MARK JANE

Improvisers are often afraid of “following a narrative” as they feel they will be prisoners of a structure and lose their creative freedom.  Yet understanding the key movements in a story and how characters evolve in a narration is an undeniable strength for any actor.  This workshop allows the participants to discover how a story is organized around “Narrative waypoints."  These waypoints take popular narrative theories and adapt them for improvised performance.  Waypoints can be used to assist the creative process of designing a show or simply to help navigate a narrative long form during a performance.  The goal being to liberate creativity in flexible and exciting ways whilst unlocking the full potential of your improvised stories.  This workshop is inspired by the work of Christopher Vogler, John Truby and Blake Snyder.

This workshop presents tools to help you create strong, varied and sincere characters on stage.  The participants will discover how to play a character in a hundred different ways and how to rapidly generate a character for the needs of an improvised scene.  The techniques used in the workshop are applicable to improvised shows, but can also be used as work tools for non-improvised performances.  The workshop will present the Fast-Food Stanislavsky technique developed by Keith Johnstone, as well as other ways of creating characters on stage.

This workshops takes a look at a collection of specific situations and stage tools for generating comedy in your shows.  It develops broad concepts like “the game” in a scene and then analyses more precise comedy principals like Funny/Straight, the quiproquo, false help, opposing energies, resistance…  If you want to inject more fun into your short form or be more playful in your longform you will find tools here to help.

This workshop will teach you all you need to know to make masks yourself.  All stages of fabrication will be dealt with: making a clay mould, creation of an aquaplast mask, painting, finishing touches, etc...  Each participant will take home a finished mask at the end. 

This workshop deals the with the heart of improvisation: the concept of spontaneity.  It provides tools to liberate an actors spontaneity by overcoming fear and removing the pressure we create for ourselves when we try to be clever or funny.   These techniques explore the playful relationship between actors on stage and its importance in the creative process.

This workshop provides a theoretical presentation of story structure using "The Hero's Journey" adapted by Christopher Vogler.  The 12 stages of the Hero's Journey will be presented in depth along with the 8 narrative archetypes plus notions of dramaturgy for scene work.  Numerous examples will be given of the use of the Hero's Journey in cinema as well as in classical text such as Shakespeare.  This is an essential tool for directors, scenarists and actors who want to understand the inner workings of a narrative.

Mantras can transform a scene from a basic interaction into exciting drama. Using breathing and mantra techniques this workshop provides tools for instantly creating sincere drama in acting and improvisation. The tools help an actor to bypass their intellect and to access an organic experience that drives their scene. This is great for improvisors who desire working on material that is less comedy orientated. The workshop is based on techniques by Keith Johnstone.

To work with masks is to work with the sensation of pure spontaneity. A mask can only operate in the present moment, it is never in the future or the past. Masks also develop the notion of another "self", a character that is not you even if you are its vehicle. The experience of mask allows the participants to open up their personal awareness of the "moment" and develops their spontaneity and expression on stage. This workshop is based on the techniques of Full Mask and Trance Mask developed by Keith Johnstone.

Do you want to spice up your long form with action sequences and visual effects like in a Hollywood blockbuster?  This workshop is for you.  Thanks to his experience in long form shows like "Double O Impro", "Trio", "Epic" and "Bio", Mark  reveals the tools he has used to make these shows dynamic, varied and spectacular.  Combat, chases, flashbacks, chorus effects and other techniques will be explored.  No need to have years of impro experience to take part, but you do need to want to sweat a little.

This workshop answers the simple question "How do you direct an impro scene?"  Its goal is to allow the directors to liberate themselves from the pressure of directing and enable them to facilitate the actor's improvisation in a creative way.  A good director can efficiently "press the right buttons" to allow the actors to get the full potential out of the great ideas that are already present in their scene.  Its a fantastic way of creating shows with directed scenes as well as being a powerful tool for teachers in a workshop context.  This workshop is inspired by the impro formats Maestro and  Gorilla Theatre by Keith Johnstone.

