Improvidence opens the third edition of the ‘Lyon Improv Fest’!
August 20 – 26
The LIF is the very first international improv festival in Lyon. We are proud to welcome renowned international guests we love and have been following for years. The LIF in one of the largest improv events in France. 300+ improvisers, 25 workshops, 15 international guest, 20 shows. It is the very first festival bringing together so many different improv trends. Choose your own path, register for workshops or apply with your own shows.
SAVE THE DATE!
From August 20 to 26 2023
THE LYON IMPROV FEST
What a fabulous cast! We are already excited to welcome their amazing shows every night.
Improvidence Theatre is the France’s first improvised comedy theater.
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Fiasco. Season finale. With Selena Hernandez and special guest Joe Bill.
A season of 9 episodes about love cynicism, emotional or sexual addiction, the highs and lows of meeting someone… quests to find our unreachable stars.
A show by Selena Hernandez, Marie Parent, Christophe Le Cheviller.
Directed by Marie Parent and Christophe Le Cheviller – La Morsure –
The sound painting is a sign language that is used to compose in real time performances executed by several art disciplines. Created by Walter Thompson and spread around the world, the “Impro Big Band” is a derived dialect from the original. It has been performed at Mexico, Reunion Island, Puerto Rico, Spain, etc. with an absolute success. Is a new way to play, in relationship with another artistic disciplines.
This workshop is open to actors, musicians, dancers and any other artistic discipline!
Improvising with musicians is awesome for adding atmosphere and emotion to scene work but how can we help and move our partners without musicians or soundtracks?
In this workshop you will learn basic tools to support scenes using soundscapes, music, choir singing and basic beatboxing and sound effects.
This musical from Joe Samuel (UK), Heather Urquart (UK) & Joe Bill (USA) is based on the idea that the favorite songs in Improvised Musicals tend to be those songs that are rooted in the Blues. They wondered, what if EVERY song in a musical was a completely different sounding song that’s rooted in The Blues? Would that even be possible? After a wildly successful debut in 2017 at The Arabian Nights Festival in Dubai, it became clear that it was not only possible but that THIS is the trio who can wield the musical Blues Hammer to cure whatever blues their audience might be experiencing that night. This talented & experienced trio, led by the phenomenal musical improviser Joe Samuel on keyboards, is happy to share Blues Hammer with LIF this year.
Random is an improv show in its purest form. It is a playground for improvisers and an open window to their imagination. Scene after scene, actors and musicians create worlds using might, music, sound or random set pieces.
People remember things, things remember people.
All the time, all the times.
A show by Omar Galvan.
No relationships go deeper than family relations. (Grand)parents, children, siblings, they can often read each other even if they don’t want to be read, and they constantly rub each other either the right or the wrong way. Love and hate sleep in the same bed. That is why most drama, both in theater and in real life, is family drama.
Inspired by true personal stories of the actors and the audience, we will play an impactful collage of scenes in diverse theatrical styles. Sometimes we will find the obvious, sometimes a hidden gem. Raw, hilarious, dramatic – but always fierce.
Trapped by a evil game, Storybox’s actors/singers and musicians must act, sing, dance and improvise to survive-all based ont the audience’s suggestions.
Come and see short musicals that will let you travel through music and theater.
Inbal Lori (Tel Aviv) and Tim Orr (San Francisco) combine to present Click. In this format, the improvisers take their inspiration from photographs provided by the audience, rather than verbal suggestions. Each scene will start with a new photograph, and the scenes are most likely unrelated. The evocative, non-literal nature of photographs allows the actors to discover their way into characters and situations through the feeling that the images inspire.
20 suggestions are taken from the audience in perfectly random order and written on a board visible only to the audience. Improviser and mentalist Cédric Fernandez memorizes these words. His partner then enters the theater knowing nothing of these words, and from there they embark on an improvised story in which Cédric puts the words in order from 1 to 20.
The last time they saw each other they spent the night together, today they accidentally meet up again…
A show by Mark Jane and Jeanne Chartier.
The life of an object told through the stories of the people who encounter it.
A show by Felipe Ortiz and Patti Stiles.
Two mediterranean woman, one a brunette Israeli and the other a blonde Spaniard, will improvise a full-length story as an allegory based on a secret answer they get from someone in the audience.
