Praxis 2026 – Open Call / Opið kall — IUA’s Performing Arts Symposium — The Actor’s Role
Name — Marie Alisa Garlock
Email — marie@itisinyou.org
Title of Contribution — Devising Collective Theater: The Actor’s Role (Workshop + Sharing)
Description of Content (300 words)
Participants will workshop devised theater methods focused on the actor’s role in enlivening the nexus of arts + social change.
A short, in-process performance (~7 minutes) precedes, with NC, US-based + Stykkisholmúr, Iceland-based theater collaborations with dance, music + visual artists.* Participants are then guided (with examples) to map a possible future piece with a core, locally important social change priority; non-traditional venues (public spaces, open landscapes); and small ensemble partnerships (2-5 actor/s, musician/s, visual artist/s).
Methods build on facilitator/co-performer Marie Garlock’s processes of devising new theater + public ceremony works with performing arts professionals, university students, + community members affected by + pursuing health, land, + environmental justice. (E.g., local/global communities navigating water toxicity, fossil fuel dumping, or displacement from colluding corporate/governance logics).
Engaging with key choices in cultural text adaptation, symbolic, choreographic, + multi-genre design, a small ensemble of actors/collaborators can start to devise a short, original, site-responsive piece. We will explore 4 praxis areas, centering actors' roles:
1) Living Literatures
*Cultural texts—choosing poetry + theatrical play excerpts
*Human presence—actors' role in enlivening literature in real time
2) Symbolic Discernment
*What world does this piece reveal, reclaim, or reimagine? (poem as voiced, play excerpt as staged)
*What objects, settings, or symbolic actions can be paired? (inspired by a social change priority)
3) Physical Theater + Movement
*What power dynamics are engaged—how are actors' staging + gestural choices shaped?
*From whose perspective/s does this scene unfold—where are their bodily centers of gravity?
4) Visual Art +/or Music Evocations
*How are chosen work/s of visual art woven in as material for actors to respond to?
*How are musicians’ soundscapes in dialogue with actors' design + timing choices?
*Creative partners include Ánna (Stykkisholmúr theater + movement club co-host), Sara Gillies (multi-media visual artist, artist-exchange co-host in Stykkisholmúr, June 2026).
Technical Requirements (110 of 200 words)
- A space for 30+ people to move openly (3-5 meters squared per person) in an open-plan workshop venue, stage, or studio
- Basic theatrical lighting (2 white portable light packs, 2 color light packs would be workable, e.g., from a IUA media library if accessible)
- Sound system (for playing a soundscape + tbd 2 mics on stands for performers + live musician depending on venue)
- Projection wall or screen + projector (plug-in / mobile projector; can orient to a fixed screen or wall if it starts at ~1 meter or less from ground or can place a screen / fabric)
- 2 benches, stable chairs or theater cubes if possible
- Artists will bring own additional objects / visual media / instruments
CV / bio (300 words)
Marie Garlock, PhD (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist in theater, dance, + public practice whose work centers the power of our living stories to shape a more just, healthy world.
Marie's work as an actor, performance-based researcher + theater facilitator often unfolds in outside-the-box venues--from the banks of polluted/reclaimed rivers to stages centering mental health justice in community-collaborative musicals; from interactive scenes for equity-focused professional development to site-responsive performances with advanced cancer patients, for medical schools.
Recently, Dr. Garlock has been an actor/deviser with Woodshed Players (NC, US)--in an antifascism re-topia where workers in a corporate high-rise are replacing themselves but re-finding inner-purpose as mysterious underworld objects are sent up through toilets. With Weird Theater Club (2024-on)--Marie joins a professionals' skill-sharing/devising ensemble creating new works on capacities live, non-narrative performance opens to counterbalance/reveal accumulating mirages/displacements caused by AI, such that actors' embodied practices are the trickster flipping the lid on techno-feudalism's assumptions. WTC also makes gallery-based pieces with visual artists, musicians + physical theater vignettes (e.g., with Jenny Eggleston's "POW!" on US war regimes).
In "Committed / Asylum for Saints + Seers" (2023-26, C. Campbell) Marie was a lead actor, dancer + co-designer of poetry, movement, + other-worlds ceremonies for people navigating bipolar, suicidality, loss, institutionalization, + queering of liberatory struggles for bodily dignity.
Across two decades with Global Education grants, Health Centers, NIH, ArtPlaceAmerica, US Commission on Civil Rights + more, Dr. Garlock has performed in theatrical productions + staged arts-based public rituals for culture-making toward health equity, environmental health + land rights, with mentors in East Africa + in her homeplace, the US South.
Through budding partnerships to build global artist-residency exchanges in small towns with environmental lenses on artmaking + social change, Marie is excited to sync with collaborators in Stykkisholmúr, Iceland in anticipation of "Praxis: The Actor's Role."
(*Will gladly send a shorter bio if being printed or linked! If needed, full professional CV here).
*More Info (open text box)
If helpful context for the Praxis team, on getting an applicant from North Carolina, US
In a more personal note, the short(ish) story is…
I am excited for the possibility to learn more deeply with practitioners + collaborators in creative community, via vibrant offerings from LHÍ + Icelandic theater scenes. Responding to the ethic of this gathering space, for the proposed workshop, I hope to build on a multidisciplinary artist's residency with ~3 Icelandic artists + collaborators coming together in Stykkisholmúr in 2026 (several also share their works in Reykjavík). We will focus the above model for actors’ devising work through material + questions discerned in shared artistic process.
Finding Praxis 2026: The Actor’s Role was a delight, based on insights gained through prior years as audience at moving, memorable Reykjavík-based site-specific + experimental performances [with genre-traversing artists at Mengi, at Harpa’s multi-story atrium with dancers + musicians (in a work responding to climate chaos), at RvkFringe with actors' physical theater, comedy + storytelling installations in the old cinema building / Gamla bíó + more]. …Those experiences remain + feel aligned in many ways to multidisciplinary + devising-based theater works made in the arts-focused region I am from (Durham, North Carolina, US).
Longer term (coming ~1-2 years), I am considering application to a Fulbright or another similar avenue—and any future dialogue (e.g., in 2027) with possible LHÍ partners could be informed by 2026 Performing Arts Symposium immersive experiences. Alongside the chance to contemplatively soak up, learn with, + honor the range of what participants will offer in September, it would be a joy to contribute something meaningful / reciprocal to the community via the proposed workshop.
Thank you ~