classes & workshops – Page 2 – a field of crowns

Workshop: Physical Approach to Character

In this 3-hour workshop we will explore movement tools to help you give external and internal shapes to your characters.

Since 2018 the tools I’ve gravitated towards to create characters, or to approach performance in general, have become consistent. I keep revisiting my understanding of certain approaches, trying to form them to my own usage, be that for clown, puppetry or the character-driven dance pieces I often dramaturg for Frog in Hand. I’ve been curious about how these approaches can talk with one another, to build on our own understanding of our bodies and the way we move our instrument through space and time. I have taught some of the elements separately, and as I’ve done so have really noticed how each one complements the others. Which brings us to today, where I’m attempting to bring these elements together into a single workshop. This workshop will be part class, part solo exploration and part workshop with analytical prompts. And if that sounds too thinky, I assure you my approach is one of embodiment so expect to MOVE.

PHYSICAL APPROACH TO CHARACTER

November 2nd, 2024
2-5pm @ the Art Shelter

There are many approaches to character and most of them are intellectual and text-based. These approaches are wonderful for understanding your character’s story and empathizing with them, but often they don’t touch on a character’s physicality.

In this workshop we will explore character from the outside in, inspecting the body and defining its architecture while taking time to relax into our choices to allow the actor to live.

Together we will build a physical vocabulary inspired by Laban, Bogart & Landau and a variety of contemporary clown, puppetry and mask teachers.

The majority of this workshop will have you up on your feet, exploring through a series of exercises and prompts. The workshop will begin with a warm-up and will have breaks throughout.

Things to know:

Bring comfortable clothes and layers as the dome is warm on sunny days but cooler when it’s been overcast for longer periods of time.

The Art Shelter is an off-grid dance studio run by solar power. It is not heated nor does it have air conditioning. We have batteries onsite and it is quite comfortable but we are also in the middle of a field so plan accordingly (especially if it rains). We have water and a small kitchenette with some coolers to store foodstuffs and the ability to make coffee/tea and a microwave to reheat food.

Clown Training x Red Nose Remedy

It’s the summer of clown!

Alongside Red Nose Remedy, I’m hosting a series of 3 one-off clown workshops, each focused on a different set of tools the clown utilizes in performance. They are happening at Sweet Action Theatre and are on the 2nd Mondays of June – July – August.

In June we’re working on soft skills of the clown, including pointe-fixe, up and out, repetition, the puppetry of the body and more. In July we’re diving into our emotional landscapes and playing with articulating and crafting emotion as gesture. And in August we’re taking it all away and focusing on one-thing-at-a-time.

Check out the images below for more information and for registration:

Pre-registration is encouraged but Drop-ins are available as well!

Clown 1 – The Tenets of Clown

For absolute beginners, no previous experience necessary! Join us on a 5-week journey in Frog in Hand’s Art Shelter. Led by Andrew Gaboury.

NEW CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT

Before we put on a nose we start with ourselves. Beginning with presence, we will witness one another, learn and discover what naturally makes us and others funny. Each week will focus on a guiding principle of red nose clown through exercises, games and ‘turns’ on stage, all the while scaffolding in the ‘soft skills’ of the clown. By the end of the course you will find the beginnings of what will eventually become a clown persona.

This course is inspired by theatrical traditions of red nose clown as interpreted through a variety of contemporary artists and teachers through the ages and across continents. It is my attempt at balancing what I’ve found the most useful in my own clown practice in order to share the joy of clown with others.

No clown or performance experience necessary. Clown is one of those wonderfully transferable skills that can be applied to everyday situations, including public speaking, team work, project management and rekindling your own sense of play.

