WORKSHOPS

A playful on-your-feet performance oriented workshop on finding humor in showing your unique authentic freaky funny self. Drop the mask and tune into the natural comedy of being honestly YOU onstage. Through group games and fundamental clown exercises, participants in this workshop will first get to know each other as a small collaborative group, creating resilience, buoyancy, and trust before diving into individual expression. Core concepts include tapping into a deep sense of play, creating an honest and engaging stage presence, partnering with the audience, and reacting authetically in each moment. We will practice peering through the fourth wall to really SEE your audience, and allowing them to see you in return. A mere toe-dip into the infinitely deep performance genre that is clown! All levels of interest and experience welcome.

Who is this Clown?

THERE IS SOMETHING FUNNY ABOUT YOU

BY YOUR Lonesome:

SOLO DEVISING THROUGH CLOWN

This workshop invites both fledgling performers and seasoned professionals alike to plunge into the daunting-yet-delightfully-rewarding wormhole of creating and performing as a solo artist. Whether you’re looking to elevate and refine an existing act/show, or just get comfortable with the idea of creating concepts to present onstage, this workshop offers an array of tools and jumping off points that you can use to approach your creative process. Warm up games, classic clown exercises, storytelling techniques, and structured feedback will form the foundation of the workshop. As a group, we will work on identifying the ingredients of compelling work, and develop solo proposals based on your interests, personal history, voice, and physicality. If you are curious about independent solo theater-making, devising, and show building, or if you want to delve into developing your own unique personal performance style and voice, you belong in this workshop!

More Props to Ya:

PHYSICAL OBJECTS AS CREATIVE PARTNERS

A clown workshop about STUFF & THINGS. How props, costumes, and set elements can anchor and inform character, world-building, and play. Whether acknowledged or not, the things performers wear, carry, and sit on, are the silent co-stars of any production. Using objects is powerful choice, and one that you can harness to do more than just support. We will explore games, writing exercises, and devising activities oriented around our relationships to the physical, tangible items that we choose to bring onstage with us. For performers of all types who want to explore dynamic performance, act/show creation, and play through the gateway of physical items. Whether you are trying to refine props & costume elements in an existing act/show, or you are looking to build something new, this workshop will offer jumping off points that you can use to approach the creative process through the sometimes unwieldy yet glorious magic of GARMENTS and OBJECTS. Each participant should bring 1-2 costume pieces and 1-2 props that they would like to explore and work with.

Working from a foundation of clown, this workshop will explore status dynamics, complicity, and dynamic co-devising between performers, both onstage and off. By starting from a mutually arrived upon sense of curiousity, urgency, and play, participants will build a communal foundation of support and trust before breaking into smaller partnerships to experiment with shared stage work and material proposals. We will also discuss how to approach creative co-creation and touring dynamics outside of the container of the performance itself.