13th Summer School Of Modern Mime 3-8 August 2026 - Poland.

Bartłomiej Ostapczuk & Feliepe Velez Martinez

From 2008 to 2019, the Summer School of Modern Mime was held annually at Teatr Na Woli in Warsaw. Initiated by Gregg Goldston and Bartłomiej Ostapczuk, this intensive course in theatre beyond words, led by an international faculty of artists and teachers, quickly became a recognized event and one of the most intensive and comprehensive programs of its kind in Europe. Each year, it gathered several dozen participants from around the world, who came to Warsaw to develop their acting, teaching, and creative skills.

After the closure of the theatre and a five-year forced break, we return with our idea, our program, and new energy. This year, we also invite participants to a new location in Poland, which will provide the best possible conditions for creative work.

Idea

The idea of our program is to create a space in which participants can explore the modern art of mime and the broader field of non-verbal creativity in a comprehensive way. We do not focus on copying the style of a single artist, school, or tradition. On the contrary, our aim is to gather and organize the most important elements developed by key creators of modern mime, physical theatre, and theatre of form, and to present them as a coherent and clearly structured program of work.

A special place in the workshops is given to the meeting of two complementary ideas: the actor-object and the animated form. We treat them as two important areas of contemporary non-verbal art. On the one hand, we work with the actor who is able to consciously transform their body, presence, and stage energy, becoming a carrier of meanings, images, and rhythms. On the other hand, we explore the object, form, matter, and space as elements that can be animated through the actor's action, gaining dramaturgy, character, and their own scenic presence.

The foundation of the classes is a set of concrete movement, acting, compositional, and animation structures. Through them, participants can first understand individual tools separately, and then combine them according to their own sensitivity, imagination, and direction of artistic development. Work with the body, object, and form does not function here as separate areas. These elements interpenetrate and create a fuller stage language.

Our work with participants does not end with a single workshop encounter. We treat it as the beginning of a longer creative path. The program is intended to function not only as a cycle of classes, but also as a specific way of thinking about the art of mime: about the body, stage presence, the relationship with the object, composition, imagination, and contact with the audience.

The classes are addressed both to people professionally connected with the stage and to those who already have basic experience in working with the body, movement, physical theatre, mime, dance, or other forms of stage creativity. For professional artists, the program offers an opportunity to deepen their stage language and focus their artistic explorations. For participants with basic experience, it provides solid technical, acting, and compositional tools that allow them to develop conscious stage work. The shared work of people with different levels of experience creates a living environment of exchange, inspiration, and collaboration, which may become a starting point for further artistic projects.

Photos form previous editions of the Summer Intensive

PROGRAM

The workshop program lasts 6 days and is designed as an intensive creative process in which daily technical, acting, compositional, and animation work leads to evening presentations within the Lab Class.

Each day is based on a specific creative assignment. During the morning and afternoon sessions, participants are introduced to the tools necessary to complete it: body techniques, principles of stage action, methods of building character, relationship, rhythm, space, composition, and work with object and form. They then use these tools in short, 2 to 4-minute études presented in the evening during the Lab Class, a creative laboratory session.

Over the course of the week, each assignment gradually develops from the previous one. The program guides participants from fundamental technical and acting tools toward more complex forms of stage composition. The aim is not only to prepare short presentations, but above all to equip participants with practical knowledge and skills that they will be able to continue developing independently after the workshop.

The workshops create an intensive space for working with the modern art of mime and non-verbal creativity, understood as the art of the conscious body, precise action, relationship with the object, animated form, scenic imagination, and movement composition.

LAB CLASS

The evening Lab Class is the heart of the entire program. The daily schedule is structured around the assignments prepared for the laboratory. The school's program is based on writing structures that allow the artist to create work within each of them, and then combine them according to the needs of a specific idea, theme, or artistic concept.

It is also a time for practically testing the material. Participants present short works created from assignments that explore various stage structures, involving both solo work and group choreography. Some of these tasks develop the actor's skills as the central figure of the stage image, while others focus on the relationship with the object, matter, and animated form.

In this way, each participant can develop not only their individual movement language, but also the ability to build a scenic world in which body, object, and space create a shared dramaturgy.