What if, say, the waiter/waitress we play by request of the audience had exactly the same morning routine in the bathroom as oneself and later, after work met up with the same friends in the same bar as oneself, and if he/she owned and used the same things as oneself? What if we open up our daily lives to create the improvised life of this waiter/waitress? What if this fictitious character was free to help himself/herself to the riches of our personal experiences and observations, if his/her short stage life was drawn from our wealth of experience? What if this is what we were to explore? Let’s find out!

There are various ways to create characters on stage. In improvisation theatre we very often have to make quick, bold choices. And sometimes there is enough space to discover your character while you are playing it. In this workshop we will dive into various ways to create nice, nasty, beautiful, ugly, average, unusual, believable and stereotypical persons on stage. A lot of those characters you’ve met already, very often. They’re part of your life: your brother, neighbour or favorite bakery-employee. Other characters are hidden somewhere in your body (and can quickly be found!). And others appear spontaneously when you change your voice just a little. Sometimes one bold statement is enough to know who your character is. We will investigate, discover, play, fail and have lots of fun.

»We as improvisers are finders, not searchers. The moment we stop searching, we’ll find our scene, fun and magic.« (Henk von der Steen)

When improvisers are asked for self-criticism, they often say »we talked too much in the scene«. Talking is often used to hide insecurities in the character development - so often we are tempted to keep the story going by an excessive use of words. »Let me hear your body talk« will bring our awareness back to the body. Together we will explore what we perceive, what we intrinsically know (in the body) and how we can use this knowledge to our advantage when improvising on stage. You will get to know the fundaments of physical theatre: rhythm, spatial awareness, gesture, breath, body language, levels of presence and - most importantly - how these fundaments can generate play! It is a workshop about what happens and is happening on the stage before words are needed, if we stop and listen!

»I really love impro because it is a celabration of horizontal arraignment instead of hierarchal relationships that we very commonly find in theatre. In impro there are no big writers and directors. There are only players who are playing their hearts out in front of and with the audience!« (Alenka Marinič)