Projects

Workshops from two hour to two week in duration are available. Each workshop is shaped to the needs, objectives, and interest of the given group and are conducted (according to availability) by Litooma collective members. Workshops are practical in their orientation. Key to each workshop will be community building and expression through performance.

Workshops are adaptable to a variety of groups regardless of previous experience. Past workshop have included those with performance experience, from novice to advanced, and those with no performance experience. Like the Performance Residency the emphasis of a workshop will adjust to need.

Emphasis of a workshop may include: Conflict Resolution Dealing With a Social or Cultural Trauma Team Building Breaking Down Personal Barriers With Others Imagination and Creativity Development Realizing The Full Potential of the Self and the Community Working Collaboratively Community Identity Making a New Story for the Community Community Effectiveness Emphasis for advanced performance training workshops may include: Performing Place Creating Indigenous Performance Intercultural Creativity Ritual Performance Shamanistic Performance Performance as a Therapeutic Tool The Technology of Self, Community, and Performance Story as a Vehicle of Change and Growth

To address the subtle inter-tribal antagonisms, some performers were deliberately assigned the tribal dance of a traditional rival to perform. Initially this caused some grumbling and some insensitive 'correcting' by those from whose tribe was being danced, eventually however a sense of ensemble sharing and teaching evolved. I this instance, as in others, I took advantage of my being an outsider by asking them to do things no insider could nor would even think of asking. By dancing the dances of another tribe, boundaries were broken and performers expanded their performance vocabulary while gaining insight and appreciation for other tribal ways. Dance sharing established a paradigm and attitude that would guide the workshop and performance process: traditional performance was a language accessible to all and not something limited to tribal identity. This porous passing back-and-forth between tribal cultures and performers was seen as a source of strength. When Nyambe gave the each individual tribal its identity, the chosen would perform that tribe's distinct dance. Fellow performers would clap, drum, and sing in accompaniment--often times evoking the audience to do likewise. The performance of the tribes also brought dances to parts of the country that otherwise had no direct experience with the tribe it represented. The disparate tribal dances, given to the tribes in performance by a single creator figure, resonated with political, cultural, and cosmological allegory. Seeing the dances of sometimes rival tribes being sung and danced along side of one another symbolically demonstrated to our audience that the wealth of traditional Zambian culture was a co-habitating whole rather than separate entities. from In Zambia, Performing the Spirits TheatreForum No. 8 Spring 1996

He asks them to search in themselves, their experiences and memories and asks them to tell him about them. The appropriate revelations are then used where necessary being worked into the structure of the play...Judging by what we were shown it is not very difficult to make him an equal with a master. The Echo Yakutsk, Russia

For further information about Litooma and its programs contact: LITOOMA PO Box 83498 Fairbanks, Alaska 99709 USA Telephone/Fax: 907/474.8721 email: fftpr@aurora.alaska.edu