Date: Monday 17th Aug- Friday 21st Aug
Cost: Workshop with standard double-occupancy room with early bird discount: $1,125
The early bird discount (10%) expires on April 2 then the registration fee is $1,250.
Workshop with single-occupancy room: $1,800
There is no early bird discount for single-occupancy rooms.
Note: A $400 deposit is required when you register for a double occupancy room. A $900 deposit is required for a single occupancy room. The remainder of your balance will be due prior to your arrival at Celebration Barn.
Led by: Aitor Basauri & Toby Park, Spymonkey Co-Artistic Director
Experience the passions and pleasures of great acting
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A festival of emotions, where the actors who have been trained in the Art of Acting have the opportunity to play big emotions to the full. It is an art that belongs to another age, of another time where things were proper and right, and everyone knew the difference between Right and Wrong.
The moral certainties of the world of Melodrama, the playing out of Good and Evil for an audience of honest people hungry for justice, these old fashion ways of expressing ourselves are all in the melodrama, a world of storytelling captured so masterfully by the likes of Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Benito Perez Galdos.
Melodrama had its heyday in the 19th Century, its actors refining and mastering a grand expressive technique: brilliant gestures, wonderful fixed points, loud and strong voices full of impressive and fun noises, wringing the body of its full potential to express emotions.
We explore how performers can play this ‘game of emotions’. Playing emotions as a game, as opposed to attempting psychological realism, gives performers the freedom to go to extremes, to have enormous fun playing emotions that we would not normally think of as fun – crying, hate, jealousy, rage. Playing this game to the full has been at the heart of Spymonkey’s work. We love to laugh and now we will love to cry.
“I believe my own work has benefitted greatly from the workshop. I would do another one at the drop of a hat.”
Kalki Henenberg / ‘Kalki Hula Girl’, performer Australia
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For more information about our bursaries, please click here.
Founder, co-creator and performer of all Spymonkey shows to date. Performed in The Servant of Two Masters at Sheffield Crucible (1996), Axomate at the Seville Expo (1992), Eulenspiegel (1991) and in Karl’s Kuhne Gassenchau’s Grand Paradis and Stau in Zurich (1997 and 1998). Director of Little Prince for Donkey Productions (1997), Un Vento Impetuoso for La Canoppia (1996) and Meci Y Me Fui for Pez Enraya ( 1997). In 1999 he appeared in Circus Knie, the Swiss State Circus, and in 2000 formed his own company Punto Fijo, based in Bilbao. Appeared in Cirque Images’ 2003 series Solstrom for Bravo Cable Network. Appeared in Bertold Brecht’s Senor Carrera’s Rifles at the Young Vic, directed by Paul Hunter (2007).
Directing credits include: ‘Lily & Marlene’ for La Dinamica (Spain 2015); ’Looking for Duende’ for Teatro Entre Escombros (Spain 2015); ’Hondycops’ for Squadra Sua (Czech Republic 2015); ’Ferucchio Peru is Extraordinaire’ for Leebo Luby (UK 2015); Manifest Destiny (New York 2015); Fabulous Bäckström Brothers (Finland 2014); Entre Escobros ‘600 Teatro’ (Spain 2014); ‘Gloriator’ for Skipstick Productions (London 2013); ‘NMIIDP’ Simone Riccio, (London 2013); ‘Herr Ist Immer Der Natur’ for Die Drei Auf Den Baum (Berlin 2012); ‘Discombobulated’ for Publick Transport (Bristol & UK tour, 2011); ‘Ramshackadelicious’ (Bristol 2011); ‘Shake’ for The Last Baguette (Switzerland 2010). Director of physical comedy for Chichester Festival Theatre’s ‘Mack & Mabel’ (2015) starring Michael Ball. Co-director of Orpheus in the Underworld at Vienna Volksoper operahouse which opens in 2023.
Aitor is an acclaimed teacher of clown, regularly leading Spymonkey training in London, New York, Maine, Los Angeles and around the world, and for the Clown Doctors organisation in Germany, Austria and France.
