Creating from Clean Break's archives, with Paula Varjack
Led by multimedia performance artist and facilitator for Clean Break, Paula Varjack, this workshop will explore how to creatively engage with Clean Break's archives to make new performance material. Responding to archival objects from the 'I am a theatre': 40 Years of Clean Break exhibition, the workshop will share elements of Paula's facilitation process with Clean Break Members, to create individual responses inspired by the objects. Participants will be invited to devise and share their own responses in the workshop.
Paula Varjack is a theatre-maker, video artist, writer, and performer. Her body of work includes performance, film, monologue, installation, and participation. She makes work as a way of amplifying marginalised stories and voices, engaging in a way that both provokes thought and entertains. Having begun her practice as a solo artist, her work has become increasingly collaborative, shaped by the artists who inspire and collaborate with her. Her recent work with Clean Break includes a collaboration with Cardboard Citizens, All The Lights Are On, and facilitating Members to creatively respond to Clean Break's archive.
She is a Barbican Open Lab Artist, London Pleasance Associate artist and has had work commissioned by Barbican, Battersea Arts Centre, Camden People’s Theatre, and Attenborough Centre for the Arts amongst others. Born in Washington D.C. to a Ghanaian mother and a British father, she considers East London to be “home”.
Who is this workshop for?
This insight into Clean Break's archive and facilitation practice is for theatre artists, group work practitioners and/or applied theatre students, who would like to engage creatively with objects presented in the exhibition and learn more about applying devised theatre practices in heritage and community settings.
This event is part of the digital events programme for Clean Break's exhibition, ‘I am a theatre’: 40 years of Clean Break Theatre Company, celebrating four decades of creating ground-breaking theatre on women’s experience of the criminal justice system. The live exhibition takes place at Swiss Cottage Gallery from 24 June - 31 July 2021.
The exhibition and events are made possible by support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts and Humanities Research Council. This funding was received to celebrate Clean Break's 40th anniversary year, to document our heritage by: establishing a publicly accessible archive of our work at the Bishopsgate Institute; conducting oral history interviews; creating a digital timeline and exhibitions to share its story.