Be prepared for anything: beauty, ugliness, love, hate, violence, dance, and the art of not giving a f**K.
This is a show without rules or structure. it is about the story they both wanna tell you at that exact moment.
Corpus Gang is a spontaneous, visual and musical comedy!
Helped by the musicians, the actors give life to the audience words, using only their bodies to create funny or poetic characters and their intertwined stories.
Life is like hitting random on a playlist, you never know what song is coming next.
“Dance, Monkey!” is an improvised one-woman show with an ever-emerging cast of thousands of characters. Music inspires dance, movement, personalities, points of view, location, time, tone and pace as one scene moves to the next. “Dance, Monkey!” is comedic monologues and scenes just like a solo theatre piece, except everything is made up on the spot and the characters are talking right to you!
A show performed by Lindsay Gonzales.
SOIRAVE [a show that gives you a headache]
Hallucinatory awareness & stage distortion at 200 BPM
BODIES // FLASH // NIGHTMARE
Dive deep down into limbo
Bad trip & techno guaranteed
The company Le Mal du Siècle invites you to a party from which no one will emerge unscathed.
Ever wondered what goes on behind the doors of a hotel room? Watch this newbie page boy get drawn into the stories of his unique hotel guests…
A hotel clerk’s first night shift. Four rooms calling for service, one after the other, and the page boy soon realizes: It’s no ordinary night!
These hotel guests aren’t just asking for a bottle of wine…
Funny, spooky or deeply touching: an improvised journey bringing you four rooms with four stories.
An improv show based on the 1995 movie “Four Rooms”, originally directed
by Anders, Rockwell, Rodriguez and Tarantino. Come watch us make up the
sequel!
A show directed by Lee White.
One word, a short discussion, then one story, a weirdly specific world and characters who fight to change against all odds.
A mix of character-driven storytelling, visual worldbuilding and complete absurdity makes Hugh & Olivier a truely unique duo.
2 detectives will need to find who is guilty among four suspects
The trick: the four suspects know who is guilty but not the detectives beforehand.
So who is guilty?!
A poetic exploration on the daily life of a nonexistent but probable small town. Omar Galvan and Felipe Ortiz will take you on a journey through the world of latin American magic realism: characters, places and situations from a town lost in time and space.
Infinite possibilities open up in front of our eyes when two clowns take the stage and improvise.
Imaginary worlds are born, inspired by the audience, connecting us all… like strings.
Björn Bongaards and Donat Feijóo’s duo format «Lock & Load» takes you to the improvised world of the Secret Service: fast cars, thundering explosions, loaded handguns, lots of action and an evil villain who tries to get into the heros way at the critical moment. After all, someone’s got to save the world! «Lock & Load» is a narrative longform show inspired by James Bond-style movies.
Take Israeli born Inbal Lori, add the Canadian improv hero Lee White. They blend together to become one of Berlins hottest new duos. The Lorilees. They approach stories in a way that’s beautiful and edgy. Never afraid to shy away from hard topics, their improv styles mash together with power and grace.
SCRAM! is a show by Joe Bill and Jill Bernard where 3 different 2-person scenes happen at the same time.
Want to laugh while learning something about science, then this is for you!
Five women are spending time together in one place. Each of them has a secret. Over the course of the short three-act-play some of the secrets will come to light – and will forever change the relationships between the women.
Our characters are inspired by real secrets from the audience – you are invited to write down a secret of yours before the show! We will put in our own secrets as well 🙂
The stage is an imaginary border between sleep and wakefulness, where pictures
appear and fade, stories born and develop, and the audience gets a peek to a visual
fantasy led by charismatic storytelling.
A show created by Inbal Lori (ISR-Berlin) and Keng-Sam Chane Chick Te (Reunion Island) and performed by the full festival ensemble.
In this course we will learn how to use the body as well as the mind. Not to be dissociated to be able to transmit in silence with our bodies the things that are happening to us. We will learn to gather ideas with physicality and body, in order to achieve a more complete and committed communication.
We will see the different ways we have to tell a story. Using resources like flash-back, flash-forward, music to make time jumps. Even cyclic structures, ordered and disordered. We will learn to know what is the main thread of each story and to quickly identify which is the engine and the idea. So we don’t get lost later in the structure and use it to entertain us and to surprise the audience.
