Workshops

This is a course that works the principles of Impro with expressive theatrical techniques. The methodology that Luana Proença applies aims at the units of space and time to work the awareness and spontaneity on stage. It proposes a differential approach by combining "traditional" Impro techniques, that are taught and widespread around the world, with Viewpoints (developed by the directors Anne Bogart and Tina Landau from USA), and Physical Theater, Commedia Dell'Arte and Clown to understand the physical space: external and/or internal to our bodies to act, be in action. 

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Skills: Improvisation principles, instant scenic creation, character creation, presence and scene game.

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Hours: From 8-16 hours

Number of participants: 8-20. 

Participant Level: All. 

Special requirements: Open and empty room, sound system, and 2 or 4 chairs.

We talk a lot about skills to train in Theater. But not so much about the training process or its systems. The "Tray" is an impro system of practice and composition developed initially by the Argentine Julieta Zarza. It works on a freeform platform that builds group vocabulary, body awareness, confidence, presence, and group composition through basic acrobatics techniques, Physical Theater, Clowning, Viewpoints, Capoeira, and Contemporary Dance. Develops an environment of training and poetic creation. The name comes from a metaphor of a tray of food/snacks at a party where we can taste different flavors individually and mix them together. The students will learn and create a series of "snack" actions and movements that can be played individually, in duos, or with the entire group. Each action/movement is based on different techniques (such as Clowning, Capoeira, Physical Theater, etc.) and has a specific contribution to the mindset of this training and composition wheel. While having the "snacks" to play with, the group will naturally start to create and develop their own. Poetic insights will be added by the teacher from material that the group brought to the class, and scenes will start to emerge from this tray that makes people create a common technical vocabulary and is mixed with the moment to become something more.

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Hours: From 6-12 hours

Number of participants: 8-20. 

Participant Level: All. 

Special requirements: Open and empty room, sound system, and 2 or 4 chairs.

As improvisers, we act, “write” and direct at the same time while we are performing. We are creating characters, dialogues, plots, relationships, movements, transitions, meaning, and also a dynamic every time that we improvise. Even if we have a show director, we are also directing the show when we go on stage. We are a collective director, a collaboration show creator. So, the aesthetics, styles, transitions, speed, use of lights, costumes, sounds, and the space itself, are also our director's choices during the performance. How to make those choices and let our free impro flow go on? How to practice this perception by ourselves and in a group? How can we train our director's improviser side to let things flow at the moment while being actively present as well?

Based on my Ph.D. research about Improv, and my book "Our Direction at Stake: Directing is part of Improvising", in this workshop we will play with tools to train our directing view during our improvisation using 4 tools: recognition, repetition, opposition, and balance.

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Skills: The use of recognition, repetition, opposition, and balance to create impro shows, not "just" scenes. Awareness of meanings that we bring and create on stage. Tools for recognizing and choosing theatrical choices during improvisation, awareness of stage picture, movement, light, sound, costumes as part of the improvised creation, and the influence of the spontaneous choices in the speech of the play. Directing tools that can be used as improvisers or as directors.

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Hours: 3 or 6 or 9 or 12 hours 

3 hours: concentrates on identifying and understanding the tools to help our director side as improvisers.

6 hours: allows putting the tools into practice in more scenes exercises.

9 hours: adds to the other versions, the space to put the tools into practice for improvising shows, not just scenes.

12 hours: adds to the other versions, the time and space to explore more the director's side allied with the tech stuff.

On-line version: 3 hours

Number of participants: 6-20. 

Participant Level: Intermediary/Advanced 

Special requirements: Open and empty room, sound system and chairs (one for each student)

For groups and solo work. Let's stage our ideas, finding structures and elements to translate our improvisation. Lessons:

- Space as Dramaturgy

- Tools for Show Dynamics

- Exploring Concepts and Ideas

- Structures and Protocols

- Aesthetics, Style and Theater Languages

- Staging elements: Light, Sound, Set, Costumes and Makeup

- Tying the parts: Begging, Middle and End

- Audience interactions

- Study Systems

- Projects and Experimentations

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Hours: Each lesson 3 hours

On-line version: each lesson 2,5-3 hours.

