A monthly commitment
to the via negativa
Grotowski observed that the obstacles between an actor and genuine presence are rarely absences — they are accumulations. Technique, habit, professional caution — these are not failures of craft but the natural residue of a working life. The via negativa is simply the willingness to examine them honestly: not to discard what has been learned, but to ask which of it is serving the instrument and which of it has grown over it. What remains when that question is taken seriously is always more than was expected.
"Ours then is a via negativa — not a collection of skills but an eradication of blocks." — Jerzy Grotowski
The Aims of A Day in the Space
The joy is still there. Joy in the craft is not something you lost. It is something the industry covered. Each session works at removing what has grown over it — the professional caution, the habitual self-assessment, the accumulated weight of working always toward a result. What the day recovers was never gone.
The instrument you already have. You have been working for years. Something real has been built. A Day in the Space is about developing a more direct and honest relationship with what is already there — not by adding to it but by examining what has accumulated around it and asking what is actually serving you and what is simply in the way.
Methodology made personal. Grotowski, Stanislavski, Chekhov, Meisner, Adler, Linklater, Berry, Viewpoints, Laban — these are not subjects to study. They are tools to be felt in the body until they become genuinely useful. Each one removes a different obstacle between you and a genuine moment. The work is about finding which ones speak most directly to your instrument and leaving with a real and working relationship with them.
The actor in charge. Every tradition we work with in A Day in the Space is in service of you — not the other way around. The question the day keeps returning to is simple: which of these tools actually works for your particular instrument? Leave with the answer. Leave with the ownership of it.
Not for everyone... Deliberately.
A Day in the Space is designed for practitioners who already have a working relationship with the craft. The minimum requirement of three years of training or practice is not a gatekeeping measure — it is a practical one.
This is not a programme of learning. It is a programme of excavation. The via negativa only has something to work with when there is something already there to uncover. Without that foundation the day cannot do what it is designed to do.
This is not a space for beginners. It is built for the actor who has done the work and is ready to find out what is underneath it.
Cost - The fee is the first thing we subtract.
Professional development for working actors is expensive, inconsistent, and often more concerned with product than with craft. A Day in the Space asks only that you bring yourself.
The via negativa is built on the principle of removing what is in the way. A fee would simply be contradictory.
At the close of each session a voluntary contribution toward the cost of the venue is welcomed — whatever each participant is able and willing to give. The work is the point. The door is open.
In my own words
After forty years as a teacher, director, and facilitator, the methodologies I work with have become the way I think. Grotowski, Stanislavski, Chekhov, Meisner, Adler, Linklater, Berry, Viewpoints, Laban — not a curriculum, but the way I understand the craft. These traditions are in my DNA as a practising artist. They arrive in the process — not as intellectual observations but as instinctive responses to what is actually happening in front of me.
A Day in the Space comes out of a particular kind of thinking — the thinking that happens at 62 when you start asking different questions. Not what can I add but what actually matters. Not what have I accumulated but what is underneath it. Grotowski's via negativa, it turns out, is not just a training principle. It is a way of looking at a life in the arts.
Every actor in the room brings their own relationship to these traditions. The work is about deepening that relationship — discovering which tradition speaks most directly to your instrument and which ones may be standing in the way.
Part of the work is simply finding out which route is yours.
How to be involved
A Day in the Space runs periodically in Mumbai. Places will be strictly limited and allocated as first in, first served.
Register to be added to our database. You will receive information about upcoming sessions and registration links as they are announced. Registered artists will be given information two days before going public with marketing.
If you are based outside Mumbai and would like to see A Day in the Space come to your city, contact Glenn directly. We would like to hear from you.
A Day in the Space is an initiative of Glenn Hayden and is presented by Enigmatic Hills Production.
Subscribe
When a new session is announced, register promptly. Groups will be kept small and places will go quickly.
A Day in the Space — Via Negativa
10am to 6pm, Sunday 12th April
A full-day physical theatre workshop for working professional actors in Mumbai. Presented by Enigmatic Hills Productions. Led by Glenn Hayden.
A Day in the Space — Via Negativa
Sunday 12 April | 10am — 6pm | Abhyaas Manch, Aram Nagar, Mumbai Presented by Enigmatic Hills Productions. Led by Glenn Hayden.
Mumbai produces extraordinary actors. It also produces extraordinary pressure. The audition grind. The habit of working always toward a result. Over time that pressure accumulates — the critical self-observer, the professional caution, the habitual choices that quietly drain the joy from the craft.
This day is the antidote.
Built around Grotowski's via negativa, A Day in the Space removes what has grown over the instrument rather than adding more to it. The morning clears the seriousness through play, physical argument, flocking, and Laban quality work. The mid-morning builds a Viewpoints vocabulary before passing your loved monologue through three methodological lenses — Stanislavski, Chekhov's psychological gesture and radiation, and Meisner. The afternoon removes further layers: the performed body, the expected response, the face itself. The free round at the end shows what remains.
What remains is always the same thing. The joy you thought the industry had taken.
The day in brief
Bring one monologue — no more than one minute, something you love. Not something you are working on. Something you return to when you need to remember why you do this.
The morning strips away seriousness through play, physical argument, and flocking with music. The Laban quality work opens the instrument before the Viewpoints Grid builds a shared physical vocabulary. Your monologue is then passed through three methodological lenses — Stanislavski, Chekhov's psychological gesture and radiation, and Meisner — so you feel in your body which tradition speaks most directly to your instrument.
The afternoon goes further. The performed body is removed. The expected response is removed. The face itself is removed. Each exercise strips away a different layer until the free round at the end of the day asks one question of the room: what did the day give this piece?
No notes. No assessment. No hierarchy of methodology. A small group of working actors doing serious work in a room together. Free. Strictly limited places.
Who it is for
Working professional actors and actors at least three years into their practice. We are not building foundations. We are finding out what is underneath them.
About Glenn
Forty years as a director, trainer, and artistic leader across Australia, India, and internationally. Sixty-plus professional productions. Royal Opera House, Prithvi Theatre, G5A Mumbai. A regular presence in India's professional theatre community since 2009.
"Joy is not the goal. Joy is what is already there when we stop performing around it. That is what the via negativa reveals."
Date: Sunday 12 April
Venue: Abhyaas Manch, Aram Nagar, Mumbai
Time: 10am — 6pm
Cost: Free (A voluntary contribution toward the cost of the venue is welcomed at the close of the day — not required, but genuinely appreciated.)
Please note: participants will be required for the full day as we will be relying on each other for most of the day.
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