Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

 

Editorial Board

 

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John J. Schranz One of the founders of Maltese auto-didactic group theatre in the 1960's, John Schranz is committed to group research theatre and performer pedagogy.This commitment was informed and confirmed by encounters with some of the top researchers in contemporary theatre-making, beginning with a 1980 Salzburg Seminar encounter with Eugenio Barba which led to a long relationship with Barba and his work. Schranz’s thesis on Theatre Pedagogy and Actor Dramaturgy, submitted to the University of Bologna, proposed the Actor as an ideal locus where Research Theatre and Neuroscience could collaborate to investigate the human brain’s learning qualities.The proposal resulted in such an interdisciplinary research programme (xHCA - Questioning HUMAN CREATIVITY AS ACTING) being set up at the University of Malta, where Schranz currently lectures.The xHCA programme, launched in February 1995 with the late Ingemar Lindh then as its Director, resulted in a close collaboration between Schranz and Lindh, until Lindh’s death in 1997. In 1993 Schranz reconstituted his former group, Teatru tal-Bniedem (Theatre of Man), to set up Groups for Human Encounter – a nucleus of three groups (then operating in Malta, Bologna and Edinburgh) researching into performer training and interdisciplinary possibilities of the creative act.In March 1996 Groups for Human Encounter was invited by Jerzy Grotowski for a three-day encounter at the Grotowski Workcentre, in Pontedera, in the course of which Groups presented their then current performance, Inkontri Possibbli.Groups have performed and run workshops and seminars in various European countries, including Italy, UK, Germany, Estonia, Latvia.