Rama Nicholas

Explore your dark side in this workshop about playing authentic Villains. Recently toured in Israel, Belgium and Sweden with excellent feedback from participants. This workshop asks -how do we get good at being really bad. For most of us it feels very unnatural. But, every great hero needs a great villain to overcome. Villains can be integral to a story. This workshop explores how to bring out our inner villain and not in a 'pantomime' way! I mean dark, dangerous and unpredictable. Exploring offers and characters we would never have dreamed of before. It also explores why we might be afraid of playing the villian on stage. Because of the nature of the work this workshop requires absolute commitment, trust and openness from all participants.

This is a workshop about creating safe, consensual romantic and intimate improvised scenes on stage. I have been exploring this work for the past 10 years and am also trained as an Intimacy Co-ordinator for film and tv. The themes of the workshop are - Love and intimacy in romantic relationships and applying these concepts to our performance without wimping out, stressing out, crossing your partners boundaries and also understanding how to express your own boundaries! How do we give our audience the gift of a truly romantic love scene and story? Whether it be hilarious or serious? How do we electrify our audience with our performers sexual energy without being too explicit? How do we break their hearts a little? How can we create intense and electric scenes? Why don’t we ever hear honest conversations around sex in our scenes? We see it all the time in film, theatre and in music, why not improvisation? The workshop is designed to help improvisers explore their fears around intimacy on stage, practice their acting skills when it comes to love scene’s, build trust and break down barriers with an ensemble and impro partners. I ask improvisers to share their fears around performing intimate scenes. I challenge them to separate themselves from their character to be able to fulfil their characters journey. We discuss boundaries as performers - I always assure students that; I will never push anyone into anything they are not ready for, for example kissing or touching. Though this is an area we will be venturing into, I teach how to build sexual tension without touching at all. After some discussion around the ideas of love, intimacy and understanding consent. We explore how to stage kiss, holding and embracing, eye contact, slowing down and reading body language. We explore a series of heart-warming exercises designed to build trust, playfulness and intensify energy. Then we run through a series of scenes based around relationships.

From Australian creator and director Rama Nicholas CLOSE TO YOU... A fully improvised show about Romantic love, Intimacy, Passion and Sexual Attraction. Romantic love is a theme we see in cinema, books, poetry, myths and legends. There are love stories everywhere and whether or not we like to admit it these stories intrigue us and draw us in with the thrill of feeling and hurting just as much as the characters do. And yet, romantic love is a place that improvisers rarely dare to tread. This intimate show, however, courageously draws back the veil on our secret lives and loves and gives the audience the chance to glimpse love in its rawest form improvised on stage. Experience the highs and lows. That warm and fuzzy feeling only a new love can invoke, candid conversations about sex, the ups and downs of lasting relationships, the passion, the craving, the break ups, the broken hearts and the electrifying tension of desire... Like all great love stories - CLOSE TO YOU will leave you wanting more.