Friday, December 26, 2008

Tickets are going fast!

Closing Jan 10,
8 shows left,
4 of which are SOLD OUT!

Don't miss the best-selling show this Holiday Season!

A Grand Guignol Children's Show*
(*not for children)
written and directed by
Debbie McMahon.
LA WEEKLY SAYS "GO!" - "vivacious and rude entertainment that's part French vaudeville and part British Punch and Judy show"

LA TIMES calls it an "enchanting evening," and "delightful"

BACKSTAGE WEST calls it a "disturbingly enjoyable celebration of the ghastly"

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Grand Guignolers celebrate as only they can!



Debbie McMahon, [via]Corpora, and Don Cesario proudly present :


A Grand Guignol Children’s Show*

(*not for children)


Come celebrate the French puppet Guignol’s 200th Birthday
as the Grand Guignolers de Paris offer us

Hansel & Gretel:
A Horror Play

Little Red Riding Hood
A Horror Play

The Ugly Duckling: A melodrama Ballet
and
Rapunzel:
an Erotic Thriller
(performed by French finger puppets)

Due to violence, this show is not recommended for children.

Expect Dance, Absinthe, Puppets, Birthday Cake, Masks, and GORE!!!



WHERE: Art/Works Theatre
6569 Santa Monica Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90038.

DATES: Dec. 5 - Jan. 10. Fri/Saturdays at 8:30 (except 12/26), with two Thur. also at 8:30 (12/18 & 1/8) and two Pay What You Can Sun. (12/28 & 1/4) at 7pm.

Pre-Show Absinthe Demo
about 1/2 hour early *
grown up drinks & absinthe * Suggested Dress: Cocktail,
Birthday Party and/or 1920s-30s.

TICKETS: $20-30. Buy tickets for A Grand Guignol Children's Show* (*not for children) 1-800-838-3006

written and directed by Debbie McMahon
www.grandguignolers.com for more info


Sunday, June 1, 2008

Master Worksessions in commedia dell'Arte


[via]Corpora & John Achorn
Announce
Ongoing W
orksessions in
commedia dell’Arte






Stage II A six week intermediate/advanced class exploring character, selected lazzi, & scenarios ~ exploring how to apply commedia to the 21st Century

Monday evenings 7:00~10:00pm @ [via]Corpora Studio
Beginning Monday, June 16 ~ thru July 28


Stage I – A six week introduction to the essential elements of the commedia
style: mask, mime, improvisation, character, physical routines, ensemble.

Saturdays 10:00am – 1:00pm @ [via]Corpora Studio
Saturday, June 28 ~ thru August 2


Cost: $210 ~ Early Registration Discount (before June 9th): $180
Please make checks payable to:

John Achorn
653 Rose Avenue
Venice CA 90291


Contact: 310-396-3314 or jachorn@yahoo.com

[via]Corpora: 6575 Santa Monica Boulevard Hollywood, CA 90038

John Achorn is a master teacher in commedia dell’Arte, having studied with Carlo Mazzone-Clementi; he was an original member of the Dell-Arte Company and was instrumental in the founding of the renowned Dell’Arte School in Blue Lake CA. Mr. Achorn has taught workshops and classes for over 35 years at such institutions as UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, UC Riverside, University of Redlands, UC San Diego, USC, The Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis, ARTEL and the Antaeus Company here in Los Angeles. He is an actor, director and writer.

The Song of the Goat comes to Los Angeles

The Song of the Goat (Teatr Piesn Kozla) begins its first 5 day workshop in LA Monday!

Artel Members Bryan Brown and Valerie McCann as well as [via]Corpora participant Garth Whitten will be joining 7 others for the first American extended workshop held by Grzegorz Bral and co-produced by Ghost Road Company with support from [via]Corpora.

Another workshop is planned for November and we hope this is only the beginning of Teatr Piesn Kozla's work in Los Angeles.

Updates and thoughts on the practice are planned for the What Arises? blogsite later in the week.

For more information:

Justyna Warecka
Assistant to the Director
Wroclaw / Los Angeles
Teatr Piesn Kozla / Song of the Goat Theater
jwarecka@piesnkozla.pl
justynawarecka@yahoo.com

www.piesnkozla.pl

Monday, May 26, 2008

[via]Corpora Producing NEWS: Stephen Wangh Teacher's Summit

[via]Corpora is proud to announce that we have successfully helped Stephen Wangh (author of An Acrobat of the Heart) to gather a Teacher's Practicum at NACL in the Catskills July 5 -12, 2008. Bryan Brown will be attending the Practicum and will be reporting back on it later in the summer at the newly registered [via]Corpora What Arises? thoughts from the practice blog : whatarises.blogspot.com

International Clown Sensation brings LA his unique CLOWN LAB!


