Classes & Information

Instructor: Kevin Crawford and Caroline Boersma

Every voice has its own inimitable presence and identity, like a thumbprint : a signature quality that favours recognition. The voice is both a manifestation of the body but also an immaterial agent that expresses the whole breadth of the human psyche and experience. Chasing your unique quality brings you closer to that state of grace where impulse meets form and your authentic energy as a performer radiates outwards.This intensive workshop brings together voicework, singing and the vibratory power of the cello. Musicality in the widest sense of the term animates our vocal expression be it through text, song or improvisation.
 
Our pathway will explore the symmetries, contrasts and counterpoint between language and sound, movement and vocal timbre, music and meaning. Opening up different vocal perspectives enriches our palette of verbal texture and encourages a more embodied, less cerebral approach to text and singing.

Using both material generated during the workshop and some prepared content, participants will craft solos and duologues that reveal heightened presence and a breadth of creative and emotional range. The work aims at all times to maintain a balance between the acquisition of technique and the synergetic force of imagination.

During the workshop you will:

• Refine dynamic warming-up methods
• Develop vocal timbre, resilience, elasticity and precision
• Stimulate synergy between voice, movement and psyche
• Improvise with and be accompanied by the Cello
• Develop and present monologues, duologues, songs and chorus work

Instructor: Chiara D’Anna

This class is an introduction to Commedia dell’Arte and its legacy in contemporary performance. The Masks of Commedia are indeed an excellent tool to expand performers’ physical vocabulary, stamina, space awareness and a deep understanding of tempo-rhythm and comic timing. In this class you will learn how to create successful ensemble work, interact effectively with an audience and improvise with confidence, developing skills that are fundamental in any performance setting – not only physical comedy. 

Following an introduction on Commedia dell’Arte and its history, the class will explore how to apply Commedia’s principles and techniques in the development of character and ensemble work. Participants will have the opportunity to focus on different aspects of actor training including body awareness, improvisation, slapstick, stock characterization and half-mask technique.

On completion of this class you will be able to:

• Develop your physical and vocal vocabulary in the creation of grotesque and comic characters with and without half-mask. 
• Devise and perform scenes utilising the Masks of Commedia dell’Arte, props, music and costumes. 
• Improvise and interact with your audience with confidence. 
• Adapt key commedia principles and techniques to any performance setting. 
• Demonstrate an understanding of the historical and cultural context from which Commedia dell’Arte originated and its legacy in contemporary theatre.

Instructor: Gin Hammond and Echo Sibley

This course focuses on honing in on, and developing, an artist’s ability to write and perform new, personal work, by exploring a range of storytelling techniques. We will discover and polish each artist’s personal narrative through abstract physical theatre practices, writing prompts, voice methodologies, music and devising exercises. We will strengthen the artist’s ability to access their imaginative life, their impulses while writing, and on stage, and we will give them the skills to enhance their one-person performance practices.

• We will focus on specificity, spontaneity, honesty and creativity while emphasizing the importance of connection and listening, whether it is to other actors, or your own impulses.
• We will create original characters, monologues, moments and scenes by exploring archetypes, object work and personal narratives.
• The importance of the fundamentals of acting will also be strengthened as we explore objective, action, obstacles and characterization through physical and vocal expression and gesture. These techniques and skills are valuable creative tools that you can use to enhance your work in rehearsals, auditions, stage productions, TV, film or in devising your own unique work.

Each student who successfully completes this course will:

• Have increased sensory awareness and spontaneity on stage.
• Have developed the ability to live moment-to-moment and feel emboldened to create new characters and new work.
• Have developed greater powers of concentration, relaxation, and creativity.
• Have developed the ability to use Improvisation/impulse to enhance effectiveness in the rehearsal room and in an audition/callback.
• Have gained freedom and flexibility in emotional, physical, and vocal expression.

Instructors: André Casaca and Flavia Marco

“Practical studies in the art of clown starting from recognition of the comic, related to personal daily gestuality”

My goal during the pedagogic activity has always been to arouse within the student, the need of constructing their own Comic Identity of the Body, finding again the simplicity, the tenderness, and the strength to be able to be present in the scene together with the public. Inducing the students to find their own Comic Identity of the Body means to recognise in themselves the stupidity (folly), which is for the clown a high quality in comedy. We don’t turn into a stupid person, we already are. Being stupid means to marvel, to understand the world in a different way, instead of not understanding it at all; it means to use your own eyes, not for photographing and analysing the society, but for holding the public and answering their necessities. Therefore, it doesn’t mean to add, but to extract, to strip yourself from the concepts and shapes, making the act of being in the scene transparent. And this is a constant condition that is very hard to assume because it is unconscious.

I believe that the clown’s work is fundamental to put the actor of our days back in contact with it’s own fragility, making them find their own expressive strength in this vulnerable situation. 

A journey through exercises, games and improvisations with the aim of identifying and structuring the comic aspect of each student.