Number of participants: 1-12. 

Participant Level: Intermediary/Advanced 

Special requirements: Open and empty room, sound system and chairs (one for each student)

Scenic creation tools in deconstructing stereotypes with a feminist perspective: playing with equity beyond the stereotypes. Questioning our mindset in narrative and characters relationships using the Bechdel test and other tools to help work with stereotypes and gender assumptions.

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This workshop can be divided in 2 parts/lessons:

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BECHDEL IMPRO (+on-line version and Show Format)

What does it mean playing women? Let's talk about the life of one and the quality of their stories and exercise that in our scene work. Using the ideas of the Bechdel test, this class is a practical approach to empower our female characters and how we relae with them. Open for all performers of all genders. As a show format, it rases questions to improvisers and the audience. It is a wonderful exercise for mix casts or only female ones.

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DECONSTRUCTING STEREOTYPES (+on-line version)

By the idea that stereotypes are memory continents of society, we can see they are a powerful source of information to understand what and why change things. In this workshop our exercises are going to help us look at stereotypes as tools for deconstruct preconceived ideas to find real people in our characters.

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Skills: Creating characters in a feminist perspective, deconstructing clichés and playing in a more inclusive way, and empowering narratives and group mind.

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Hours: 3-6 hours (3 hours each lesson. 6 hours for the Bechdel Impro as Show Format)

On-line version: each lesson 2,5-3 hours (each lesson)

Number of participants: 6-16. 

Participant Level: All

Special requirements: Open and empty room, sound system and 1 chair for each student.

Inspiring by Peter Brook’s and Jacques Lecoq’s works, this format uses the space and the idea of “body as space” to create images, characters and narratives. It’s a discover about how space itself can be a game. At the same time look your own body as a space to realize how it changes with variations of time, size and location in relation to others. How limits can be tools. As a format structure the idea is to draw on the ground different spaces with tape (or carpets) and explore how the size and “limitation” of it can be used to create artistic codes on the scene. Outside the lines is “off stage”, what introduces a game about entering and exiting scenes, changing characters, etc. The transitions explore Topography (Viewpoints concept) and body images associations to connect scenes.

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Skills: Slow motion technique, seven tensions of body (Lecoq), the carpet game of space, editing tools using space.

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Hours: 6 hours

Number of participants: 6-16. 

Participant Level: All

Special requirements: Open and empty room, sound system, 1 chair for each participant, tape to mark the ground.

How to train improvisation by yourself? What principles, dynamics, and how can we keep ourselves in active training? Even when you have your troupe, how work some of your personal skills by yourself? How create and study a show in a empty rehearsal room? What you can use to guide you during a solo process? How you connect and to what/who? From experience and personal research with training and doing a solo show, I present in this workshop the difficulties and some tools to work when loneliness knocks on your door! Listen to your inner voice and connections to what/who surrounds you. It may be a solo, but you're not alone! 

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This workshop has 2 parts/lessons:

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TRAINING BY YOURSELF (+on-line version)

How to practice by yourself. Exercises to organize your personal training and to recognize how the moment can be a partner.

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TOOLS FOR A SOLO SHOW (+on-line version)

The challenges and beauties to perform by yourself. How to listen to your voice and study your own movements, trust them and the moment.

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Skills: How to do multiple characters by yourself. Tools to develop edits and scenes in a solo show, as ways to find connections with everything around you. Exercises to practice Improv by yourself. Tools to study an improv show structure. 

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Hours: 3 or 6 hours (3 hours each part)

On-line version: 2,5-3 hours (each lesson)

Number of participants: 1-20. 

Participant Level: All

Special requirements: Open and empty room, sound system and chairs (one for each student). 

This workshop explores the quality of tension between bodies and space. working with the body center strength and the connection with others, we developed scenes using the space relationship and the physical tension between us.

