Akron theater hosts master from Italy for workshops, performances

Akron-area audiences and performers will enjoy some international arts experiences when renowned theater practitioner Thomas Richards and two members of his team visit Akron from Italy.

Akron's Center for Applied Theatre and Active Culture (CATAC), located at Balch Street Theatre in the West Hill neighborhood, is hosting the international artists for a three-week residency that includes two public workshops and four public performances.

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The events, which will create a diversity of cultures and languages, will start with the workshop "The Potential of Song." It uses Afro-Caribbean and African songs to explore the impact that rhythmic and melodic qualities from certain songs of tradition can have on the performer.

The first workshop running 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday is sold out to participants but observer spots are available. A second session running 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. March 29-31 has participant and observer spots available. Cost is $250 to participate or $100 to observe a three-day session. See www.catac-akron-com/potentialofsong to register.

Akron husband and wife Terence Cranendonk and Debora Totti, professional actors who have organized the international residency at CATAC, said performers of all types can benefit from "The Potential of Song" workshop, which is aimed at helping performers dig deeper into their practice.

Local actors, playwrights and musicians who perform everything from zydeco to Indian raga are taking the workshop, from the Akron and Cleveland areas as well as Detroit. Richards and colleagues Jessica Losilla Hebrail and Hyun Ju Baek will teach.

The Akron residency is a point of pride because Richards, artistic director of research for the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards for decades until its recent closing, was the great Polish theater innovator's close collaborator for 13 years in Pontedera, Italy, until Grotowski's 1999 death. Grotowski is known as one of the most influential theater directors of the 20th century.

Grotowski's work has strong roots at Akron's CATAC, the theater administrative umbrella founded by retired co-artistic James Slowiak and Jairo Cuesta, who were Grotowski proteges both at the University of California, Irvine, and abroad. Their New World Performance Laboratory, rooted in Grotowski's research and training, ran for nearly 30 years in Akron before Slowiak and Cuesta moved to Paris last summer.

Now, with the Italian residency, CATAC — a new theater collective composed of Gum-Dip Theatre, Chameleon Village Theatre Collective and QuTheatr — is continuing Slowiak and Cuesta's legacy of research and training for actors as well as diverse performances in Akron.

Master teacher Richards is one of the greatest contemporary theater directors carrying on Grotowski's work, said Cranendonk: "This is really the direct transmission of Grotowski's work through Thomas Richards."

He and Totti have special ties to Richards, with Cranendonk having been friends with him since 1981, when they studied theater together at Yale University. Cranendonk also went to Pontedera in 2019 on a research grant from Kent State University on behalf of the Kent State theater program, where he teaches. He did a two-week master class at the Workcenter, where he worked with Richards on some of the songs from his "Potential of Song" workshop.

The song workshop began its development at the Workcenter in Italy 36 years ago. Daily work sessions on its "songs of tradition" are at the core of Richards and his team's research.

"There is a place inside each of us that wants to be seen, wants to reveal itself. Call it essence, our soul or our core. ... What if we could connect, sing, create, meet others from that essence and its need to be revealed? After taking a master course with Thomas Richards and his team, I was brought to confront this deep question as both a performer and human being," Totti said.

Totti started her training with Richards when she and Cranendonk worked with him online during the pandemic last year. Richards and Hebrail have been helping the Akron couple meld each of their own solo plays into one, combining her "Don't You Weep" about Mary Magdalene and his "The Escaped Cock," a story about Jesus by D.H. Lawrence, into the work "Scapegoats," whose theme is a couple's therapy session.

"It was really like being struck by the lightning," Totti said of the online learning experience.

She was so excited about the work, she traveled to Italy last March, where she worked one-on-one with Richards' wife, Cecile Richards, for two weeks. Totti then stayed another week in Tuscany to assist Cecile Richards in teaching theater artists from other countries.

Totti cited the great Russian director Konstantin Stanislavski, who believed that every six years, an actor should go back to school.

"I think it's important to understand that for everyone, every so often, you need to confront yourself with a new teacher and always getting a little bit higher with your craft and push your limits," Totti said.

Cranendonk came to Akron to work with NWPL when it formed in 1992, remaining with the company until 1999. He teaches at Kent State and the University of Akron. Totti, who hails from Italy, was an NWPL company member for 23 years until last summer, when Slowiak and Cuesta retired to France.

"This is why also it was a shock, you know, when you lose your teachers, and it was a family and it was something very deep," said Totti, who mourned the loss of NWPL in Akron after working with the company for decades.

Now, former NWPL company members have been meeting on Fridays to talk about forming a new theater group under the CATC umbrella.

"This speaks to why this [residency] is an important event for Akron. Because we have lost Jim [Slowiak] and Jairo [Cuesta], ... we've lost the presence of their work. This kind of high-quality, precision, experimental, research-based theater work has been gone from Akron for the past year now," Cranendonk said.

As part of the residency from Italy, the public also can enjoy performances of "Han!" at 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, March 25-26, and April 1-2 at Balch Street Theatre, 220 S. Balch St. Cost is $15. See www.catac-akron.com/han.

In the one-woman show, South Korean actress Baek tells the story of a young woman's voyage between past and present as she tries to bridge a schism she sees within herself and the Korean society around her. Directed by Richards, the show is in Korean with English subtitles.

"This production that they'll be bringing in, this performance of 'Han!,' is really of a level of extraordinary precision and artistry," said Crandendonk, who saw an early version of the show in Italy. "This is something that the Akron community is gonna remember for years and years to come."

Arts and restaurant writer Kerry Clawson may be reached at 330-996-3527 or kclawson@thebeaconjournal.com.

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This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Akron CATAC theater carries on training legacy with artists from Italy