Workshop will explore ‘spiritually grounded theater’
For 13 years, Vieve Radha Price has been developing the concept of Insight Artistry, a method to stimulate creativity and “activate and inspire humanity through art,” according to its website.
With help from Hit House Creative, Price’s TÉA Artistry is welcoming observers to an experiential workshop at the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon on Sunday (June 28).
The event had been scheduled for LitFest weekend earlier this month but conflicted with the No Kings demonstration. The troupe is inclusive rather than radical, but producer and moderator Shane Killoran wanted to play it safe.
Killoran met Price and her husband Jaime about 15 years ago and helped them develop a performance about the founding of the Peace Corps in the 1960s set against a backdrop of civil unrest in the Dominican Republic.
The process “is like a method actor, where you arrive at the space in the present and aware,” says Killoran. “We’re looking through a lens of unity, healing, community and listening to each other.”
Four facilitators — including Price and her co-director at TÉA Artistry, Chuk Obasi — will converge on the Howland Center. The approach can help artists stuck in a rut, says Price, but it’s also “spiritually grounded theater designed to cultivate communities of self- and socially aware artists.”
TEA once stood for theater, engagement and action, but the focus now is Insight Artistry, a process based on the teaching of Canadian philosopher Bernard Longerman. Its three stages include critically discovering, creatively exploring and aesthetically expressing, which require mindfulness but letting go.
“We’re being introspective and use our own data in the moment to explore issues people are having,” said Price. “There’s no stage — it’s an interactive workshop and exercise in creativity.”
Insight Artistry’s first step involves “insight conversations” that explore the way participants are thinking, feeling and acting in the moment. Next comes insight design labs, “the structured process TÉA uses to research, devise and stage its theatrical performance pieces,” per the website. At the end, a performance piece provides “a dramatic opportunity for change.”
The event fits with LitFest because “it’s a look into how we create our scripts, and after 90 minutes, we’ll have done some poetry and make the link of drama as literature,” Price says.
Killoran has watched the insight process grow from the beginning but has yet to see the latest iteration. “It’s learning how to be responsible and accountable as artists through that process of what insight invites,” she says. “The method keeps evolving.”
The Howland Cultural Center is located at 477 Main St. in Beacon. Tickets for the workshop, which begins at 1:30 p.m., are $20 at beaconlitfest.org/events.