A one day course for people who have said ‘I could never do musical improv’.
Heather and Joe will provide a supportive, joyous and safe environment for any age or ability to explore the world of improvising with music. We’ll cover a range of music styles, games and song structures. We’ll also look at taking improvised scenes into songs. Really useful for those who want to give it a go but need a safe environment to let their musical hair down. Also suitable for those who want a fun refresh and introduction to some new exercises.
In this workshop you will work on scenes that lead to memorable songs, and practice different song structures.
What makes a scene go from talking to singing? When is it the right moment? How can a song rise the stakes or make us understand a character?
You will find answers to these questions and many more!
And this class is open to musician improvisers!
In this workshop, I take participants through some of the core principles of Commedia Del Arte. On how through your body language, and gibberish you can actually tell a story.
We’ll look at areas like:
How can I perform without talking my native language?
How a movement or a facial expression can transform your story?
How do we elaborate a scene without talking, but only with your body expression?
This workshop is an encounter with an essential part of oneself. The clown that we’re looking for is hidden there where we hide our defects and our fears. Where we hide optimism and the pleasure to fail as well.
In the workshop we´ll explore through games, improvisation and movement, the work of connecting in a special way with the public, the discovery of creativity immersed in failure, the ability to live in the moment and the moment in search of pleasure and play.
Lee will guide you through some basic long form structures to give you a taste of the complicated but exhilarating world of long form improv. This workshop covers story timing, simple story frameworks and character development. Even if you have been doing long forms for years, this is a great workshop to get new perspectives and inspiration.
Magical Realism is a genre where extraordinary, unreal and strange things appear as part of the daily life and it´s completely normal.
This workshop is a journey through the complex world of magical realism exploring basic elements such as : different ways of playing with time, fantastic or magic things as part of normal life, social and political relationships, and from who´s point of view are we watching the story.
Just like life – impro requires contradictory abilities: the ability to be focused, and the ability to let go.
To zoom in and zoom out.
To find the details and tell the story.
To lead! And still stay surprised.
To hurry up, and slow down.
These contradictory abilities are simply different ends of the same rope. The rope of focus, storytelling, cooperation, rhythm and more. I invite you to come and explore the balance, the place where you can choose to do what’s needed at the right time.
Be a Ninja! You have inside of you the spectrum of each tool, now use the one most needed.
The workshop will explore the joy of finding truth in characters, and the ability to change in a believable way. We will do so by trying out different body languages, statuses, personal rhythms and psychological states.
We will explore realistic characters along side with expressive and extreme ones. By using impro scenes and long forms, we will search the ways each character has to express it self while using its motivation, action, relationships and more.
In this workshop we will explore everything about the languages of improv. These include:
This workshop will probably be best for Intermediate to Advanced Improvisers and especially beneficial for multilingual improvisers. I will also provide personal feedback for each improviser and will be open to addressing any curiosities about Language in Improvisation that students bring into the workshop.
This workshop will explore more than 15 structures for one actor scenes. Using viewpoints and other tools we will unfold the triple role in the monologues: the writer, performer and director.
Tools to generate scenes and no improv text.
Let’s take risks. Let’s be on the stage in groups of between 3 and 10 people at the same time.
Let’s see how we can find focus, harmony, beauty, narrative, statuses and much more in this situation that we are usually trying to avoid.
I believe that seeing a bunch of improvisers finding the flow together is a powerful and unusual thing to see on an impro stage.
I invite you to explore with me the power of a group. To find the difference notes in the harmony. To find the balance between leading and following. To enjoy the power and support of being on stage as a mass group.
Jill Bernard offers a character toolkit to give participants the ability to create strong, compelling characters that they can hang onto through the whole scene. This session will focus on using Voice, Attitude or Posture, and Animal, Prop or Obsession to build instant characters. Participants will use these tools to fearlessly initiate scenes, create relationships and find agreement.
But improv can also contain realistic characters who are vulnerable. Having the ability to create improv that is honest and vulnerable adds another layer to your work, a little bit of cake underneath your frosting to take your work from light entertainment to something with resonance. In this module, we start with your true self as a completely valid and powerful launchpad to creating original improvisation.
