Core Curriculum: Rotating 4 Day Schedule            

· Williamson Physical Technique
· Williamson Period Style
· Michael Chekhov Technique
· Viewpoints & Composition

Guest Artist Curriculum: 1 - 5 Day Workshops
· Fitzmaurice "Voicework" Technique
· Mask  
· Mime
· Laban & Character
· Feldenkrais Method
· Portrait Exercise

New Guest Artist

Andrew Wade 
Voice and Classical Style Text “Shakespeare to Oscar Wilde”

Verse Consultant on the film "SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE"

Janice Orlandi (Certified Teacher of the Williamson Technique for Actors)

This course will teach the basics of Williamson Technique, through a series of exercises that train the actor's ability to listen and communicate with the whole body while developing a stronger awareness their own experience and the experience of being part of an ensemble. Two major aspects of the work are freedom and connection. Total physical freedom in the actor's behavior leads to his or her complete connection with the relationships and circumstances of the imaginary world.

Exercises Include: A preparatory exercise: described by Mr. Williamson as, "a time for being with one's body in quiet and stillness." It is a guiding principle designed to enhance the student's awareness of the sensations and experience that are present within his or her own body.

Open Phrase Choreography: A sequence of "open" movement or vocabulary that expands the body and the voice and is designed to enhance the actor's ability to process their experience into behavior. The Open Choreography leads to movement improvisation that can flow in any sequence, in any rhythm that rises out of the connection that the actor has with their inner and outer experience. The form and its sequence or tempo is created out of a total freedom of expression.

Circles of Energy: A Williamson concept involving skeletal alignment and muscular release that expands the student's ability to; release and receive experience, it expands the muscles and breath. Locating the body's organic sense of balance, the "Circles of Energy" are then applied to the basic activities of standing, sitting and walking.

A Style Salon is an exercise that takes the student into the world of the play creating a character from the period in which a playwright sets the play. Students experience both the inner and outer elements of a specific period (e.g. Edwardian).

Outer elements of style include: the costumes, the dances, the social language, and all of the objects that outwardly inform the student's treatment of environmental elements such as the set and props.

Inner elements of the style include: a sense of space, grace and ease in formal situations, and all that creates the upper class, aristocracy, and royal class.

The students explore the inner and outer life elements of the characters in their gestures, deportment, dances, etc. this work culminates in an improvisational Period Style Salon Presentation. Because students work with images of real people that were actually connected to one another historically, their meeting, and the Salon itself, could theoretically re-write history.

Elements covered are:

• Period Character
• Period Music
• Period Costume
• Period Text
• Period Props
• Period Games
• Period Social Protocol
• Period Dance 

Curriculum includes: A Baroque and Elizabethan Period Style workshops. The emphasis of the workshops will be on the many differences between the eras presided over by Elizabeth I of England (1586), Louis XIV of France (1670), and Queen Victoria of England (1894).

Voice, Verse and Classical Style Text

Andrew Wade (Verse Consultant on the film "SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE")
Head of Voice at the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1990 - 2003.           

Voice, Verse and Classical Style Text

“Shakespeare to Oscar Wilde” Workshop Intensive
Master teacher and coach Andrew Wade will lead a Master class / from vocal warm-up to articulation to language and the application to text of Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde.

This course will teach the basics of Viewpoints, through a series of exercises that train the actor's ability to listen and communicate with the whole body while developing a stronger awareness of stage space, a sense of spontaneity, and the ability to excel as part of an ensemble.

Through the exploration of structured Viewpoint improvisations (Jam Sessions) and the use of specific compositional tools, students will learn how to transform an idea, a few props, and a bit of dialogue into a theatrical event and create original theatre pieces from source materials which integrate text, story, movement and music.



