clown
In this workshop, based on a series of exercises designed by Christopher Bayes, we will begin at the beginning to address, expose and explore some of the most basic components of the clown. Prepare to get bigger, more beautiful, stupid and simpler than you already are. Open yourself up to the great theatrical possibilities that stem from your deepest fears, tragedies and celebrations. Make a mess inside the comic problem. This work gives the performer greater access to his dreams, impulses, and humor, thereby freeing possibilities for poetic, highly theatrical and potentially bizarre worlds to emerge. The clown touches something very new, very deep and yet very familiar in us all, acknowledging in both performer and audience the need for a good cry, a great laugh, a profound sigh, or a triumphant yawp.
physical approaches to character creation
Live in the entirety of your theatrical possibilities. Experience the full scale of your body and voice. Consider that all you need to create theater exists inside you and the junk and found objects of your surroundings without a primary reliance on your personal psychology. Make vibrant theater that comes from your physical self and your active imagination.
This class explores character development from a physical place by involving the student in a series of games, improvisations, and imaginative pathways to characterization. This class is very active, accessing and expanding the range of expressivity in the body and voice. Additionally, students will experiment with generating original characters as well as applying this work to characters from existing text.
Learn to make surprising and specific choices that stem from your unrestricted creativity. Reclaim the actor/creator space, and be magnificent.
This class explores character development from a physical place by involving the student in a series of games, improvisations, and imaginative pathways to characterization. This class is very active, accessing and expanding the range of expressivity in the body and voice. Additionally, students will experiment with generating original characters as well as applying this work to characters from existing text.
Learn to make surprising and specific choices that stem from your unrestricted creativity. Reclaim the actor/creator space, and be magnificent.
ensemble building and composition
Strengthen individual and collective creativity through a series of physical exercises, games and composition assignments that encourage attention to the following: physical listening and expressivity, audience experience, entrance/exit, environment, intention, playfulness and presence.
solo performance creation
Excavate your authentic self through a series of precisely built creative writing and improvisational exercises. Create a solo-performance piece like no other, because there is no other you.
le jeu
Games. Reconnect to the spirit of frivolity. Get on the Fun train to Fun-Town. YEBO!
audition monologue coaching
Make it different, better, and more alive!
scene study through the lens of clown
What might be possible if we take the basic ideas of clown (not-knowing, vulnerability, playfulness, physically embodied emotions, vigorous listening, fun, etc.) and applied them to scene study? Together we can discover new ways to invigorate old or familiar texts, to have more fun on stage, and to keep performance alive and open.
interdisciplinaryness
By working in pairs and giving one another assignments, students will engage in a series of collaborations throughout the course. Within this microcosm they will experience multiple scenarios of artistic content, form, intention, outcome, critique, and communication as they generate individual and collective bodies of work.
Additionally, students will thoughtfully and deeply interrogate their own artistic processes, as well as the impact/experience of their various collaborators, through the lens of a prescribed protocol for reflection and dialogue. With cross-disciplinary encounter as a core principle, this course questions traditional divisions of discipline, encourages the possibility of discovery in working in unfamiliar territory, and promotes the blurring of lines and assumption of multiple roles. This course vigorously encourages experimentation, play and risk.
This course is intended for artist-students who:
Have a strong and/or abiding interest in collaboration.
Get excited by dialogic process.
Want to be surprised by their own work and the work of others.
Teach or intend to teach and would like to deepen their experience of the art assignment as a pedagogical form by giving, getting, and reflecting on a series of customized directives.
Are undertaking or expect to undertake disciplines that shape artistic work through human encounter, such as devised or scripted theater, collaborative choreography, commissioning, curation, comprehensive critique, art direction and editorial work.
Additionally, students will thoughtfully and deeply interrogate their own artistic processes, as well as the impact/experience of their various collaborators, through the lens of a prescribed protocol for reflection and dialogue. With cross-disciplinary encounter as a core principle, this course questions traditional divisions of discipline, encourages the possibility of discovery in working in unfamiliar territory, and promotes the blurring of lines and assumption of multiple roles. This course vigorously encourages experimentation, play and risk.
This course is intended for artist-students who:
Have a strong and/or abiding interest in collaboration.
Get excited by dialogic process.
Want to be surprised by their own work and the work of others.
Teach or intend to teach and would like to deepen their experience of the art assignment as a pedagogical form by giving, getting, and reflecting on a series of customized directives.
Are undertaking or expect to undertake disciplines that shape artistic work through human encounter, such as devised or scripted theater, collaborative choreography, commissioning, curation, comprehensive critique, art direction and editorial work.
creative writing workshop
This Creative Writing Workshop is designed to uncover a writer’s personal voice. Through uniquely conceived and thoughtfully presented writing exercises, the writer looks inside himself discovering who he is, what he has to say, and what prompts him to say it. Once a writer’s authentic voice is located, any type of writing (poetry, fiction, memoir, playwriting, etc.) can be built upon that insight, and the writer will never be lost. This creative journey nurtures writers at all developmental levels. It provides a powerful foundation for anyone just discovering his voice, as well as for anyone with long-standing writing experience seeking a bold new approach.
