Working Paper “The Workshop. On the Genesis of a Global Form”

Philippine playwright, director and theatre pedagogue Severino Montano gives instructions to his students at the Arena Theatre, Philippine Normal College, in a workshop, ca. 1955. My current research is tracking Montano’s career paths between the 1930s and 1960s.

There is hardly any context of learning and further education, in which the format of the workshop would not be common. Whether in the private sector, in the arts, in the academia or in theatre: workshops are popular as a format and form of learning in limited time and space. From an intensive preoccupation with the history of workshops in the field of theatre and theatre education, the idea arose to investigate the question of when and how workshops are initiated and to begin to gain a foothold in the training of theatre practitioners. This essay on The Workshop. On the Genesis of a Global Form was written by Christopher Balme and myself. It is also the first issue of a new series of Working Papers produced by our ERC-funded project group Developing Theatre. The project’s blog, http://www.gth.hypotheses.org, will provide information about the series and other working papers in the future.