BIF week

Das BIF-Programm bringt Improspieler aus der ganzen Welt zusammen, um neue Impulse und Eindrücke zu sammeln, sich weiterzubilden und Kontakte zu knüpfen. Neben den Workshops bietet das Rahmenprogramm viele Möglichkeiten, sich auszuprobieren, Denkanstöße zu finden, sich zu vernetzen und vor allem viel Spaß zu haben.

WORKSHOP:

MASTERCLASS – THE BODY IS A VEHICLE

Daniel Orrantia (COL)

There is an ancient belief that stories reside in a special place away from our world. In order to bring back stories from this mythical place, we have devised many vehicles. We have created songs, paintings, drawings, and alphabets. But what happens when the vehicle is our body? How do we use it as a medium for storytelling?

In this workshop we will work together to explore the physical characteristics of our bodies as vehicles to tell stories. Through directed exercises we will focus on ourselves, the space that surrounds us and the other performers. This will be an exploration of storytelling from your body with one of the world’s greatest and most diverse physical improvisers, with the aim of giving performers new tools and skills to enhance their practice and physical work on stage. So you can finally stop worrying about all of your scenes being just “talking heads”!

LEVEL: participants with at least 5 years of impro experience, who rehearse and perform on a regular basis and have a professional approach to their impro work.

WORKSHOP:

INTENSIVE

Character work is one of the foundations of good improvisation. In this series of workshops, we will explore the steps to creating and living in a fully realized character and see how that ultimately benefits every aspect of scene work. From the creation of a character to how it interacts with others to its eventual evolution, you’ll be shown many tools to help ground you in your scene work. With a good character, you’ll find your audience is much more connected to what you’re sharing with them. The participants will work with three amazing instructors, who will focus on three different parts of your own individual character development:

Kayla Lorette (CAN)

Creation: There are many ways to discover and create characters within an impro scene. In this workshop, you’ll explore those different entry points and see which one feels best for you! Be it physical, emotional or completely abstract, you’ll learn different tools to manifest a fully realized character, through finding your own, uniquely fitting way to approach character work.

Gilly Alfeo (GER)

Interaction: Once you’ve established a character, there’s chance for development. Believable character development shouldn’t come out of nothing. Encounter and interaction should trigger that process. Learn to recognize strong triggers for your character and grasp how to make wise offers that support a comprehensible change.

Billy Kissa (GR)

Evolution: The last chapter of this workshop will help you and your characters be open to change. Focusing on realistic and organic transitions, by recognizing how their experience evolves and reconstructs them, we can help the audience relate to our character’s journey through change and evolution.

LEVEL: participants with at least 3 years of impro experience, who rehearse and/or take workshops on a regular basis.

WORKSHOP:

SIX PACK

The Six-pack program of 2020 has been devised with great care towards improvisational diversity. Six teachers from six different companies will bring six different styles they most like to work with and introduce you to different skills that every passionate improviser should try to master.

Ashawnti Sakina Ford (USA)

Space and in between! Improvisers have the magical ability to take us anywhere in the universe with absolutely nothing on the stage. In this workshop about space and objects, participants will intensely explore the worlds they imagine! Through exercise and scene work, we will practice how to deeply invest in our spacial work to make our scenes more 3D and magical. We will let the worlds we create inspire our characters, emotions and journeys.

Lee White (CAN)

Listening and acceptance: Listening is one of the most important skills an improviser can have, yet too often our scene partner’s words and the meanings behind them are neglected. Can we turn down our ego and open our senses to what is really being said? Yes, we can. With a focus on listening to our partner and accepting their offers, this workshop will have you giving more and making your partner look like the star. Ask not what your partner can do for you, ask what you can do for your partner!

Sara Šoukal (SLO)

Enjoy the silence! So many times as improvisers we rely on words alone to tell the story or express our emotions, forgetting that our body is already telling a story. We will challenge ourselves with every improviser’s nightmare: how to improvise without words. In this workshop we will explore ways to listen to our bodies, we will limit ourselves to minimal talking in the scenes and we’ll rely on the expressiveness of our movement alone!

Björn Harras (GER)

Acting: The essence of acting is … acting. That does not mean you pretend to be a character, it means you are the character. But how can we slip into a character quickly? And when we got it, how can we sustain the character, even if we just created it? The answer lies in the inner processes, which help you to stay in the character and also let it change automatically.

Lád’a Karda (CZ)

Flow: When you have no ask-fors or topics from the audience, everything depends on the flow between the improvisers. During this workshop we will explore possibilities of how to find and keep the flow on stage and even forget about the fact, that you are improvising. When we have no rules, we have to find them with our partners and try to define the game that we are playing. It is like playing in our childhood again … but you are doing theatre … but it doesn’t feel like theatre, it’s actually playing again.

Keng-Sam Chane Chick Té (Reunion Island)

Finding your inner clown: Clowning is the essence of impro itself, the religion of reaction towards the audience and for yourself to create a story that comes true to you and the others. In this workshop we will use some techniques from Rudolph Laban, a Hungarian choreographer, who worked on the body as the tool to tell a story, and the variations that we can experience with it, and from Claudia Notalle, a clown from France, who has explored clowning in a particular way, putting the emphasis on the connection with yourself and among all the audience members.

LEVEL: participants with at least 1 year of impro experience, who rehearse and/or take workshops on a regular basis