PROGRAMME

Performance and lecture-demonstration
"Approaches to Movement-Based Theater"

Pal Bernstein is a performer and instructor of theatre concerned with experimental approaches to composition for new performance. He has received both national and international recognition for his highly technical and imaginative methods of building repeatable, yet open-ended performance works. His own plays have been produced extensively in the U.S. and Europe for the past twenty years. Pal Bernstein is an Assistant Professor of Theater at Rutgers University at Camden with a focus on international performance research. In 2008 he will perform a new series of solo works entitled “Upon The Other”, touring to Europe and the United States.

Presentation Overview

Pal Bernstein is interested in a certain flexibility that causes him to continually adjust his work in rehearsal and performance. Pal believes in learning that can demystify the nature of composition for a new theater.

Pal is an experimental actor who feels that theater should see the actor-as-maker. That is why he creates and it has led him to a “way of how” that guides him away from repeating the work that others have already done. Actors do not make the same kinds of work as playwrights and directors, particularly with a little help from the world of dance. Pal's work contains both literal and non-literal movement, text, dance, and a focus on abstracted meaning. He wants to trace the inner landscapes of characters in ways that feel new, while working with a vocabulary that is both set and open to improvisation.