This workshop presents Jill Bernard’s Fireball Theory and offers exercises to help you improvise faster and harder than you can judge yourself.
You will learn to metaphorically hit the scene running and outrun the explosion of self-loathing and doubt like an action movie hero outruns a fireball thus defying the laws of physics.
This Master Class is designed for the experienced improviser and is focused on providing specific feedback on the individual from an experience outside eye.
We look at strengths, patterns and habits. The aim is to bring a greater awareness of your work, provided challenges and open areas for growth.
Deal with the worst improvisers and worst situations.
Improvising implies taking risks but also commitment to your partners.
We want to feel safe on stage but that oftens makes us too polite.
We’ll study both sides of the coin and learn how to break the rules and deal with the rulebreakers!
The intensive focuses on the skills for creating, building and sustaining a scene / story in either long or short form. We look at platform, circle of expectations, identifying whose scene is it, advancing, raising the stakes and finding endings.
Improvising 1-Act and 3-Act Stageplays
Discover the joys of using your full acting prowess in this awesome format! If you enjoy improvising full-length stories, you’ll LOVE discovering The Naked Stage!
This intensive will focus on the acclaimed Improv Playhouse of San Francisco format “The Naked Stage”, in which the stories take place in a single setting/location, in traditional stage-play style. The improvisers play one character each, and there are no built-in time jumps, transitions or scene breaks. All the actors have is the bare stage, a simple suggestion from the audience, and each other. “The Naked Stage” is hugely popular in San Francisco and across the USA.
“The Naked Stage” combines San Francisco’s tradition of narrative longform improvisation with the demands and surprises of traditional theater. In a sense, the actors are “trapped” on stage with only each other. Without the usual exit options (lights, time and location jumps, and other scene-enders), they are left to fully confront the characters and situations which they have created.
(Suggested that students have significant prior experience in longform improv.)
Doing scenes with no talking (!) takes us into a realm of non-verbal communication which is both
challenging and eye-opening.
How do we do it with clarity and commitment? How do scenes build? We need to pay attention and respond to each other in new and exciting ways. Fun!
This workshop is for those who want to start working with the audience even more than already usual in improv. You may have heard of Lees work on stage, performing scenes with audience members in the show „Your 15 Minutes of Fame“. The results can be magical. It’s a must see for any Improviser.
Working with the audience can be tricky, dangerous and even frightening. Lees approach is simple… they should be the star. Giving everything to support your public partner becomes the best practice for any improviser. Lee takes you through his philosophy and various scenarios to condition you for entering the world of scenes with audience members.
For experienced performers.
In this workshop we will combine multiple aspects of improvisation to make characters, scenes and stories bigger, stronger and more fun!
Physicality: by being physical on stage, we lift improv out of the “talking heads” syndrome and into exciting and theatrical worlds. By being physical, we engage both ourselves and our audience on a visceral level. How do we portray Violence, Friendship, Intimacy, Love, Lust?
Staging: in improv, we can actually make an audience see things and places that aren’t there on stage, if only we have the skills and commitment to make it happen. Instead of standing onstage and talking, we have the opportunity and the challenge of portraying the full range of human experience.
Transitions: transitions (sometimes called “edits” or “scene cuts”), both within and between scenes, are one of the truly magical aspects of improvisation. We will look at the many ways that we can, as an ensemble, move from one part of scenes and stories into the next part, with the goal of making anything and everything possible. “
“Many of the genres we perform have characters that were created to reflect society of the time. Even if the author set the story in a different time, the actions or behaviours of the characters represented the social sensibility of the reader. These acceptable social rules were heavily categorised into male and female behaviour. Today’s world is different. Our social dynamics and ‘rules’ of engagement encompass more freedom then rules of the past yet our storytelling is still shackled to historical roles. For example, if we continue to categorise behaviour by gender, in reflection of today’s world, are we not perpetuating a form of sexism? Do the actions need to be linked to the gender for the story to be told? Do the stories remain genre ‘true’ regardless of ‘gender’ casting? By questioning, challenging and exploring the purpose of the character in the story and removing the gender assumptions we break open new levels of impro play and possibilities. The effects on the audience are really quite interesting.”
What is more difficult than improvising an emotionally truthful play? Doing it in multiple languages! What happens when the stranger enters the house of Babel? Someone who can’t communicate? Who’s only language is English. Will the tower fall?