How can you pass from one scene to another in a creative way?  How can you make your narration more dynamic and playful ?  This workshop proposes tools to boost your improvisation thanks to techniques inspired by cinema and television.  You will work on Flashbacks, Split-screen, location jumps, Zoom in/out...  These concepts can be used in both long form and short form improvised shows.  The aim is to enrich the theatrical experience for your audience and spice up your show by adding a little "organized chaos."

"Status” is above all about relationships and how characters behave towards each other.  It exposes the unconscious maneuvers that a character makes to dominate or be dominated by his partner.  Through awareness of Status an actor will be able to fine tune his play and generate compelling stories based on strong relationships.  Once you have learnt Status, you will never see human relations in the same way again.  « Status » is an acting tool developed by Keith Johnstone.

Do you wonder what the point of Gibberish is? Do you hate doing scenes in Gibberish? Well this workshop is for you. The workshop aims to make Gibberish accessible for everybody and allow improvisers to discover how it is a real tool for an actor. Participants will learn how to develop their own style of Gibberish that they are comfortable with. Gibberish is a fantastic tool for working improviser’s awareness of each other and their capacity to react to their partner with sincere emotional energy.

This workshop will introduce you to the Keith Johnstone show called « Maestro ».  The Maestro is an excellent training tool for actors as well as directors.  It can create a fantastic playground for improvisers to experiment and learn in, as well as being a very popular show for an audience.  The shows structure seems simple but it hides many subtle secrets that are the keys to its success.  This workshop aims to provide the keys to running a successful Maestro.  Maestro is a show format under license to the International Theatresports Institute.

Everyone has a favorite sitcom, whether it be Friends, Big Bang Theory, The Simpsons, Modern Family, The Office or many others.  Working on sitcoms means working on comedy but that does not mean improvising great jokes.  The comedy of sitcoms comes from strong characters and their interactions.  This workshop explores the archetypes of comic characters and how to put them together to create situations where the comedy is spontaneous.  It also presents how a sitcom is structured around the comedy created by having these characters suffer.  Whether you wish to improvise sitcoms or not the tools reveled in this workshop are useful for all kinds of improvised performance.   

Does your long form sometimes feel a bit flat?  Do you struggle to get a truly satisfying story?  Do you want to mess things up a bit?  This workshop aims to provide tools for building better stories in narrative long form whilst keeping the surprises intact.  There will be tools for enforcing narrative and structure as well as tools for varying the staging and pace of the show.  Keeping a long form show alive means creating organized chaos, where the story is the driving factor whilst we maintain a healthy dose of accidents, surprises and unexpected fun.

We are onstage to "play" with our partners in every sense of the term.  This workshop develops the notion of a playful relationship between actors.  We will try and tease our partner by getting them in trouble and trying to destabilize them.  The goal being to generate accidents and surprises that can be transformed into unexpected gifts for our creativity.  All strategies are welcome when it comes to playing with mischief: say "no", ignore your partner, play in a bizarre manner…  This workshop will show how your worst impro nightmares can actually be sources of inspiration that can refresh your performance.

If we know that our body is our primary tool for communication, why do we speak so much in impro?  Theatre is a visual art and we can use our body to create images that speak a thousand words.  This workshop explores physical expression in impro.  We will work on letting go physically, organic interactions and how to use space to generate captivating images during a scene.  The goal being to find the soul of each scene through the actors bodies.

On a film set an actor must know how to improvise.  Whether adapting to unforeseen events in the shooting plan, dealing with changes to the scenario and script or simply managing unexpected demands from a director, a film actor must constantly plunge into the unknown and create a spontaneous performance whilst being aware of the technical restraints of a scene.  This workshop explores using improvised theatre tools in the context of a film shoot.  Practical exercises with film equipment will be used to polish your improvisation skills and gain confidence in front of a camera.

This workshop is aimed at actors who are working with text.  The workshop invites the actors to explore their text based scenes by applying improvisation techniques and games to their performance.  The idea is to explode the scene and make new performance discoveries by allowing ourselves to truly experiment with a text in unpredictable ways.  Total creative freedom and open-minded playfulness are established as classic texts come alive in a completely different way.