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Where the laughs come from: Improvising on the shoulders of giants
Ed Greenberg, USA
This workshop will use games, scene work and long form play to take participants "back to basics" and forward into the future of improv. We'll explore today's improvisational theater through its roots in the theater games invented by Viola Spolin, then used for public performance by her son Paul Sills, founder of The Second City, and also jam around the origins of long form improv. Through long form, we'll take a deep dive into Del Close's vision: to create a theatrical art form that gives actors the time and space to explore in depth any theme from multiple perspectives.
We'll practice what Viola called "the discipline of play", with attention to space work, the power of silence on stage, and slowing down to expand moments and advance story in improvised scene work. In this way, laughs will come through a deeper expression of who we are as individuals and as a group. Del Close's tenet to create comedy based on real people behaving honestly will be very much in the mix.
ED GREENBERG directed America's foremost improvisational comedy theater, "The Second City". He's directed iconic American comedy performers Robin Williams, Jonathan Winters, and Dan Castellaneta (the voice of Homer Simpson).
Ed has taught acting and comedy performance at USC School of Cinematic Arts, UCLA and Pasadena Community College. Through Laughter for a Change (www.laughterforachange.org), a non-profit that he founded, Ed brings the healing power of laughter and play through improv to post-genocide Rwandan youth, former gang members and combat veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress.
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Field technique
Sarah Caroline Kenter, Denmark
Sarah offers Improvisation Field Technique as a tool to navigate in dramatic improvisation. The technique is founded on the philosophical, spiritual and scientific thought that everything is connected. The workshop will introduce meditative processes that will expand your awareness of spatial presence and scenic energy fields. Furthermore, Sarah will introduce Field-technique for improvised monologue.
You will experience a deepened understanding of the fact that an empty room/ page/ stage is not ever "empty", but open. It takes trust and training to go on stage without a conscious intention. You might just love it or you might feel fear and stress and try to gain control by e.g. pleasing, joking or speed talking. There is room for all, and Sarah guides you past mental noise and emotional confusion so you can experience clear impulses and let the intuitive intelligence lead the way.
SARAH CAROLINE KENTER founded the professional theatre ensemble FELT in 2014 and has since then been teaching actors at IFT workshops and acting students at Copenhagen Film & Theatre School and Nordiska Teaterskolan (Kungälv).
She studied theatre, creativity, voice, improvisation and energy constellations at Center for Creativity and Theatre. She is a certified reflexologist with exams in anatomy and physiology; a trained psychotherapist, and holds a master's degree in theology from University of Copenhagen. Therefore body, mind, emotion and spirituality are naturally and closely connected in the improvisation method that she has developed, Improvisation Field Technique (IFT). www.fieldtechnique.dk
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The moving voice
Nikola Matisic, Sweden
In this workshop based on play, the body as an instrument and primal actions we learn how to harness deep, primal energies without damaging or taxing our bodies or voices.
PLAY: The animal is fascinating to watch in its different states of action. Why? Because of its singular focus on goal, and its entire energy reserves harnessed by this goal. The same happens to the human during play. We will look at tools on how to attain this state.
THE BODY AS AN INSTRUMENT: We all have different shapes, muscles, joints and trained abilities. Accepting the body, learning to forgive it when we no longer adapt to our surrounding culture, and learning to accept its inabilities, is part of knowing your body. We will do exercises that reveal the body to us.
NIKOLA MATISIC is an opera singer and the artistic director of Operalabb. After a successful career as an operatic soloist, performing many lead roles and often crossing over into experimental and ovement-based opera Nikola changed paths, due to a serious accident. Though re-training, research and collaboration with advanced experts in many fields, Nikola has developed a training method for the stage artist, called "the full body artist", a way of looking at stage artistry through the eyes of the body rather than separate styles of performance. Dance, theatre and opera use the same foundation; the body as a tool for expression.
Nikola has used Operalabb as a platform for collaboration with choreographers, theatre specialists, philosophers, directors, scientists and critics.
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