CPR, the Center for Performance Research in Wales, is facing the struggle inherent in all theater practitioners lives, the sand we build our castles on is perilously close to the ocean. The Center for Performance Research in Wales, a deeply important enclave of theatrical research is in jeopardy of losing its funding! CPR is a model for Artel's [via]Corpora. For over ten years they have been creating international networks, offering some of the foremost worksessions in physical and voice work in theater today, publishing important journals and books (their next two years are almost solely committed to Polish theater and Grotowski). Wales has made itself stand out and seem like a beacon of light to artists who are underappreciated and undervalued in their own countries and now the Welsh government is disregarding this international "status" that it was beginning to develop and going the way of all conservative governments in an economically unfriendly time. In our letter of support we quoted this from Stanislavsky which seems mightily apropos:
The theatre is not a luxury in the life of the people, but part of its bread and butter. It is not something one can quite well do without, but something incontestably necessary for a great people....You can't postpone the art of the thetare for a while, padlock its workshop, and suspend its animation for a time. Art cannot go to sleep and then, when it suits us, wake up again. It can only go to sleep for ever, by dying. Suspend it, and it will perish...returning to life only centuries later, if then. The death of art would be a national catastrophe.
You can view letters of support from around the world here: centreforperformanceresearch.blogspot.com
For direct information: www.thecpr.org.uk/
To view/sign the petition please visit: http://www.gopetition.com
