26th Annual
La MaMa Umbria International Symposium for Directors
During the two 10-day sessions, directors will take workshops with distinguished, internationally renowned directors, visit Spoleto and other Umbrian cultural sites.
WORKSHOPS: A training program for professional directors, choreographers and theatre-makers. Internationally renowned theatre artists conduct workshops and lecture/demonstrations.
Participants will be exposed to a variety of theatrical perspectives during the Symposium, from instructors who will expand their sense of what is possible in the theatre. Directors attending the Symposium see how prominent artists on the international scene create their unique productions. The workshops are participatory, and it is expected that all attendees will engage actively in the processes of the various teaching artists.
EXCURSIONS: While most of the time will be spent in workshops at La MaMa Umbria, at least one day has been set aside for excursions to nearby cities. We will attend at least one performance event at a local arts festival. There may also be opportunities to see additional performances on an ad hoc basis. The group will visit nearby towns such as Perugia, Umbria’s capital, Deruta, famous for ceramics painted by hand or Assisi, to see the famous Cathedral of St. Francis, Orvieto, etc. In addition, we may participate in other cultural events such as an Italian tradition, a sagra, or community celebration of the specialties produced by small Umbrian villages (such as truffles, olive oil and wine.)
SHARING YOUR PROCESS: In addition to our internationally renowned guest teaching artists, there will be an opportunity for you and your colleagues to share exercises and techniques with each other in late night sessions. You may propose a special workshop to offer in one of the late (after dinner) sessions. Use the space on the registration form to describe what you would share. Not all proposals will be accepted based on time and space availability. [Whether you choose to present something or not, will not be a factor into whether your application is accepted.]
SESSION ONE
July 16-25
Physical Theatre Perspectives with Stefanie Batten Bland
This workshop examines our ability to tell stories in experimental movement, text, and proximity/travel based scenarios. This genre-blending workshop explores devising and directorial skills necessary for moving, acting, sound, and text to defend abstract and linear narration. The workshop will address the scaling of kinesthetic awareness in immersive theatre settings. The week’s scenic devising in multiple spaces, will be shown at the end of the week.
The Art of Curiosity with Liesl Tommy
A rigorous exploration of the director’s process, from the page to the stage. Looking at process through both new works and reframing classics, exercises will be structured around the questions: How deep is the artist going? How dangerous is their work every step of the way? Are we making space for the magic of imagination to lead?
Seminar with Simon McBurney
SESSION TWO
July 27 – August 6
The Power of Puppets with Dan Hurlin
After looking first at a variety of types of puppets (marionette, Bunraku style, shadow, etc.) we’ll spend time learning “how to use a puppet,” in the sense of manipulating them, making them work. Simultaneously, we’ll also look at how to use puppetry to serve a narrative and the dramaturgical requirements of a particular performance. I think of puppetry as not so much an art form that stands alone, by itself, like sculpture or dance. But rather as a medium to be used to convey ideas. When does a puppet work in a performance, and when does it not? What are a puppet’s limitations and how can we capitalize on their strengths?
Spatial Design and Narrative with Wesley Ruzibiza
This workshop is designed to ignite creativity by constructing new narratives from the ground up. Participants will explore how physical spaces and elements can inspire storytelling, regardless of their background in dance or movement arts. By integrating spatial design with narrative development, this workshop offers a fresh perspective on storytelling. It highlights the potential of physical space as both a canvas and a catalyst for creative expression and story design that resonate far beyond our personal experience. Participants will leave with a deeper understanding of how to harness their Space to create meaningful, transformative stories.
Seminar with Milo Rau
BIOS
Stefanie Batten Bland (USA)
Stefanie Batten Bland, a global story teller and 2023 Dance Magazine Cover Artist. She is a captivating figure straddling the artistic scenes of NYC and France. Born to a jazz composer father and a writer mother, she was raised in SoHo when it was led by artists. Batten Bland’s work profoundly explores contemporary and historical cultural symbolism, cultural identifiers, and their influence on our global human relationships.
SBB creates immersive worlds that answer the quest for belonging. As the Artistic Director for Company SBB, Creative Casting & Movement Director for Life & Trust, Performance-Identity liaison for Sleep No More, and the Artistic Director of the inaugural 2024 immersive theatre summer intensive CONCRETE, she is constantly pushing the boundaries of interactive art. SBB’s work has been recently presented at BAM Next Wave, Spoleto Festival in Italy, Lincoln Center, and Bates Dance Festival, and she has recently received Creative Capital, Dance Advancement Fund, NYSCA, and NEFA grants—she is an assistant professor at Montclair State University. IG: @sbb_land
Links:
companysbb.org
2025 Reel
KOLONIAL
Liesl Tommy (South Africa/USA)
Liesl Tommy is the Tony®-nominated director of Eclipsed. Her previous directing credits include the world premieres of Party People by Universes (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), The White Man – A Complex Declaration of Love by Joan Rang (DanskDansk Theatre, Denmark), Peggy Picket Sees the Face of God by Roland Schimmelpfennig (Luminato Festival/Canadian Stage), Eclipsed by Danai Gurira (Yale Reperatory Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, and McCarter Theatre), The Good Negro by Tracey Scott Wilson (The Public Theater/NYSF and Dallas Theater Center), A History of Light by Eisa Davis (Contemporary American Theatre Festival), and Angela’s Mixtape by Eisa Davis (Synchronicity Performance Group, New Georges). Other credits include Hamlet (California Shakespeare Theater), American Buffalo (Baltimore Centerstage), The Piano Lesson (Yale Repertory Theatre), Ruined (Oregon Shakespeare Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, and Berkeley Repertory Theatre), Stick Fly (Contemporary American Theatre Festival), A Christmas Carol (Trinity Repertory Company), and Flight (City Theatre). Her productions have won numerous awards for directing, acting, and design.
