Be Here Now! — Action Theater™ Fundamentals ——challenges you to articulate your present moment experience into clear, dynamic expression in voice, movement and/or language. You become more aware of your body/mind instrument and how it enhances or limits your expression. The practice makes you a stronger performer and dramatically increases your performance vocabulary. You learn how to perceive space, sense time and change situations instantly and gain the tools to do so.
In this workshop, we dig into the joy of the unknown, shake hands with the uncomfortable and amplify the magic of creating instantaneous performances out of nothing.
instant composition, real-time performance/ physical dance/theater training
Be Here Now! is for all those who wish live more in the present, make clearer momentary decisions and instantaneously compose stunning expression. Starting with physical and mental exercises of the Action Theater™ method, you expand your perception of the present. You integrate the experience of space into your perception. Your body awareness refines, you become aware of the different qualities of attention. The more you become aware of where your attention goes, the deeper you dive into the present. Once you learn to stay present in challenging moments, the unexpected happens. Change becomes possible, not because you wanted it, but precisely because you have abandoned the need to change.
Some topics covered:
• Employing doubt to create attractive stumbles
• Re-defining mistakes as “missed takes”
• Shifting & developing frames
• Embodying the language experience
• Movement/breath/voice as an unending source of content
What is Action Theater?
Action Theater™ is the radical b0dy-based improvisation method created and developed by Ruth Zaporah. Coming from a dance background, it addresses improvisation from a somatic level rather than from the thinking mind. Somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of improvisation, where on one end is Impro/Improv Theater/Comedy Sports, developed by Keith Johnstone, a narrative and language based improvisation method, and Contact Imnprovisation, a physically-based form devised by Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark-Smith and many others, lies Action Theater. If we add vocal improvisation/singing to this spectrum as a third point on of a triangle, then Action Theater lies in the middle of all three.
Action Theater is not purely a theater form, but rather a dance/theater/voice/Buddhist philosophy mixture that employs the kinaesthetic experience as the basis for all expression. Its spontaneous performances manifest as dance, story or song or a combination of all three. It is an art form oriented towards a clearer sense of presence while on stage and an articulation of the body experience into forms of expression. The work, unlike many other forms of improvisation asks you to confront yourself, the thoughts and ideas you have about who you are and who or what is creating your mental chatter. The work’s rigor demands that you keep coming back to now — what is actually occurring — and engage with all the experiences of the present moment, both mental and physical. The practice teaches you how to better perceive space, to sense time and change your relationship to the chattering mind.
Action Theater is. also, a disciplined study of change. We have only three possibilities for change in our lives on or off stage: 1) We continue with what we are doing — Develop; 2) We stop what we are doing and start something else — Shift; 3) We slowly change what we are doing into something else — Transform. In the practice, we divide actions into Frames. On a gross level, Frames are either voice, language or movement frames and/or any combination of those three. Frames either travel or don’t, connect directly with our partners or not, and have an intention, a directive in their action that is expressed throughout its development.
One of the basic principles behind the work is that body experience generates feeling states which the brain then categorizes into thoughts/ideas/emotions.