Playing in flow: ensemble, movement, & voice (weekend)
by Ben Crystal
About the workshop:
A weekend of physical play, tuning your body and voice to the room.
Exploring exercises that give space for your natural simple play, to free your voice, and quickly establish a collaborative, connected feeling of togetherness, of ensemble.
Find a flexible, rich focus, and a spontaneous lightness in movement. Feel the ground beneath your feet. Let the body be the subtitles to the story, the poem, or the song. Explore confidently speaking or singing in front of others while also staying free to explore the physical world of play.
The exercises physically manifest a generous, welcoming, and fully participatory creative process. The exercises encourage eye contact, honest reactions, and full body physical expression, and they create a common language among participants that is non-hierarchical.
Working in solo, pairs, and as a group, explore your own craft of physical play from the heart – without getting into your head – training craft in stillness, focus, and flow in a neutral body.
Fine-tune how you listen to the room, to your self, to each other. Listen with the eyes in the back of your head. Hone your personal craft of moving in relation to space, architecture, and everyone around you.
Ben about working with the stick:
“Consider the simplicity of walking across a space with a stick on the end of your finger.
The aim is not to make it across the room without the stick falling. That’s easy, that’s just balancing.
When you take a stick for a walk, much like a dog off leash, it will tend to go where it wants, and we must listen to it, flow with it. And we must become aware of the tension that creeps in, that sends shoulders to ears, tensing every muscle in your torso, a single finger flying away striated from the rest of the hand, for fear of the stick falling to the ground.
It’s just a stick, so who cares if it falls.”
Biography:
Ben is an actor, author, and creative producer. He trained with Complicité, Frantic Assembly, and with Annabel Arden, Jennifer Jackson, Monika Pagneux, David Zambrano, and Mick Barnfather.
Ben works with an international ensemble to create full-scale productions of Shakespeare plays in 3 days or less, exploring a fusion of Elizabethan rehearsal methods and modern physical theatre techniques. They create work that responds to the environment, the community, and the space they find themselves playing in.
He has directed at the Shakespeare’s Globe, London and consults with theatres around the world. He is passionate about making theatre in non-English-speaking communities from inner-city warehouses to remote mountain-tops.
Ben did a TEDx talk, which was called Original Practices: Shakespeare’s Craft.
He tweets from @bencrystal
Links:
www.passioninpractice.com/sticks-workshops
www.bencrystal.com
Dates:
Saturday – Sunday
September 10th – September 11th
Times:
10:00-16:00
Price:
80 €
