PARASTUDIO Association

Short story... The Parastudio Association was founded in 2014 by Thomas Liszkai PhD, performer-trainer, stage manager and Maria Punk, drama- and ritual-pedagogical teacher, stage manager. The primary goal is to develop body- and voice-centred ritual sensitivity from an early age to the 'limit of active ability', and finding general, human ‘performing’ skills in the individual work and in a group, thereby to forming an ‘active culture’ in a social and pedagogical environment. The Association also has a cultural, public education, actor pedagogy and art profile. Its scope of work includes taking workshops and trainings (based on a pedagogy recognized as accredited training for children and young people [Forty-hour accredited in-service teacher training course entitled “Ritual pedagogy - opportunities for the development of ritual competence among children aged 4-12”] according to international pedagogical methods and experience gained in workshops); organizations of professional conferences and lectures; presentations and organizations of artistic productions; publications of studies and translations of publications in foreign languages. Since our establishment in 2014, we have organized several workshops together with cultural, public educational and ecclesiastic institutions. During this time we prepared almost 20 work-presentations and lectures, as well as we organized a national professional conference, we published two pedagogical textbooks (Ritual Pedagogy I-II) and two study volumes. Our trainings and the participation in our performances are absolutely open to everyone, regardless of earlier artistic education. From 2021 onwards, as a non-profit organization, our work aimed at the fundamental development of the cultural sensitivity of the participants in the workshops through active participation and joint action, as well as through interaction, to enrich the perception of the spectators and to get to know more precisely and to integrate the universal, local, sacred and profane-traditional symbols characteristic of the customs and traditions into everyday life, resp. communication. Mission statement... During our association work and our trainings we use the pedagogical methods of actors and performers in all ages to test the social and communication sensitivity of the participants, their openness to partner relationships, their ability to use body and voice, and their improvisational and artistic development and shaping factors. Based on the idea of JERZY GROTOWSKI, a Polish theatre director, performer-educator and theatre-anthropologist, we believe that all people have a basic, yet objective artistic [ritual] receptivity and appreciation/creativity. Thus, as a homo ludens universalis sive ritualis, it becomes able to form and live a collective culture of action that transcends social/ethnic/gender and religious boundaries, organically [i.e. pre-cultural], sincere, open and dynamic in its body and voice. Acceptance of existing physic-vocal defects and which simultaneously develops the technique of self-experience [introspectio] and self-transcendence [transgressio]. Grotowski’s universal workshop-concept (called ‘active culture’), developed with the involvement of the paratheatrical, i.e. all those interested in theatre-play action (performer-spectator, i.e. community), has been declared a special cultural value all over the world. Our goal is also to make these common, organic and objective values universal in interactive trainings, such as in ritual pedagogy and paratheatrical/paraliturgical workshops, acting trainings, pedagogical and adult training courses, as well as to make our pedagogical research more widely known in contemporary domestic and international art and education forums.