5 weeks

Thursdays, June 6, 13, 20, 27 & July 4 | 6 – 9pm

@ The Art Shelter (887 Hydro Rd, Mississauga, ON L5E 1E9)

$250

$200 early bird if registered before May 21st, 2024

For this class, I thought I’d write a clown-specific bio:

Andrew Gaboury is a performer, writer and educator based in Port Credit, Mississauga. Central to his practice is the desire to bring a sense of wonder and joy to the everyday. He initially found his clown in 2012 when he met Helen Donnelly and took her course, Discover Your Clown. Andrew has since been clowning theatrically for 12 years, performing at the Toronto Festival of Clowns, the Foolish Cabaret, the Red Nose Cabaret, HarbourKIDS Circus, for Common Boots Theatre with Luminato’s presentation of Walk With Amal, internationally at Ei! Marionettas (Portugal), and nationally at World Stage Design in Calgary, the University of Guelph and at various parks and promenades in the GTA. Andrew has been teaching clown since 2019 with the Frog in Hand Summer Company, Clay & Paper Theatre and through various workshops. In 2018 he began his journey into the world of therapeutic clown when his teacher, Helen Donnelly set up a training program with George Brown College. The nexus of clown, joy and wellness in difficult situations has become a place of passion for Andrew, who has travelled to the Netherlands to train with an international panel of artists for the 2022 Healthcare Clowning International Meeting (HCIM). This year, Andrew was part of the planning committee for the 2024 Meeting of the Noses presented by Fondation Dr Clown and the North American Federation of Healthcare Clowning Organizations (NAFHCO). Through the pandemic, Andrew worked with Derek Kwan and MABELLEarts to bring a practice of social therapeutic clowning to their community. Andrew is Acting Executive Director and a therapeutic clown practitioner with Red Nose Remedy – a company founded by award-winning clown Helen Donnelly, as well as one of Kathleen Le Roux’s therapeutic clown partner’s focusing on Long Term Care and rehabilitation hospitals.

World Building for Choreographers

Your boots scuff across gravel as you begin to see lights coming from a compound behind a metal fence. The gate is open. There is a shipping container with tables full of science equipment emerging from it. In one corner of the compound, you see what you assume was the kitchenette although the dishes are rusty and whatever food was here has long since been removed. By people? Animals? As you explore the main container you understand it used to be a Climate Research Station but has since been abandoned — seemingly in a rush: papers, tools, vials and beakers filled with liquids and questionable materials, even pictures of those who used to work here still populate the station but are covered with spiderwebs and the dust of time.

You can almost imagine the life that was here long ago; their voices seem loud in your ears as you rifle through their work, trying to piece together any evidence you can that would shed light on their evident demise. As the night falls and the winds pick up, you hear footsteps against the gravel and the clanging of pots and pans. A new source of light makes its way into the compound and a hooded figure enters the site, a large pack on his back. It’s almost as if he doesn’t see you as he begins to search through the contents of this mysterious site. What is he searching for?

These were the opening moments of Frog in Hand’s 2021 performance Stories in the Woods, a site-specific, promenade dance-theatre piece set in a mysterious post-post-apocalyptic reality. The world we created helped us channel our thoughts about the themes of climate anxiety, the uncertainty of the future and the resilience of both nature and humanity into a container (quite literally) to house the piece’s dances.

Stories in the Woods, 2021

World Building can be an integral tool to elevate your show.

It can be a method for you to collect your thoughts into a cohesive whole.

It can be a way for you to make sense of those themes you want to approach and display to your audience.

And it can be a way to entice your audience to want to meaningfully engage with your piece.

World Building for Choreographers, a 4-week online class

I’m happy to be joining Colleen Snell to co-lead a 4-week online class about worldbuilding in performance. In it, we’ll talk about character design, setting, story vs. world and think about crafting immersive experiences and rich worlds for our audiences to inhabit, explore and experience.

Worldbuilding for Choreographers is a mix of lecture-style presentations with activities sprinkled throughout to help reinforce our approach and to get you to immediately apply the theory. You can join us live the night-of or catch up on your own time by watching that week’s recording.

We start tomorrow night, Oct. 20th and run to Nov 10th, but there’s still time to sign up! Just click the link and you’ll be taken to Eventbrite.

I hope to see you there!