The Dell’arte Intensive June 27-July 22 2011 (Blue Lake CA)
When I went to Dell’arte, it was a year long conservatory style program with a fixed curriculum. The second year was optional, and open to all past alumni, focusing on a specific style (clown, commedia, mask, melodrama, etc). The final exam/project was a tour throughout rural Northern California of a play that you and your classmates devised, built, designed, promoted, and toured. There wasn’t really a summer program, but once in a while they’d offer classes. Oh, and by the way, there was no central heat in the building. Part of your work as a student was to chop the wood and build the fires in the morning. I am NOT making this up!
Now Dell’arte is a 2 year MFA program, with academic classes, and internships, and , yes, central heat. They also have a full coterie of summer classes and a pretty well-respected summer festival.
They also have something in the summer called the Dell’arte Intensive, which is four very intense weeks in which they do their best to cram a full year of work into 4 very dense weeks. Â
The teachers are all Dell’arte company members , faculty members, and former students, and will work you harder than you think to produce surprising results.
4 weeks in the heart of California’s redwood forest in a town called Blue Lake (which doesn’t have a lake and it’s not blue)
What could be better?
ENROLL ONLINE
General Workshop Info including Housing
THE POWERFUL PRESENCE: Effort, Risk, Momentum, Joy (TM)with Ronlin Foreman, Joan Schirle, Joe Krienke, Stephanie Thompson, Michael Fields June 27 – July 22, 2011
$1525
Week 1: The Instinct for Play Spontaneity and Imagination: the all of a sudden — In this first week the student is engaged in improvisations focusing on awareness, availability and responsiveness. This improvisational play leads to discoveries reconnecting the student of the theatre with what is authentic and truthful in response to the dynamic natural world; to reestablish contact with the act of thinking physically. This is the fundamental state that was our teacher as children.
Week 2: The Powerful Presence Resonance: the body in space — groundedness, clarity, energy and projection. Via spontaneity and imagination we move on to identification with, and extension into, the world “around where I stand.†The student will begin conditioning, a fundamental engagement with acrobatics, levels of energy, imitation of the natural world (mime) and the nature of the mask. Believe, Behave, Behold, Become.
Week 3: The Embodied Voice: The moving actor speaks; the speaking actor moves — vocal power, vocal ease; exploration of vocal and physical dynamics; FM Alexander Technique, and the study of dynamics as applied to the work of the stage.
Week 4 : The Dynamic Theatre & The Actor-Poet Devising: The making of theatre — Students explore devising processes in which text, physical action and staging support the development of character, situation, circumstance. Short pieces of theatre will be generated in small ensembles focusing on the D’AI methodology introduced through out the intensive. Image, Idea, Concept, Design.