A lot of narrative improv is genre based and sometimes we can find it daunting to jump into the unfamiliar. But you can have fun in any show if you have some of the basics down and learn to love the fear with the new as opposed to panic with the unknown. Let's explore genres together!
Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston who rose to fame from her Ted talk on The Power of Vulnerability. She’s spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. We'll be playing with her wisdom - gamified through improvisation - and taking the time to talk about what we notice in ourselves as well as our work.
by KATY SCHUTTE
So much of theatre and movies isn't so much about what is being said but what isn't being said. Doing this in improv when we are creating in the moment is quite challenging but bringing subtext to our scenes can elevate our scenes and shows into something magical. It requires deep listening, an understanding of body language, and a vulnerability of performance that can be difficult to capture.This workshop will explore the idea that the words we say can be made secondary to the feelings and stories we share dancing in between those lines of dialogue.
Look into the eyes of your partner and give them the best time. Worry less about what will happen and focus on what you have right now and give your teammates the best time and they in return will do the same for you ensuring everyone has a great time. In this workshop you will gain skills in supporting your scene partners in serving the right now on stage.
The main objective of this workshop is to train tools from dance and physical theater to create from and with the body. We'll work to develop the body's creativity and the relationship between movement and image, movement and ideas, and movement and words. By combining dance and theater, we can add poetic ways of telling stories, expressing emotions, and creating imaginary worlds with unconventional bodies. Students will take away creative devices from the body that they can apply in their individual and group improvisations. The workshop will offer a break from realism and open the door to surreal, imaginative creation.
Improvisers like to think with their heads - and often forget about thinking with the body. Let's discover the movement within... using physical work from a variety of Asian and Western disciplines. This workshop's objective is to shake off years of office culture conditioning, the racing thoughts of half-paying attention, and tapping into our more animal, natural selves instead.
by ANNIE LOW
During improv shows, our scenes can often suffer from too much going on, or from vital cues not getting picked up. The stress of being onstage gets to us and we either try to overcompensate by adding more, or miss the offers our partners make. But how can we keep our brains from going into overdrive and truly stay in the moment with our partners, reacting to what is already there rather than inventing new things? How can we trust that what we have is enough? This workshop will focus on exercises that will help slow us down, quiet our inner critic, heighten our perceptiveness and keep us attune to the rich world that has already started unfolding in our scene. We will create scenes that prove that we are all we need.
