And our other big announcement…
3-WEEK CLOWN CREATION SCHOOL
1st – 19th October 2018 / Mondays – Fridays 10.30am – 5.30pm
at Toynbee Studios, 28 Commercial Rd, London E1 6AB
This October for the first time we are offering a three-week course, aimed at performers who would like to follow clown and physical comedy work through to performance level.
We’ve been asked frequently by participants of our 5-day workshops whether we could offer a longer course, aimed at taking students deeper into the work and equipping people to make the first steps towards creating a new clown number, or even a whole show.
So this October for the first time we are offering a comprehensive three-week Clown Creation School, led by Spymonkey artistic directors Aitor Basauri, Petra Massey and Toby Park, and producer Emily Coleman.
We aim to build a strong ensemble dynamic, to encourage participants to go further and deeper into the work to explore new areas of comedic investigation, and to inspire and initiate new creative material and performing relationships that we hope will go on to flourish into the full glory of performance! There will also be an opportunity to examine the basics of how to build a more sustainable performing arts business.
We believe that we have learnt the most about performing from the process of creating and building work towards performance. So we will use this as an impetus to creativity by working towards a final presentation of new work for an invited audience.
The course is aimed at emerging and professional performers of intermediate and advanced levels of experience, 18+. Previous participation in a Spymonkey course will be an advantage but is not a requirement of the course.
Week 1 / Clown Foundation
The first week will be an exploration of the fundamental principles of Spymonkey’s approach to creating comedy theatre. Led by Aitor Basauri, we will look at establishing a shared vocabulary of exercises and games: le Jeu, clown, pleasure, complicity, vulnerability, generosity, sensitivity. The emphasis of this week will be on recognising each performer’s unique quality of ridiculousness, and the pleasure of sharing that sense of ridiculousness with an audience.
Week 2 / Developing Clown in Context
Physical Comedy & Slapstick – exploration of comedic physicality and devising tools, led by Petra Massey.
Music & Performance – developing comedic material through musical games and exercises, song-writing, musical theatre, instrumental ensembles and choreography, led by Toby Park.
The Business – optional sessions on running a business for emerging artists: finance, funding, branding and marketing, led by our producer Emily Coleman.
Week 3 / Creating, Writing & Directing
Practical tools for making physical comedy work in a range of performance contexts: theatre, cabaret, variety, circus, dance.
In the mornings we will continue to explore creating comedy theatre, including elements of melodrama (the pleasure of great acting) and bouffon (the pleasure of parody and the grotesque), as well as the wider themes introduced in week 2.
Our aim through the whole course will be to gather moments, double acts that we want to explore, build scenes, and look to develop these in the context of creating new work. In the afternoons we will have the opportunity to work on this new material, led by all three of the workshop leaders. This will climax in a presentation of this new work for an invited audience.
More information on the events page on our website: https://www.spymonkey.co.uk/wordpress/event/clown-creation-school-oct18/ |