She has taught master classes in acting, directing, and new play development internationally and has taught at The Juilliard School, Trinity Rep/Brown University, The Strasberg Institute, and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Ms. Tommy was awarded the NEA/TCG Directors Grant and was an artistic associate at Sundance Theatre Institute working with the Sundance East Africa Project. She is a native of Cape Town, South Africa and a graduate of Newton North High School and Trinity Repertory Conservatory.
Simon McBurney (UK)
Co-founder & Artistic Director, Complicité: Actor, writer and director Simon McBurney is one of the most innovative, mercurial and influential theatre-makers working today. In 1983, he co-founded the company Complicité and since then all his work has been made through a deeply researched and highly collaborative process which fuses a profound belief that all aspects of the theatre should challenge the limits of theatrical form.
In 2024 Mnemonic returned at London’s National Theatre to critical acclaim. Conceived and directed by Simon, its exploration of origins, memory, migration and time remains as strikingly relevant as when it first debuted 25 years ago.
As well as writing and creating original works, Simon has brought great plays and adaptations to the stage, including: The Master and Margarita (2012), Beware of Pity (2015) and most recently, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (2022). He also adapted Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising into a 12-part dramatisation for radio alongside author Robert MacFarlane for BBC World Service in 2022.
Simon’s opera work includes: A Dog’s Heart (2010), The Magic Flute (2012), The Rake’s Progress (2017) and Wozzeck (2020).
The culmination of Simon’s four-year, cross-continental collaboration with choreographer Crystal Pite for Nederlands Dans Theater is set to premiere at Aviva Studios, Manchester this February before embarking on tour. This is the first time Simon has created a work for a dance company exclusively. The works that have premiered at Amare, The Hague and toured so far are: Figures in Extinction [1.0] (2022) and Figures in Extinction [2.0] But then you come to the humans (2024). Figures in Extinction [1.0] was awarded a Zwaan Award for the most impressive dance production at the 2022 Nederlandse Dansdagen.
Dan Hurlin (USA)
Dan Hurlin’s work has been presented at multiple venues both nationally and internationally. He received a 1990 Village Voice OBIE award for his solo adaptation of Nathanael West’s A COOL MILLION, and in 1998, he was nominated for an American Theater Wing Design award for his set design for his music theater piece THE SHOULDER. His suite of puppet pieces EVERYDAY USES FOR SIGHT: Nos. 3 and 7 (2000) earned him a 2001 New York Dance and Performance award (a.k.a. BESSIE), and his piece HIROSHIMA MAIDEN, was given an OBIE award for music by Robert Een, and received a UNIMA-USA Citation of Excellence. Other works include DISFARMER (2009), premiered at St. Ann’s Warehouse and DEMOLISHING EVERYTHING WITH AMAZING SPEED (2016) premiered at Bard Summerscape Festival. He built a large gallery installation called MOTEL which has been seen at 1056 Gallery in the Catskills (2022), La Mama Galleria in New York (2023), and is scheduled for showings in Iowa and at the Flinn Gallery in Greenwich CT.
Most recently he was commissioned by Bådteatret in Copenhagen, DK to develop an adaptation of Thoreau’s WALDEN, and is currently working on a new theater project entitled BISMARCK. Dan has received fellowships in choreography from the NY Foundation for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, fellowships in theater from The Alpert Foundation and USA Artists, and in 2014 he won the Jesse Howard Jr. Rome Prize in visual art. He directed the Puppet lab at St. Ann’s for nine years and until retiring in 2020, was the director of the Graduate Program in Theater at Sarah Lawrence College where he taught theater-making, solo performance, dance composition and puppetry.
Wesley Ruzibiza (Rwanda)
Wesley Ruzibiza is a dancer, actor, choreographer, and director. Raised in the Democratic Republic of Congo, he moved to Rwanda, his country of origin, in 1999. He was studying financial management at the National University of Rwanda when he encountered the world of contemporary arts. While observing a dance workshop, the choreographer surprisingly invited him to join the group. He took off his shoes and since that day never left. It was through a dance performance that he finally fully understood what had happened in his country, Rwanda, in 1994 and how he could tell his own people’s story to the rest of the world. Ruzibiza holds an African Contemporary Dance and Germaine Acogny diploma.
