AWARENESS THROUGH TENNIS BALLS (one day)
This workshop explores the ways and means of using tennis balls to develop an awareness of how you move, how you hold yourself and how to become aware of habits and start to make changes. This is a relaxing workout. It won’t make you fitter, stronger or make you loose weight but it will enhance your flexibility and develop your complicity with yourself.
THE FOLLOWING WORKSHOPS ARE IN COLLABORATION WITH WITH VICTORIA WORSLEY :-
FELDENKRAIS AND NEURTAL MASK (two days)
This is an approach to Neutral Mask using the ‘awareness through movement work’ of Moshe Feldenkrais. How do you stand, how do you hold yourself, how do you breathe and how do you move? All these questions are instantly revealed the moment you put a mask on. And the same questions are experience and understood by the simple movement work you do on the floor, without the mask. Having identified the changes and played the mask we then take those movement quality into a dramatic interaction.
MAKING THE MOST OF YOURSELF (two days)
This course is designed to explore your physical range as an actor.That’s to say your sensitivity to, and your awareness of, your body language.Through a carefully integrated series of theatre games and Feldenkrais sequences, John and Victoria will trace the journey from you at your most comic and irresponsible and looking like someone who’s perpetually in the wrong space, to you as a strong and confident individual who comfortably opens the space. This isn’t a course about making changes and knowing ‘the right way to do something’. We’re not interested in ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ . We’re more interested in differences . That’s to say the differences you find for yourself through an understanding of what you do naturally.
FROM MASK-WORK TO ACTING VIA FELDENKRAIS (two day)
Masks give us a persona: a personal facade that you present to the world that you can discard change at will. We instinctively cultivate the personae that best serves our circumstances. Some masks seem to fit you like a glove and others make you feel like an alien.
Through a carefully integrated series of theatre games and Feldenkrais sequences John and Victoria will enable you to investigate the persona you admire, want to emulate or most identify with as well as exploring the personae you feel less akin to.
The workshop uses masks to define the persona and then enables you to play that persona out of mask. We’re interested in the differences you find for yourself in order to develop a physical understanding of how you assume that persona.
THE SKILL OF PLAYFULNESS (two days)
What is it? These workshops dive into the inventiveness of acting. They enable us to reconnect with our playful instincts: how we get ideas, generate material and create action. The ancient art of making stuff up can easily get squashed out of all recognition by the pressures and conditions of the acting business. All the above workshop are designed to rekindle the power and pleasure of finding things for ourselves. Play is a skill like any other, and this skill can be learned, honed and applied in any way you like.
How will it work? We’ll use the Feldenkrais Method to re-acquaint us with the play mat, where we can simply explore and discover physical possibilities without the pressure of trying to ‘get it right.’ Then we’ll progress to Naïve Masks to empower us to mess about with greater skill. Finally we’ll remove the masks to explore a variety of different games and techniques to apply your emerging expertise. We will learn to start small, do less, listen more intently to ourselves and others so that we can actually hear that little impulse, let it grow and lead us somewhere new.
What do you get out of it? A weekend to rediscover the spontaneity and sheer pleasure that lies at the heart of all acting. A weekend to wake up that child-like skill of playing that brings your work to life.
