Polygon

Substance

Polygon maintains stable cooperation with different authors. We have given ourselves the goal of selecting and producing one of the plays recognised in the biannual play competitions worldwide, if suitable, however, we also commission new material from authors and create texts ourselves. We enjoy close cooperation with the international agencies and cultural endowments and fundraisings. In our drama school, every group usually creates an original piece for the end of the spring term.

The Polygon Theatre School is an extension of the professional company based on a mission to offer self-improvement through performing art to children, young people and adults. Rather than aiming to raise future professional actors only, the drama school’s purpose is to cultivate well-rounded and open-minded future members of society. The school includes nurturing a voluntary community.

Study

The Polygon Theatre School welcomes all ages from secondary school up to adults. Come as you are, everyone is welcome here! The drama school teaches mainly the Stanislavskian acting and directing, combined with impro and physical theatre, as well as voice, body awareness and movement training. The school features a training curriculum and faculty – distinguishing it from casual drama clubs. Not everyone has to necessarily become a professional actor, however, through its professional approach rooted in self-improvement, it certainly offers a good basis for a future acting career. The drama school has permanent ties with various practical outputs in the professional field: voiceovers, production projects, public events, engagements in television, radio and film, among others.

Teachers

The drama school faculty members have professional performing art education and many of them hold an academic degree. All teachers are practitioners themselves and are involved in professional creative processes daily. Thus, there is a permanent rotation between teaching and the professional stage: everything experienced live on stage comes across to the drama school, and all discoveries made in the school are applied to professional work.

Contemporary Study

• Tamur Tohver (PhD candidate, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK; awarded to Archimedes (2019) and Fulbright scholarship (2021), the founder of Polygon, is the author of the Zero Zone Praxis methodology, which enables the art of theatre to be ventilated through a more trusting actor-director relationship. It helps to avoid stage fright and performance anxiety, rooted already in the rehearsal process and, therefore, achieve more profound quality in our performing arts by applying a higher consciousness state.
• Polygon is actively involved theatre research and is a member of International Platform for Performers Training (IPPT), Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA) and International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR).

Since its founding in 2008, Polygon has given performances to audiences across the world, in places like Tallinn, San Francisco, Auroville, Brussels, Bangalore, Yerevan, Helsinki, Bursa, and many other locations. Many recognised domestic and international creative practitioners participate in the Polygon team (see Productions).

The economic functioning of Polygon relies wholly on grants from national, international and local foundations, tuition fees and ticket revenue, as well as special projects and individual contributions. In many cases, it is Polygon’s volunteer community that has enabled such a centre for theatre to exist.

The Polygon Theatre Company is a proponent and vigorous spreader of ‘immediate theatre’ (The Empty Space, Brook, 1968) with a contemporary and sparing worldview, carrying lucid thought and powerful emotion with using few resources and material means. Polygon is green in both thought and action. Important concepts in Polygon’s daily practical activities are respect, honesty, dedication, caring for all living things, and re-use. All stage design, costume and prop items, essentially all productions, are made without wasting any resource, both material and mental.

Polygon Theatre

narrates a local or global event on its stage in contemporary and classic form comprehensible to every person, intentionally expanding their worldview, enlightens those participating in the public forum of thought, encourages free discourse, promotes creativity and endeavour, unites communities and generations, cultivates tolerance and understanding, treasures and defends ethical base values, maintaining high artistic quality in its socially pointed yet unifying work. The theatre is guided in its activities by the acknowledgement that to be able to address and coalesce different layers of society, one must speak a language they can understand. The vision of Polygon Theatre is realised through the expansion and merging of different artistic tenors.

Immediate and honest. Immediate theatre is rich in message. In Polygon’s interpretation, it is a human that carries the message and creates an atmosphere accordingly. Simple is honest, and a clear message needs no conspicuous decoration. We don’t make art for art’s sake but tell what’s in our hearts. Polygon Theatre is and will remain personal. Human to human, not actor to audience, so duality (separation) disappears.

Professionalism relies on knowledge, skill and experience. At Polygon, the art of theatre is born through the freshest knowledge based on the daily practice of world theatre education and traditions. This encompasses planning our content, finding and developing ideas, creating stage productions and giving live performances. Including creative individuals in our team, the company makes decisions based on their specific talent, education, gained and constantly developing skills, self-criticism and ethics. Polygon Theatre is poly-lingual, international and holds a universally humane view, seeking to include all social groups and do so equitably, without discriminating against anyone based on their views, race or gender.

The empty space is not empty – it’s never the case that there’s nothing or nobody there. Materially speaking Polygon doesn’t have the burden of a sizeable organisation to carry along, it partly recreates itself anew each time, thus encompassing and spreading the concept of simplicity and the worldview of reuse. Efficacy means the constant bettering of its operation, to spare expenses and free up resources for the creation of new and compelling productions. Polygon Theatre runs itself effectively, continually self-developing and planning its budget sensibly to always tend to the optimisation of its core and supplementary activities.

Judge a tree by its fruit – the result is not immediately visible. Even the most commercial-appearing endeavour has genuine qualities, the most artful production may be inspired by simple pragmatic processes. All of us are eternally learning. Searchingness is predicated on being ready to develop, sensing changes in the theatre field and reacting rapidly and accordingly. Polygon Theatre is open to the newest explorations in form, and makes use of contemporary technology, solutions in content and form, where necessary.