The class will cover Anne Bogart's Nine Viewpoints:

· Kinesthetic Response
· Tempo
· Duration
· Repetition
· Shape
· Gesture
· Spatial Relationships
· Architecture
· Topography

Andrei Malaev-Babel Teaching Class in Psychological Gesture
Michael Chekhov’s Five Guiding Principles

The Five Guiding Principles of the Michael Chekhov Acting Technique as described by Michael Chekhov in a series of lectures given to a group of professional actors in Hollywood. These Five principles lay the foundation for the entire work. If these principles are practiced and understood one has an overview of what Michael Chekhov's view of the actor is.

Students will explore Michael Chekhov's "psycho-physical" approach to acting, through the basic principles and exercises outlined in Chekhov's book "To the Actor", including psycho/physical exercises, character work and ensemble improvisation. Each class begins with a warm-up specifically designed to develop the organic connection between the actor's inner life, creative imagination and expressive body. Through the rigorous practice of Chekhov's core exercises students will explore; Archetypes, Imaginary Centers, Imaginary body, Character Atmospheres, Overall scenic Atmospheres, Qualities of Movement, Imaginary Place and Psychological Gesture, along with on camera adjustments, and more .

The Chekhov Acting principles will be explored through the means of psycho/physical exercises, character work and ensemble creation.

Basic Exercises: Expanding/contracting  Staccato/legato, Radiating/receiving  Ease, form, beauty and a sense of the whole Molding, floating, flying, radiating

Character Work: Imaginary center, imaginary body psychological gesture quality and sensation

Ensemble creation: Atmosphere and Improvisation

Fitzmaurice Voicework is a comprehensive approach to voice training that can include, as needed, work on breathing, resonance, speech, dialects, impromptu speaking, text, singing, and voice with movement. Fitzmaurice Voicework explores the dynamics between body, breath, voice, the imagination, language, and presence. It encourages vibrant voices that communicate intention and feeling without excess effort. The work brings together physical experience and mental focus.

Destructuring, the first phase, promotes awareness of the body, spontaneous and free breathing, and vocal expressivity.
Restructuring, the second phase, encourages economy of effort while speaking or performing. The resulting freedom and focus allow for a wide range of vocal expression without strain.

Physicality: we develop awareness of patterns of vocal effort through a series of gentle and/or rigorous exercises, accessing the body's own healing systems for deep release.

Breath: we explore the central role that breathing plays in both voice production and the imagination, encouraging whole body oxygenation without forcing the breath.

Vocal Quality: we cultivate the ability to accurately communicate our thoughts and feelings while meeting the demands of text, space, and the immediate moment, through both spontaneity and choice.

Practical Results: we reduce strain in the voice, increase vocal range and expressivity, make speech easy and clear, and communicate intention more effectively, allowing creativity to flow.

Vocal Rehabilitation: we can help to resolve many functional vocal difficulties.

The Neutral Mask

Exploring Transformation
Transformation Exercise: A comprehensive hands-on introduction into the world of the mask.
Explore the Room: Further discoveries using the freedom provided in the mask world.
Chairs: Integration of the full body and the mask.

Character Mask: This section utilizes the 3/4 or half mask with the actor's own mouth exposed. With the return of the voice, a vast array of characters populate the classroom. Actor muscles flex and develop.

The Four Stages of Man: Toddler, Adolescent, Adult, Elderly
Scale

Hinge Moments: Using the breath and focus finding the elements that allow the body to speak. Choreography of grand moments of change from Shakespeare, Mythology, The Bible and Fairy Tales.

This workshop will explore many of the different Awareness Through Movement Lessons developed by Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, founder of the Feldenkrais Method. These lessons will assist the student to create new forms of movement which reduce tension and physical imbalances. The work also promotes a clearer unity of the body and mind which may produce movement that is more articulate, economical, dynamic and varied. In addition, the method may help the student-actor to become more transformational and spontaneous because he/she is no longer bound by a limited image of the self and habitual movement patterns.

Units of Study

• Self-Image
• Pelvis
• Reaching
• Extension and bending
• Walking
• Breathing and expanding the throat

Students will be guided through the various phases of “the portrait exercise”.
(developed and popularized by Bobby Lewis)