Rasabox Workshop Coming to the Ethical Society

IMG_4708The Rasabox Workshop is the most recent series of exercises to emerge in the context of New York performance training center The Performance Workshop. This weekend, the intensive course comes to Philadelphia for a special two-day engagement at the Ethical Society. Based in the classical Indian theory of “rasa,” which in Sanskrit means taste or flavor, and corresponds to the felt experience of specific emotional states shared and savored by performer and spectator, Rasaboxes offers a psychophysical form within a playful, game-like structure. “Rasa” offers a sensation-based way of working with emotion, and can be used in any style or genre for text and scene work, character development, refining audition material, improvisation, devised performance, and more. This psychophysical, ensemble-oriented approach complements Stanislavsky-based as well as experimental, non-psychological modalities.

Rasaboxes develops energetic, emotional, and physical specificity, agility and flexibility, enhances emotional awareness, and expands the rehearsal and compositional toolbox for performers. The workshop is taught by master teacher Michele Minnick, CMA, Ph.D. As a director, performer and teacher, Michele works with both traditional and experimental theater material and techniques. She has been a member of Schechner’s East Coast Artists in New York (1994-2005), Iron Crow Theatre Company in Baltimore (2010-2013), and has been an associate artist with Subversive Productions, Inc. since 2014. She trained the ensemble and co- directed The Mesmeric Revelations of Edgar Allan Poe, Baltimore’s first immersive production, and is currently developing BATS!, a theatrical meditation on madness, fear, and bi-polarity in American culture. Her approach this work is deeply informed by her training in Laban/Bartenieff movement studies, her engagement with Vipassana meditation, and her extensive research on somatic and artistic practice.

To enroll email: rasaperformanceworkshop@gmail.com

Enjoy these discounts:
$175 for students
$175 each two for one

THE PERFORMANCE WORKSHOP

Core Principles of the Work:

  • A work cycle incorporating training, workshop, rehearsal and performance — the body as the sensual, playful, relational center of performance
  • “Encounter” as the present-tense, layered, experiential core of all theatrical relations
  • A dynamic engagement with space as living, flexible environment
  • Investigation and experiment with self, identity and one’s participation in groups
  • Ongoing inquiry into the act and definition of performance itself

Exercises and improvisations involve a series of overlapping encounters with self, other, group, objects, texts and other source materials. All activities in The Performance Workshop ground aesthetic questions in personal, social, mythical and political realities, and serve as a means of exploring the relationship between those realities. Exercises include:

  • Breath and movement practices grounded in yoga, Bartenieff Fundamentals, Body Mind Centering and other somatic and performance modalities
  • Vocal work and song, based in 4 key ‘resonators’
  • Sound and movement-based improvisation to generate ensemble and spontaneous group creativity, based in One Sound exercises
  • Crossings: a series of exercises exploring a continuum of performance skill and complexity, from pure presence through elaborate scores engaging character/persona, narrative, and other structures.
  • Solo and group performances

 

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