Werewolves The Improv Show is a longform that combines improvised theatre with the popular party game The Werewolves Of Miller’s Hollow. The players introduce a smalltown village in medieval times. People are living their simple lives until a curse hits the village: werewolves start killing off innocent villagers one by one. Their only hope is for the audience to discover the wolves amongst the villagers before it is too late…
Night School Improv has been enlightening audiences in San Francisco for over two years. By taking fun facts from the audience and performing sets based on them, Night School is dedicated to making people learn as much as they laugh.
Come one, come all to see the Fortune Teller, a mystical being with the ability to see into your future. Come see the Fortune Teller, who will sense the presence of the chosen one in the audience and reveal untold truths. Come see the Fortune Teller bring the improbable future of the chosen one to life before your very eyes with the help of The Ghost Sheep !
A few lines. Just a few lines can spark into a million different conversations. Start a new scene. The same lines, but a totally different scene with a unique approach. And again. And again. These words will unleash multiple chains of events and we’ll be there to explore all the possibilities and leave no stone unturned.
Crazy 80s. Two friends remember the time of their stage glory while acting out the story of their life. The performance is interlaced with the biggest disco hits, which are created ad hoc with the tips from the audience.
Joe Bill is american. Felipe Ortiz is columbian. So of course they will perform a show in French, with wine, cheese and few words !
The Bookends is a literature-inspired narrative longform duo made up of two bookworms, Bart Van Loon and Kelly Agathos. The audience is asked to bring a book with them, and once one is selected, a sentence from it will inspire the rest of their show. Throughout the show, Bart and Kelly both act out and take turns narrating the story, giving the audience an alternative, touching and entertaining version of their book! You will never read your book in the same way again…
A gloomy melodrama with a pessimistic undertone. A woman with a history meets a man with no future. The improvisers create a story in the neo-noir style, bringing on stage the dark and light sides of life.
In everyday life, what do we do when we want to express ourselves but it is impossible to speak ? Decibel, using the art of mime and bodily fluency, offers the audience the opportunity to immerse themselves in situations, real ones or not, where language is not possible. Accompanied by a musicians who participates interactively in the creation of the stories, they will bring you into realistic and surprising universes.
In a place where worlds collide, different realities hold hands and space and time had too much to drink, two parallel played solos merges into one duo. A double solo. Solodoppio.
Sassy Murder was formed out of a love of freedom and absurdity on stage. Heavily inspired by Boston-style freeform, filtered through Chicago long-form and European narrative, they take all the best bits and the bits they love, throw it all against the wall and see what sticks.
Every scene is inspired by the previous one. It could be the atmosphere, the emotions, the energy, the theme… whatever inspires the improviser who decides what the scene was about and how it will be used to inspire the next one.
Random is an improv sho in its purest form. It is a playground for improvisers and an open window to their imagination. Scene after scene, actors and musicians create worlds using might, music, sound or random set pieces.
Inbal Lori (Tel Aviv) and Tim Orr (San Francisco) combine to present Click. In this format, the improvisers take their inspiration from photographs provided by the audience, rather than verbal suggestions. Each scene will start with a new photograph, and the scenes are most likely unrelated. The evocative, non-literal nature of photographs allows the actors to discover their way into characters and situations through the feeling that the images inspire.
Drum Machine is Jill Bernard’s one-person sweepingly epic unscripted musical featuring multiple characters in scenes, monologues and songs accompanied by electronic drum beats or in collaboration with a musician. The show opens with a brief interview of an audience member, then Bernard creates a musical that weaves details of their life into a historical period suggested by the audience.
In search of an unknown hero…
Inspired by your suggestions, the actors propose a biography of an everyday hero. A one hour exhilarating life story punctuated by flash-backs, intriguing characters and improbable anecdotes that marked the life of our hero. Plunge into intimate secrets, hold your breath in moments of glory and tremble in times of doubt. The story writes itself before your eyes.
LUGARES (PLACES) invites members of the audience to describe a special setting. This glimpse into an inner world might describe a house of a grandparent, an attic room lived in during college, or a car you commute in. The improvisers create exciting new stories and parallel worlds that will change the way we see the spaces around us, and connect us to our own personal places. This is improvised theatre that is crafty, challenging and adventurous.