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Skills: Listen at the same time to yourself and everything around you, Work with the center of body activated. Created heat between bodies. 

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Hours: 3 or 6 hours

Number of participants: 6-16. 

Participant Level: All

Special requirements: Open and empty room, sound system, chairs and broomsticks (one for each student).

We will dance based on the everyday gesture "stolen" from the audience and that becomes dance in its broadest sense: a movement that gains space in our bodies. This improvisation format departs from the classic image of parties, where we expect someone to ask us to dance. From solitude, to duets, to groups, to the delight of discovering yourself dancing in your own way. "Oh, I wanna dance with somebody... I wanna feel the hit with somebody". 

 

Skills: Qualities of gesture, transformation of everyday gesture to expressive, observation and group work based on the idea of ​​shoal.

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Hours: 3, 6 or 9 hours.

Show format: 6 or 9 hours

Number of participants: 6-20. 

Participant Level: All. 

Special requirements: Open and empty room, sound system, and 1 chair for each participant.

Using the idea of seven levels of tensions from Jacques Lecoq, slow-motion techniques, and corporal matrices, this workshop works from the rhythm of individuals and group’s breath to develop mime, create scene movement, characters, emotions and feelings. Everything is connected to our own breath: movement, emotions, and relationships. Let's breathe Improv together.

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This workshops is divided in 2 parts:

 

BREATHING EMOTIONS where we explore how we feel emotions in our bodies, regulating them with our breathing. With simple exercises, we will find the spaces in us to let fictional emotions be felt for real.

 

BREATHING THE MIME it is the part where we correlate each breathing movement with the gestures on the scene to create an illusion based on body awareness.

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Skills: Body conscience and organic control. Principles of mime. The rhythm of the scene. Acting emotions technique.

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Hours: 3 or 6 hours (each part of the workshop takes 3 hours)

On-line version: 2 to 3 hours (only "Breathing emotions" part)

Number of participants: 6-20. 

Participant Level: All. 

Special requirements: Open and empty room, sound system, and chairs (one for each student). 

Capoeira is a style of fight and dance from Africa/Brazil that, today, is also gathering people that just want to play it. Yes, there is a game to be played inside the circle and it only happens because of the connection with the people around. In this workshop, we use some principles of capoeira that can directly help our improvisation. So it is not a capoeira class, it is a capoeira mindset for improv, and the mind is the body. We will work on the "string" body quality of "ginga" used in capoeira to be more available on stage. It is a quality that allows us to expand and retract (like a string), making us ready to give an offer and receive an offer at the same time (sounds like Impro already). That will be the body that we will use to play with movement offers and let the movement inspire our words (if they come). It is a great way to feel words as movement and as part of the musicality on stage. This musicality is also explored by the group on the "sidelines", in our case, on the circle. As in capoeira, the group is as important as the game that we are watching in the center of the circle. The group's attention and readiness follow the rhythm of the game or change it. Everybody is ready to tag (yes, there is actually a tag in capoeira). This mindset makes the entire ensemble responsible for what is happening on stage, it takes the work backstage and shares the weight of creating the show. Presence, group rhythm, ensemble connection, trust, and physicality, all at once: an opportunity to be playful with the risk.

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Skills: Presence, group rhythm, ensemble connection, ensemble presence, the power and influence of sideline's ensemble, capoeira principles, trust and physicality, "string" body quality and "ginga".

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Hours: 3 or 6 or 9 hours

Number of participants: 8-20. 

Participant Level: All. 

Special requirements: Open and empty room, and sound system.

We will study the adventure cycles and the archetypal characters of the tarot cards to explore the combinations and possibilities of the adventure in an Impro show. The tarot cards have a lot of information to creates characters and its structure also plays with storytelling.

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The workshop is divided in two individual parts: Characters and Storytelling structure.

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Skills: character creation, narrative and moving and expanding the scene action.

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Hours: 3 or 6 hours (each part of the workshop takes 3 hours)

On-line version: 2,5-3 hours each part.

