Andrew is a performer, director, trainer working in theatre,music, film and television for nearly thirty years. He was first introduced to Improvisational theatre at the age of 10 in grade school in Los Angeles. Since then he has worked with theatre groups in the US, Canada, Europe and since 1994 in his homebase of Budapest. He was a founding member of the experimental impro trio Scalabouche and later he founded Grund Theatre in 2008 developing a company and training methods for actors and shows for performance.
WORKSHOPS / WARSZTATY
TABOOS
Misbehaviour and Challenging Themes on stage
Do you feel like improvised shows often rehash the same types of scenes over and over again? Do you ever leave them after either playing or as an audience member without the real ability to remember what it is you saw or why you saw it? This is in the cards. It’s part of working unscripted. There is a strong argument to be made for very light entertainment. Still, the stage is a dangerous place. It should not lack consequence. It should be dangerous to the characters. This is theater’s unique, great power. The audience buys a ticket to see others struggle with things that they see and experience too. Theater has a great chance to reflect versions of realities and fantasies that the viewers know, understand and are tickled to see others suffer. This course is about making risky choices. It is a course that wants to turn up the temperature on risk and relationships. It is a course that wants to embolden actors to bring pressing questions about people and our times to the stage. There will be numerous exercises examining the skills on how to get piquant or pressing topics out in the open and examined. It will look at how to play informed characters that champion philosophies or feelings quite the opposite of your own. It will look to define technique that can put controversial or troubling content on stage while handling it sensitively and poignantly. There will be a strong mix of group and do exercises eventually leading to focused scene work or even simple formats for plays. Very interactive workshop that will be sensitive to everyone’s views and understanding. It will be very technically driven with a lot of practical work and stage time. It will certainly include a lot of candid constructive feedback.
10-16 students, RED TRAIL // SZLAK CZERWONY
THE HIDDEN FILM
Using improvisation to develop filmic scenes/narratives
A course that I often run for the Alternative TV arts school at Bauhaus University to get some easy-to-do interdisciplinary work to create short films (primarily with phones or iPads). A course that explores how to team create and examine strengths and weaknesses of a series of images, attitudes and behaviour and how the story is hidden in these. Working together to uncover these and capture them on camera then edit and apply sound or music to them to create great little improvised films. Another focus of this course is to get as much value from scenes as possible and knowingly make choices to do this. Working to get the mix of exposition, narrative and transformation that the scene needs to have a strong effect on the viewers and players. This course is also valuable to improvisers if creating a film is not the focus
10-16 students, GREEN TRAIL // SZLAK ZIELONY
