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Clown Theater Festival Workshops Sep 11–26
Posted August 18, 2010
Note: Clown Theater Festival is a full month of shows, free events, and yes, workshops. Posted as received.
To Be Caught: A Clown Workshop
Joan Schirle
dellarte.com
September 11 & 12; Saturday and Sunday, 10am–3pm
Triskelion Arts, 118 N 11th St, 3rd fl, Brooklyn, NY 11211, triskelionarts.org
Fee: $200; Maximum enrollment: 15
The world of the theater clown is generated from the empty space of the stage. The clown brings the space alive in a dynamic partnership with the audience. "To be caught," to be captured by what is, is the goal of our play. We will play with presence, breath, voice, movement, status, and delight in the playing. On the second day we will investigate the situation of the clowns' journey to set us on the road to laughter. By working in ensemble, we learn who our clown is in relation to community. Joan Schirle is the director of the Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theater and will offer the teaching of DAI based in founder Carlo Mazzone-Clementi's principles of effort, risk, momentum, and joy.
Joan Schirle's high school years were spent watching The Three Stooges and I Love Lucy. Nevertheless, she became founding artistic director of Dell'Arte International, the ensemble acclaimed for 33 years of collaborative creation and global touring, and the director of Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theater (one year training program plus MFA in ensemble-based-physical theater). She designed DAI's MFA curriculum and heads DAI's Study Abroad: Bali Program. Her solo show, Second Skin, has been seen in five countries. She was honored at the 16th Cairo International Experimental Theater Festival as a leader in the field of experimental theater. She was one of six US actors awarded a 2006 Fox Foundation National Artists Residency grant. She has directed at San Diego Rep, Houston's Alley Theatre, Bloomsburg Ensemble, and A Traveling Jewish Theater. Her teaching includes mask performance, commedia dell'arte, clown theater, physical comedy, sound, and movement.
Physical Comedy
John Towsen
physicalcomedy.blogspot.com
September 18, 19, 25, & 26; Saturday & Sunday, 10am–4pm
Triskelion Arts, 118 N 11th St, 3rd fl, Brooklyn, NY 11211, triskelionarts.org
Fee: $350; Maximum enrollment: 15
A hands-on crash course in physical comedy vocabulary for clowns, mimes, actors, and everyone in between. Technique leads to application in short pieces, with an emphasis on character interaction, gag structure, and storytelling. Skills are centered around working with your partner (counterweights, levers, mounts, lifts, partner tumbling) and with the physical world around you (tables, chairs, doors, props, etc.). Some performance experience and a reasonably sound body highly recommended, but all levels of experience welcome.
John Towsen has taught full-length physical comedy courses at Princeton University, Ohio University, and the Juilliard School (the latter two for six years each), plus numerous shorter workshops, most recently at the Nouveau Clown Institute in Barcelona. He has many famous former students but doubts he had anything to do with their success. His once-upon-a-time performance career included seven years of television acting as a child growing up in New York and a decade of clowning as an adult, from the elementary schools of Long Island to the sands of Saudi Arabia, most of it with partner Fred Yockers. In his other lives he teaches multimedia and digital video in the creative arts and technology program at Bloomfield College and spends his summers working for the Open Society Institute doing media training for activists in hot spots across the globe. He is the author of Clowns (1976) and was artistic director for the first two New York international clown theater festivals (1983, 1985). His latest research on physical comedy can be found on his blog: physicalcomedy.blogspot.com
Register:
ovationtix.com
More Information:
bricktheater.com/clown
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