Magda Tuka

Dr Magda Tuka Polish Performance Artist, Researcher & Teacher

Also: Magdalena Tuka.

Also: Magda Stawman-Tuka.

Magdalena Tuka is a performance maker, researcher, teacher and mentor in contemporary performance.

She is an exponent of experimental and physical theatre, specialising in the work of Polish practitioner Jerzy Grotowski.

Education : She graduated from MA studies at the Theater Academy in Warsaw. She received a Drama Actor diploma from ZASP. For 10 years she worked as an actress and workshop leader in the Warsaw group Studium Teatralne, whose performances were shown in many countries in Europe, Uruguay, Brazil, Russia, Venezuela and Argentina.

After leaving Studium Teatralne, she worked with The Other Way Works, an interactive theater group, staging shows in England. She collaborated with Black Tonic and Bojan Jablanovec from Via Negativa (Slovenia), as well as the body/mind and Sztuka Nowa foundation.

She is a scholarship holder of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Visegrad Foundation, which resulted in the creation of her last two performances, which are now in the repertoire of Ja Ja Ja Ne Ne Ne - an association founded with Anita Wach in 2013.

● (Sep 2019 - Oct 2022) - Doctor of Philosophy, Drama: Practice as Research - University of Kent.

● (1999 - 2004) - Master's degree, Theatre - Akademia Teatralna im. Aleksandra Zelwerowicza w Warszawie.

"Rooted in the processes of Jerzy Grotowski's Art as Vehicle period, my practice combines a contemporary performance aesthetic with a strange fascination for Polish Romanticism. I began my career working for ten years full time as an actor in the Warsaw-based Studium Teatralne company of Piotr Borowski, a long-term associate of Grotowski during his late Pontedera phase.

For me, the essence of this formative work was in its physical training. A rigorous investigation into the relationship between the body and space, between precision, improvisation and intuition; the aim, a creative onstage existence, a continual search, on a moment by moment basis, for what and where the performer's attention is.

In a break from this tradition, I undertook what became a series of collaborations over several years as a performer with Bojan Jablanovec's Via Negativa theatre company in Ljubljana. In my opinion, the importance of the VN approach is its focus on communicating to the audience via an "essential" creative message devised from the personal experience of the performers.

On these foundations, I began initiating projects. In 2012, with an intuitive trust in the creativity of opposites, I incorporated the organisation Ja Ja Ja Ne Ne Ne and devised a succession of shows with dancer Anita Wach, in collaboration with sound designer Opaean.

My process of creative thinking often starts from the vision of a character who represents a complex of ideas, problems, irresolvable circumstances.

I am interested in exploring situations where the body is thrown into heightened modes of operation determined by self-imposed conditions. Treated rather instrumentally. In service of ideas, meanings. Often naked, exposed, trapped in uncomfortable circumstances, but not humiliated.

And no religionism.

Work has been variously supported through a succession of grants, scholarships, residencies, co-productions and festival selections, presented in theatre, gallery, cinema, church, and online; in Poland, UK, Netherlands, Denmark, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, USA and Germany."

● Theatre teacher - East 15 Acting School - (Sep 2021 - Present)

● Head of Skills - Fourth Monkey Actor Training Company - (Sep 2022 - Present)

● Director (in London/Warsaw) - (Jan 2008 - Present)

"On leaving Studium Teatralne, my path has led me via the radically different rehearsal methods of Ljubljana's Via Negativa to an ongoing series of initiatives made in collaboration with UK sound designer Opaean."

● Producer Horsedonkey Production Company - (Feb 2020 - Present)

"As an organiser of 'The Horsedonkey Club', I was jointly responsible in late 2021 for programming a season of live performance and sound work at vFd in London. Aside from helping raise the project's funding from Arts Council England and being the invited artists' main point of contact, I was both a host and regular performer at the events, as well as being in charge of the club's social media presence which included the coordination of each evening's documentation."

● Teacher University of Essex - (Oct 2021 - Present)

"Teaching BA degree in Acting and Physical Theatre."

● Teacher Falmouth University - (Sep 2010 - Present)

"Teaching BA (Hons) Acting / MA Collaborative Theatre / CertHE Acting and Theatre Making | 'Grotowski Technique' (also leading classes in Ashtanga Yoga)."

● Performer Tuka Wach - (Aug 2013 - Present)

"An ongoing collaboration with dancer Anita Wach

Process-based and predominantly live, Tuka Wach's experiments in contemporary performance are not strictly dance, theatre or dance theatre, their strategies for devising and presentation are resought each project anew in response to the material".

Performing Arts - Improvisation - Theatre - Physical Theatre - Teaching - Research - Movement Direction - Devising.

● Theater Teacher · Drama Teacher · Performing Artist · Theater Instructor · Professor of Theater.

● Artistic Director at Tuka Wach.

● Works at Horsedonkey.

● Studied at Akademia Teatralna im. Aleksandra Zelwerowicza.

● Went to University of Kent.

● Went to Dobiszewski.

"Expertise : In 2023 I completed my PhD Drama by Practice as Research under the supervision of Professor Paul Allain at the University of Kent. ‘Towards a Burning Method: how might the conmporary performer build on the legacy of Grotowski’s Total Act?’ My interest in the art of theatre with an emphasis on the devising goes back to as far as my teenage years. In my early twenties, while in the process of graduating from my MA [Early work of Bertold Brecht] I joined Studium Teatralne theatre company in Warsaw whose director was Piotr Borowski, a long-term collaborator of Jerzy Grotowski. Thus for ten years, I worked on physical training that came directly from the Grotowski lineage.

Teaching : I teach over 20 years now. I believe that training has to be constantly revised in order to remain alive and relevant to the dialogue with students. In teaching I always try to keep in mind the individuality of each student, their particular unique way of expressing themselves. My objective is always to create safe conditions for conscious creative work without the deadening effects of self-censorship or judgement.

I pay special attention to the devising work, to understanding the living organism that is each group, to the particular mechanisms that each one follows. One of the biggest values for me in teaching is the symbiotic nature of the process by which, when my teaching is going well, I am always learning too. It is worth noting here that my teaching was profoundly touched by a short but very strong connection I made with one of the pioneers of contact improvisation, Lisa Nelson, and her work in spontaneous composition and performance called Tuning Scores.

As a freelance artist myself, I am more than aware of the difficulties of this profession, but the solid foundation of training that I received in my early years is something that has stood me in good stead throughout my career to keep going through bad times and good, experiential knowledge that I feel I now have to pass on to students.

In addition to working as a performer, I am active in the field of producing and hosting other artists. I am a co-producer at Horsedonkey, a production company for hybrid live work supporting the creation, hosting, and promotion of contemporary performance, e.g. through my initiative 'The Horsedonkey Club', as first mounted at the London incubator of queer arts, vFd:

https://horsedonkey.org

In my creative work I draw lots of inspiration from visual arts and sound. To see some examples of my work please visit my website: https://magdatuka.com."