Character Factory Workshop
At Brown University
September 2024
Overview
“Free your mind, throat, and body! String together words! Release a character from deep within! An improvisational movement and acting workshop.”
Outcomes
Drop into one’s own body, get acquainted with the bodies and eyes of the fellow participants, get comfortable moving and speaking in front of each other, in order to become comfortable performing and “releasing personalities” in front of one another.
Structure
Participants start on the floor in a dark room imagining their bones to be made of seaweed “twisting and untwisting” in the sea, all of the bones in their feet and behind their eyes accompanied by the sounds of deep water flowing.
We come to our feet and move through the space gently observing the feet of our fellow participants slowly moving faster until we meet each other’s gaze (by this point most people are giggling.)
The group splits into two, observers and observed, the observed start to name things out loud that they see in the room which are adjacent to the material thing (ie. A window could be a fish tank. A wood grain could be a snail.) faster and faster, louder and louder.
Participants engage improvisational movement while music plays. Music cuts and the performer speaks in stream of consciousness while pantomiming. On and off.*
Groups morph into one. Movement instructions are given to the performers to interpret themselves such as “turn left and go around” or “three steps forward hop over.”**
Workshop ends in a group “performance” and then we come into a circle with our knees touching for reflections.
Stills
* (technique inspired by my mentor Tess Dworman)
** (technique inspired by my collaborator Julia Antinozzi)