Mixing his experiences as professional improviser and former light designer, Franck BuzZ, with Thomas Ury’s support,
imagined a show where lighting atmospheres, randomly associated to sound atmospheres, are the starting points of each new scene.
In order to provide variety, it combines all types of lighting sources, from candle to videoprojection. All the magic is in the choice of lightning energies, conceived so as to stimulate improv actors and encourage them to release their spontaneity.
Quotable Women is a celebration of women improvisors. Using quotes from notable women throughout history as inspiration, Quotable Women will take us on a playful expedition into the often untold stories of women. Power, submission, lust, love, sexuality, body image, success, politics, friends, sister, mothers, daughters, whores, virgins and lovers. Join this all female cast on a journey from concubine to feminist, from damsel in distress to patriarchal working woman.
An international cast of improvisers, actors and musicians will unite to create an fully improvised musical !
Five improvisers take turns as movie directors, casting and directing a movie in their favourite genre. The audience will decide which movies get to be continued, and at the end of the show a single movie will get the green light !
Observer, étudier, signifier, épuiser à la fin ce qui n’est pas perçu, l’ordinaire, l’infraordinaire, ce qui se passe quand il ne se passe rien: comme un rat qui construit lui-même le labyrinthe dont il se propose de sortir.
“Tentative…” est, aussi, un hommage à George Perec et à l’OuLiPo.
Two people in one room for the whole story. Extradited to each other. No entrance, no exit. Nobody will join and nobody will leave. When space and time are limited, the improvisers have to find the issues inside and between the characters themselves… and escape from the inside. The deeper they dig, the more freedom they get !
In days of old the fate of civilisations was decided by a handful of powerful men and women. Heroic leaders, courageous believers and glory seeking rulers in a struggle to conquer. An improvised tale of survival in ancient times. 12 actors permanently onstage to improvise the situations as well as all the visual aspects, both real and symbolic, of this epic universe.
The power of body-telling. How much do you need words? How much can you tell with the body?
This a format without words created by Felipe Ortiz. It’s a collection of scenes without words inspired by a short interview of a member of the audience.
The improvisers will jump into a wordless challenge: communicating without words, opening a whole new world of magical realism where anything can happen.
“Longform improvised musicals are one of the most intense, joyful and brave formats for an improviser. If you want to take your improv to the next level, this series of workshops will focus on intense listening, commitment and support as well as some technical skills useful for performing improvised musicals such as song structures and big group numbers. We will also look at handling narrative, singing songs that matter, lyrics and choreography. No previous experience of musicals required, just bring your heart and soul! “
“Improvisers who inspire, surprise and delight their partners are the most fun to play with. How do they do this magic? This workshop explores exercises and techniques to help you delight, surprise and inspire your partner. How to change them, affect them and watch them light up!”
“We live in a complex, complicated and extraordinary world. Humans are capable of the most amazing heroic and horrific actions. What one person may see as rational and necessary another sees as an act of prejudice or violence. Our values, views, morality and beliefs colour our interpretation. Improvisational theatre can provoke the audience to question their own beliefs by shining a light on stories from a different point of view. Where the unimaginable becomes understandable and the wrong may seem right.Improvisers are often afraid to engage in the stories that reflect life around us. This workshop challenges participants to play scenes based on the dark and light of humanity. Please note: this workshop uses subject material and language that may be confronting and difficult for some people.”
“Joe Bill will share with you some tools that will help you make powerful choices in any context in which you find yourself improvising. The first tools for getting yourself into a place of vitality for yourself and connectedness with your scene partners. Then you’ll get tools to forward scenes, games & stories all the way through to an ending that is compelling for both you and your audience. This workshop will also include some individual and group diagnostic and feedback, especially around issues that are constraining you or putting you into your head.”
“Saying “Yes And” without words is a pleasure. More deeply, we will work on an organic chain of action/reaction, without words. Learning to trust silence and to respect the silence of my partner. Trying not to fill the silence but to let us become full from it.”