From 2002-2010 he took over the direction of the Dance Department at the University Center of Arts and Drama. Today, he is the Artistic Director of the Amizero Kompagnie that he co-founded in 2005 with the National University of Rwanda UCAD, with which he won multiple international awards. He founded the East African Night of Tolerance international festival (EANT), co-founded the Africa Mashariki Dance network (AMDA), and in 2020 co-founded with his partner Dida Nibagwire, Rwandan actress and producer, the first Rwandan private theater based in Kigali named “L’ESPACE.” He is the co-artistic Director of l’Ecole des Sables in Dakar, an Associate Professor at the Dance and Research Center (CPARC) in Bordeaux, France, and at the Muda Africa Dance School in Tanzania, among others.
Milo Rau (Switzerland)
Milo Rau, born 1977 in Bern, is the Artistic Director of the Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen) | Free Republic of Vienna. Critics call him the “most influential” (Die Zeit), “most interesting” (De Standaard), “most controversial” (La Repubblica), “most scandalous” (New York Times), or “most ambitious” (The Guardian) artist of our time. The director and author has published over 50 plays, films, books, and actions. His theatre productions have been shown at all major international festivals, including the Berlin Theatertreffen, the Festival d’Avignon, the Venice Biennale, the Vienna Festival and the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, and have been touring in over 30 countries worldwide. From 2018 to 2024 Milo Rau was Artistic Director of NTGent (Belgium).
Rau has received many awards, including the 3sat Prize 2017, the Saarbrücken Poetics Lectureship for Drama 2017 and, as the youngest artist after Frank Castorf and Pina Bausch, the renowned ITI Prize of the World Theatre Day in 2016. In 2017, Milo Rau was voted “Acting Director of the Year” in a survey conducted by Deutsche Bühne, in 2018 he received the European Theatre Prize for his life’s work and in 2019 he was the first artist ever to be “Associated Artist” of the “European Association of Theatre and Performance – EASTAP”. In 2019 he received an honorary doctorate from Lund University (Malmö), in 2020 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Ghent University. In 2020 he received the renowned Münster Poetry Lectureship for his complete artistic oeuvre, his plays were voted “Best of the Year” in critics’ surveys in over 10 countries. The film version of “Orestes in Mossul” – followed by a speech by Milo Rau – will open the Dutch Theatre Festival in September 2020, at the same time the book “Why Theatre?” was published, in which Rau asks 100 leading intellectuals and artists from all over the world to answer this question.
La MaMa Umbria Symposium and Retreat FAQ
How is it decided who will be accepted into the Programs?
The applications are considered on the basis of the responses to the questions on your resume and the Application Form: why is this Program appropriate for you and what do you hope to get out of it? Once the Application has been vetted, and approved, the participants will be selected on a first-come, first-served basis. If the Program is filled up, there is a Waiting List you can join.
How does the Waiting List work?
If a Program fills up, we will let you know and put you on the Wait List. If someone drops out, we will go to the next person on the List and offer them that spot. This could happen any time up to a week prior to the start of the Program. If you decide not to wait, please let us know and we will remove your name from the List.
Should I wait until I have been accepted prior to sending in my deposit?
You can wait until you receive an acceptance letter, but we will not reserve your spot until we receive your deposit. If you send your deposit and are not accepted, you will receive a full refund (except for credit card fees.)
What is the Application deadline for the Playwright and Directing programs?
The deadline is May 15th, but the Programs could fill up prior to that date. Please check with us to see if there is still space. We will have a waiting list for those who wish to wait to see if someone who applied decides not to attend. If we receive your Deposit by May 15th and we are not yet full, we will hold your spot.
If I pay the Deposit and find that I cannot attend, willI get a refund?
You will get a full refund if you cancel by May 15th, except for the credit card fee.
When is the Full Payment due?
Full payment is due by June 1st.
If I pay the Full Payment and then I find I cannot come, will I get a Refund?
You will get a Full Refund (except for Credit Card charges) if we have a Waiting List and we can find someone to take your spot. If not, you will get a 50% Refund if you let us know by June 15th. After June 15th, there are no Refunds.
Is there a way to pay where I won’t incur Credit Card charges?
Yes, you can pay by check, made out to La MaMa ETC and mailed to: La MaMa ETC, Umbria Programs, 66 East Fourth Street, New York, NY 10003, USA. There are no additional fees. You can also pay by bank transfer or Zelle. There are no additional fees to us, but your bank may charge you a fee. Speak to our Business Manager to arrange for a bank transfer: [email protected].
Many of our international artists cannot afford to make the trip to Umbria. We offer limited financial assistance to disadvantaged artists from countries that have had little to no representation in our residency programs. It costs approximately $5,000 for the entire trip, which includes admission fee, accommodation, meals, workshops, and international travel for one participant. All donations will help us achieve this goal. In addition, we are continually upgrading our facilities to provide the best possible experience for the attendees. We need funds to cover the cost of maintaining La MaMa Umbria, a 700 year-old structure, while adding modern technology to allow more diverse performance creation.
