Physical Theatre Courses

About

We offer two courses during the winter term: Beginners and Intermediate.

-BEGINNERS COURSE:

The main focus of the beginners course is to release preconditioned views of acting and bringing student’s attention back to their own body.

Students are introduced to physical exercises, movement improvisation, movement analysis, and devising process to discover the expressive possibilities of their body and to developed self awareness.

Breakdown of the course:

1st Module. Encountering with your own body: The first module will be based on “meeting with your own body”! Exploring in which ways we can move in a more sustainable, playful and creative way. We will be working on playfulness, core connection, gravity and balance. We will explore how our body can function better when we use our core to generate movement, and which kind of movements we can create when we “move from the centre”. We will investigate the concept of balance, equilibrium and disequilibrium, and how we can perform them in order to create drama and action.

2nd Module. Applied Techniques: Starting from this acquired exploration of our own body we will then move towards studying fundamental movement principals, discovering time, space, rhythm, shapes and gestures. In this module, students will be asked to observe reality and nature and to analyze the interconnection between the human body and reality. Therefore we will be working on embodying states of flow, resistance, push and pull and natural integral forces regulating nature and life.

- INTERMIEDIATE COURSE:

In the Intermediate course we invite students to “enter into the form”, observing and investigating reality to embody its movement.

Embodiment will enlighten a new dimension of poetical movement where you find gestures and movements who are not explanatory or formal but truthful and poetic.

First of all, you will discover unity between your body and the realm of reality. An incredible freedom is in observing and understanding the dynamic of natural movement, sounds, shapes and gesture. And you will find that all the “movements of the world” are already written in your body. Consequently, you will be able to start a process of awakening to let the poetical possibility to unfold.

Breakdown of the course:

THEATRE OF GESTURE: “THE MIME MOVEMENTS”. Action mime provides a basis for analyzing physical actions of humans. It consists in reproducing a physical action as closely as possible, miming the object, the obstacle, the resistance. Rather than creating physiological explanation, we research the economy of physical action. This work will be essential for performers who want to discover dynamic of movement and theatre of gesture.

STUDYING ANIMALS TO BUILD CHARACTERS. We will analyze animal movements and behaviour, investigating how they stand, eat, hunt, what drives them, how fast, how slow they move.  This work will be essential to build characters and human attitudes. Rather than an encounter between the performer and his character, we will create a relationship which is always triangular: the animal, the character, and the performer.

VOICE, SOUNDS AND RHYTHM. We will move from silence into sound, rhythm and musicality of motion. You will explore rhythm through the body, and musicality through the voice. Above all, you will have the opportunity to deepen your individual access to the world of rhythm and voice. Finally, your discoveries will be applied to the process of devising theatre, creating storytelling and exploring dramatic and narrative territories just using your voice, musicality and rhythm.

Courses are lead by Monika Gravagno

Monika Gravagno is a Performing Artist. She has been trained at the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA) in Jacques Lecoq’s Pedagogy and Devising Techniques. She works as a Teacher and Coach, specifically in devising projects, leading and helping artists during their creative process.