“Appropriate for Improvisers with at least 2 years of experience up to professional level. This workshop will introduce you to your brain and how it works to serve (and also paralyze) you while you’re doing Improv Scenes. You will learn how to recognize the sensations that go along with being connected or disconnected from your scene partner or yourself (and your architect brain) so that you can be more fully present, productive and in service to each moment that you find yourself on stage improvising. You are an actor, director & playwright when you improvise long form, this workshop will help you feel the integration of ALL of those sensibilities in order to play both the truth and the comedy of moments as you improvise.”
“This workshop aims at releasing your physical creative power. Your body is much more smarter than your brains and it’s an open book worth to be read. Let’s leave our brains backstage and follow our animal instincts. Listen to our bodies and our senses. Learn to be present from the 4 elementary animals: The Monkey (Earth): Body Creativity The Tiger (Fire): Release the Power The Shark (Water): the 6th Sense The Dragon (Air) : The Magic Skills and tools: physicality,creative work-out, Lecoq technique.”
We spend too much time on Man vs. Man. What other conflicts are there? Man vs. Nature, Man vs.Society, Man vs. Himself, etc. In this workshop we will do some scene stwhat we can do besides bicker with each other.
“Through spontaneity games, impro exercises, and specific movement techniques, you will find how to discover and create imaginary objects and spaces and how to connect your imagination with your body taking advantage of your possibilities and knowing your limits. In this workshop, the participants will be trained to allow their body to surprise them, taking them to unexpected places and circumstances, how to interact with imaginary spaces and objects, (they can be your best friend but also your worst enemy), this will be an important tool to avoid actor’s blockages and a limitless source of creativity and inspiration.”
“An pure Omar workshop. Omar Argentino Galvan shares his particular and evolving work always researching dramaturgic paths and performing solutions not generally explored in improv. The poetic movement. The magic realism as an excuse and inspiration to learn and generate new shows. Ghosts, the non-living character, the use of empty space, reality planes, imaginary object 2.0 and sound painting strokes. A key workshop to discover and understand a Latin American style of improvisation as a theatrical expression.”
“Not a traditional voice class, instead, we want to look at how you as a human being can create art that reflects what you want to say to the world. Of course we can do improv scenes about anything, but a playwright is able to choose their subject. This class guides you to examine what you really would like to improvise about. “
“LightboX is an innovative format created by Franck BuzZ where lighting and video atmospheres are the starting point of each new scene. The LightboX has been played in 10 differents countries and with a lot of international famous improvisers : Patti Stiles, Joe Bill, Inbal Lori, Felipe Ortiz, Susan Messing … In this workshop, discover how light can become your partner on stage and how you can create strong and powerful pictures to release your creativity and playfulness. Inspired by the « Lightbox » format, you will play in several lighting and video atmospheres to enter in a new universe of fantasy and poetry. Unique experience ! Guaranteed fun !! (videos of LightboX shows and workshops : https://vimeo.com/album/4163122 )”
Too often improv feels like a chore, filled with right decisions and good and bad choices. In this session with Jill Bernard, participants will learn the joy and success that follows doing exactly what tickles them.
“Group Pretty: Table Manners: 6 ways to create sustainable characters: Put up or shut up: Get reamed out and picked apart in a firework of personal feedback by two masters of improvisation. This workshop is for experienced improvisers who have been performing regularly for at least a couple of years.”
Characters should be familiar and yet new. How do we do this? Lee White guides you through simple character creation and helps maintain and expand these characters for both long and short form. Strong characters that make your audience fall in love with them and come back over and over. Looking at the choices we make as improvisers and how to make better, stronger choices to develop great characters for the stories you want to tell.
“What ever you or the scene needs is present on stage right now. As improvisers our imagination is working extra hours. Is not just about what we say or who we play, it’s also about where we are, what else is around us and how can we use it. This workshop will explore the ways to imagine and create the world you’re in. It will shift your focus into a wider perspective allowing you to be more spacious, detailed and inspired. See where you are and use it for the best of the scene!”
This workshop shows you how to create your scenes moment by moment, helping you to develop the skills for storytelling and strong characters. The scene work is the basic building block of any show. Lee helps you to recognize bad habits in your improvisation and gives you the tools to get out of them, helping you break down storytelling to its simplest and driving you to make them as complex and colourful as your imagination lets you.
