzegorz Bral, with choreography by Iván Pérez and text by Alicja Bral. Music composed and arranged by Jean Claude Acquaviva and Maciej Rychły.
“Song of the Goat Theatre are an extraordinary company, and masters of their craft. Going beyond music that is a joy to listen to, this is a collection of highly evocative and emotionally stirring works and a magical piece of theatre.”
— Fringe Guru
