What happens in a workshop
The physical preparation before each improvisation class is a mix of exercises and games that move the body and awaken the spirit, the imagination, the fun of playing.
Each workshop is guided by a theme (clowns, bouffons, masks, etc.) and organized like a progressive course. Each stage is meant to provide the students with what is both useful and necessary for him/her to move on.
Improvising, creating, is at the core of this process, while written texts or scenes can be used to underline the work.
In essence it is a self questioning approach.
Curiosity, personal involvement and the pleasure of playing will shake and overcome the pre built ideas, the habits and inhibitions.
Worskhops :
The clown
Draw me laughter
« When you tell a clown that night has fallen, he looks at the ground »
When the student decides to study laughter, there is something a little tragic, because it happens when you don’t expect it, escapes if you try too hard, and shows up when you gave up trying.
To show one’s own faults or shortcomings: the skinny legs, the oversized chests, the tiny arms and to display them using other clothes than the ones that usually hide them, means to accept one’s self and to appear as one really is…
This quest for one’s own clown rests on the freedom to be one’s self and make others laugh about it, to accept one’s own truth.
A child is in us who has grown up and whom society doesn’t allow to show; the stage is there which will allow it better than in life.” Jacques Lecoq
This work is based on presence: being moved, being touched, as much as being funny.
Mask play
To hide in order to reveal yourself
Hold a mask in front of you and move it in the space. Do you see it’s expressions change? Does it seem to come to life?
Then, it is a good working mask for the actor.
The mask is a form with a structure, a rhythm, an intensity, representing the essence of a human type, which you can capture and experience dynamically by moving.
By wearing it the actor hides his face, revealing through the mask movements his inner world, his fantasy, his imagination, his poetic self.
Through improvisations we ‘ll discover the rules of mask play,the technique,
the language of attitudes, the level of play needed.
We’ll define how to fuel the « motor » of a situation, how to elaborate on a simple sketch outline, building a story with powerful characters.
The half masks open the space for the mouth. This inspires a wide range of voices to match the movements and attitudes of the mask and allow unexpected texts to emerge to the great surprise of the actor and the audience. Away from realism, the life of the mask is fueled by the pleasure and the imagination of the player. As an actor you’ll find the work with masks will bring you to enlarge, to clarify and to deepen your play range.
The bouffon
Discovering the strange madness of the « bouffons »
This workshop ‘s theme is on freedom of speech.
Inspired from the bouffon, the king’s jester of the middle ages, who spoke loudly what others thought silently.
Today the spirit of the bouffons is back.
With the freedom of the children who do not understand the meaning of what they say, the « bouffons » mock humanity and its taboos:
With wonderful fun they imitate the behaviors of mankind forming gangs, groups, with no hierarchy, free from law and order ,they make fun of everything in major themes such as disease, war, religion, death , sex, politics, breaking the taboos that surround them and allowing the truth to echo deeper than the daily news broadcast.
We laugh, but it is tragic.
In the workshop, we explore how to move our transformed bodies in different unusual ways, as if we came from elsewhere, another world, or another planet, and create an atmosphere of mystery and a sense of strange madness.
Characters
I hope they won't recognize me
In this workshop we will use all sorts of costumes, wigs, hats, props, whatever we need to bring characters out of our desires and imagination.
Will they manage to sustain their life on stage?
The actors will have to meet that challenge.
When the fantasy dies, we have to invent a new character.
We’ll provoke situations to create these characters, to follow our pleasure in playing them and to discover what they feel, how they move and speak through a wide range of improvisations.
To explore one’s own of fantasies, desires to appear, to show oneself, to impersonate a character.
To engage in these « lies », with a great athenticity in the play is about going on the stage pretending to be someone else, saying to yourself :
I hope they won’t recognize me !
In this workshop we’ll define the rules of the theatre.
Progressively defining what makes a character work.
Realistic play
All these other « Me »
Based on the observation of daily life and using a selection of short written scenes from a repertoire of films, this workshop proposes the study of realistic play.
It is close to cinematic play.
The scenes chosen are either dialogues or monologues.
This approach underlines the relationship between text and movement, the impulses and the playing of an emotion, text and subtext.
The process consists of first enlarging and amplifying the inner movements of the characters to observe and recognize the significant aspects of their psychology and integrate these in a realistic play.
The final scenes will be filmed.