“Are you afraid of the void, the slow, the silent and the unexpected? We’re going to explore global listening and learn how to reveal the magic scenes hidden inside you. We´ll learn to trust silence, our bodies, the environment and our partners to build our own truthful stories And share them to the world. Let’s wait and not run, let’s read the scenes rather than try to write them. Don´t give the audience what your fear thinks they want, give them what you are. Your pure honest self in the moment. Skills and Tools: Global Listening, Slow improv, physicality.”
“We’ll work on how to go deeper and deeper with our listening skills, in order to play more emotional and more organic scenes. All the exercises of this workshop will follow the metaphor of the mirror: a tool that will help us to respect and give value to the offers of our partner. In order to discover impro, more than create it. It will be fun and emotional, intense and poetic! “
“A sculptor starts to work on a big piece of wood, and a little kid is standing next to him, watching him work. After a while, the sculptor drops his tools on the floor, and walks back a little, to look at his sculpture. The kid does the same and discovers that the sculpture is actually his own face! He looks at the artist, and says, surprised: “Hey, how did you know I was in there?”. Why not become this sculptor and surprise the audience by revealing to them what is already there, in front of them, in between us? What if the stories we were about to tell were already written within us?” – for improvisers who are already familiar with the Slow technique
“A sculptor starts to work on a big piece of wood, and a little kid is standing next to him, watching him work. After a while, the sculptor drops his tools on the floor, and walks back a little, to look at his sculpture. The kid does the same and discovers that the sculpture is actually his own face! He looks at the artist, and says, surprised: “Hey, how did you know I was in there?”. Why not become this sculptor and surprise the audience by revealing to them what is already there, in front of them, in between us? What if the stories we were about to tell were already written within us?”
The horror scenario of many improvisers: ¨let’s see a solo scene¨ Actually it is not really that hard to play a scene just by yourself. Felipe Ortiz will help the participants of his workshop to bring solo-scenes to the stage by using physical work, details and being aware of your body. You will explore different ways for being able to travel inside your imagination and visualize for the audience and suddenly find yourself doing whole scenes without any pressure.
“Our body knows. Every improviser has already felt this inner impulse pushing you on stage because it’s «now». And we also know this little voice in our brain telling us just after the impulse: «are you sure ? is it a good idea ?». Inspired by techniques of other disciplines including dance, american native clowning, breathing and meditation, martial arts, Franck Buzz will help you connect more deeply with your body. You will learn to recognize these inner impulses and listen to them, trusting yourself, here and now. In that way, you will shut off your « clever » brain, releasing your spontaneity to play organically with more love and honesty. Are you ready to intuitively play impro with eyes closed (literally) ?”
Discover the power that you get as an improviser when you play characters who actually get along with the other characters in the scene. Most improvisers have heard of playing “happy/healthy”, but in my experience less than 5% of improvisers in the world actually know how to do this. Is there really a need for conflict and trouble between the characters in scenes? By getting along and liking each other, a whole new world of conflict-free detail opens up. You give yourself and your partners the room to be anyone, do anything and be anywhere. This is a powerful and transformative approach that will change your improv for good!
Improvisation – like any other story telling art – uses the element of time, and does with it a variety of many cool things. It allows us to jump from one time to another,to be in two different times simultaneously, to slow or fast-forward the reality, to jump from the past to the future and much more! This intensive workshop it will take us from being totally present in the moment to time-traveling in an epic way, fast and funny way, with cinematic and theatrical qualities.
This workshop presents story structure based on Christopher Vogler’s adaptation of “The Hero’s Journey”. The participants will discover how to use this structure in a manner adapted for an improvised long form narrative performance. This unique workshop provides tools for developing and applying the “Hero’s Journey” in a flexible and free way that does not make the improvisation rigid and predictable. The Hero’s Journey is not a prison that restricts your improvisation, in understanding the movements of a story the Hero’s Journey liberates the creativity in any long form narrative performance.
Learn how to improvise sustained, improvised stories in any style or genre! This course focuses on the core elements that make San Francisco-style (Improv Playhouse, 3 For All, True Fiction Magazine, BATS, etc.) Long-Form successful—Ensemble, Narrative, Acting, and Genres/Characters/Wheres. This intensive is for both improvisers with previous experience who want to step up to the next level, and for improvisers who are just starting to do long-form stories. (Warning: this course may give you the desire to do long-form improv for the rest of your life).