Number of participants: 6-12. 

Participant Level: All. 

Special requirements: Open and empty room, sound system and 4 chairs.

Two sides of the same coin: Opposition is a powerful thing. It can be a tool. It can be a method of creation. It can be a theme. It can be a format. Opposition makes you see and fill the balance. In this workshop we will get deep in opposition not only to build different characters and relationships, but also different kinds of scenes, spaces, styles, transitions, speeds: dark and light, strong and weak, beauty and nasty, yin and yang, yes and no: finding ourselves being the “and”, being something together, being the same where we are different.

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Skills: Spatial relationship, Group mind, Listen to the play as whole thing by looking to the pieces (scene by scene) and some Viewpoints technique.

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Hours: 3 hours

On-line version: 2,5-3 hours.

Number of participants: 8-12. 

Participant Level: All

Special requirements: Open and empty room, sound system and 2 chairs.

How can we be fully aware of what we create while we are creating? How can we let ourselves be in flow and make choices at the same time? Using Viewpoints of Time and Space by Anne Bogart and Tina Landau, we will find tools for Improv performances to help us with simple things as remembering where improvised objects are, to more deep issues of movement and presence in the scene. 

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This workshop has 4 parts/lessons:

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FIRST AWARENESS (+on-line version)

How the system of Viewpoints (Anne Bogart and Tina Landau) can help our improv scenes. 9 points of view from time and space to help us to be present, aware and make powerful choices. In this workshop we will exercise the awareness of elements of time and space towards our improv scenes. We will talk about how Viewpoints can help our Improv and exercise a few to understand this combination.

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SHAPE AND CHARACTER  (+on-line version)

This workshop foccus in the Viewpoint of Shape to create and discover characters. From outside to the inside, we will explore how deep we can know our characters when we let the entire body speak.

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GESTURE AND EMOTION  (+on-line version)

The truth is in our gestures. We will use the Viewpoints of Time (Tempo, Repetition, Duration and Kinesthetic Response) to explore the Viewpoint Gesture (Behavioral and Expressive) to realize how emotions can be in a finger tip or in a blink of an eye (literally). We will combine Viewpoints with some dance (contemporary and Laban ideas) to play exercises and scenes.

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SPACE AS A PARTNER  (+on-line version)

In this workshop we will explore the Viewpoints of Space: Topography, Spatial Relationship and Architecture to find games, dynamics, playing with the real and the imaginary space in improv scenes.

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Skills: Awareness, flow and choice. The use of space and time as partners on stage. Basic of Viewpoints (Space and Time) and how to use this system in a Improv scene and training.

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Horas: 3-12 horas (3 horas para cada parte)

Versão On-line: 2,5-3 hours (each lesson)

Number of participants: 6-20. 

Participant Level: All

Special requirements: Open and empty room, sound system and two chairs. 

How to use the details and the big pictures to create characters, images and stories on stage? This workshop starts from a simple exercise of image association to stimulate the investigation mind of the improviser to create narratives throw image. Not only image as a start point but as the whole thing using Group mind.

For the option of 6 hours we actually can use camera and projection and exercise a mix between video and life performance.

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Skills: Group mind, scene space and narrative. Cinematography structure: from image to storytelling.  

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Hours: 3 or 6 hours (3 hours each part)

Number of participants: 6-10. 

Participant Level: All

Special requirements: Open and empty room, sound system and two chairs. For the 6 hours version: wall or screen that we can project video, the room should go dark or at least a little darker so the projection can work. I can travel with my projector, but it would be easier if the space already has it.

This class works with sponteneous and interactive narrative. Improv, ediction, characters and narrative exercises will be apply to story and to experiment narratives that comes from the scene to paper, from paper to the scene. 

A course to exercise the writer mind, acting skills with text: script or improvised.

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Skills: creative flow tools, narrative structures, and scene edition tools.

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Hours: 3 or 6 hours

Number of participants: 1-16. 

Participant Level: All

Special requirements: Open and empty room, sound system, and chairs (one for each student).