[via]Corpora is incredibly excited to host Jef Johnson (principal clown in the international touring company of Slava's Snowshow) for a weekend intensive of his



CLOWN LAB


June 21 and 22
1pm - 5pm
Art|Works Theatre
6569 Santa Monica Blvd.
Hollywood 90038

$150
Early Bird Special: $120 (pay before June 8)

register: see payment options in the upper right hand corner of this page


questions or more info:
Contact Bryan@viacorpora.com

The way to have and to be a sharp, powerful instrument is to be
minutely sensitive, and use that sensitivity to see the epiphanies that
have been sitting around you all along.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

Come and experience what the Clown Lab is about.
Unlock your creative impulse.

* Do you remember who you are?

* Forget what you think you know.

* Get back in tune with your heart.

* Re-discover the magic in the minute,
the simplistic, the absurd.

* Feel the joy of being stupid.


The feeling I have experienced is that you can't escape that
'just right' place. It becomes a sacred space, if you allow it.
Jef Johnson and his teachings brilliantly place the person in
just the right space for this to occur.
Julie Josephson, trombone artist


Suddenly there I was, standing blindfolded,
trying to count in two directions while walking
sideways and I had the most beautiful feeling
of stupidity...When the control was gone I felt
the greatest potential--the greatest freedom--
as if the control was actually big steel chains
holding me down.
Thomas McGinn, Actor/Director


Jef Johnson is a principal clown in the international touring company of Slava's Snowshow. As Clown, he has also toured with Cirque du Soleil. Jef has more than 20 years of experience working in a wide range of physical styles.His approach is rooted in subjective expression, physical expression of condition through impulse and reflex. He has studied corporeal expression from disciples of Grotowski, Suzuki, Marceau, Decroux, Lecoq, Meyerhold, M. Chekhov, Vakhtangov.

He has been commissioned for Master Classes, Lectures and Workshops in Acting, Theory, Character, Mask, Creative Play, Improvisation, and Clown for numerous theatre companies and universities, including Cirque du Soleil, New York Clown Theatre Festival, Camp Broadway, Slava's Snowshow, University of Houston, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, University of Minnesota, Empire State College and NYU.

For more on Jef and his Clown Lab: www.nyclown.com

Los Angeles Contact Bryan@viacorpora.com

Saturday, May 3, 2008

6 week Acting Intensive

YOU ARE YOU
Laboratory Theater Work for the foundations of the actor’s practice and the devising of performance
Based on Eastern European and Russian Traditions


Monday Evenings
May 19 – June 23
7 - 10pm
$240

limited scholarships available

This Workshop will approach the necessities of creating a foundational actor's practice and its application to monolog and scene work through the systematic isolation, coordination and development of the psychic, physical and vocal aspects of the performer’s body thus allowing deeper expression and revelation of the self in performance.

[via]Corpora Studio
6575 Santa Monica Blvd
Hollywood, CA 90038
Contact: bryan@viacorpora.com
213.249.1690


Necessities:
Clothes to move in
Text (chosen by participant and instructor)


You may want:
An extra shirt
A long sleeve shirt/sweatshirt (during breaks)

A notebook and pen (time for hunkering)

Water/snack


BRYAN BROWN has studied physical theater extensively in New York City, Europe, and Los Angeles. He has recently been invited to South Korea as Artist-in-Residence at Hooyang Performing Arts Centre. Previously, his last reconnaissance was 6 weeks in Wroclaw, Poland intensely working with instructors gathered by the Grotowski Institute as well as a profound worksession with Song of the Goat (teatr Piesn Kozla). For almost a decade, Bryan has researched with various physical theater investigators including Stephen Wangh and Raina von Waldenburg, Shinichi Iova-Koga, Mary Overlie and other Viewpoints practitioners, the members of Odin Teatret, Commedia dell'Arte instructors, Contact Dance originators, as well as the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. The deepest application has been the process of creating, leading and learning with various experimental ensembles culminating in the work with Artel.


Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Actor's Practice Evening


YOU ARE YOU
An intensive of Freedom Bound: foundational actor's practice

Monday March 24
7 - 10pm
$40

This Workshop will approach the necessities of creating a foundational actor's practice by combining work taught in longer weekend intensives and ongoing weekly worksessions in order to isolate, coordinate and develop the psychic, physical and vocal aspects of our instruments for deeper expression and revelation of the self in performance.

[via]Corpora Studio
6575 Santa Monica Blvd
Hollywood, CA 90038
Contact: bryan@viacorpora.com or 213.249.1690

Necessities:
Clothes to move in
Text


You might want:
A long sleeve shirt/sweatshirt (during breaks)
A notebook and pen (time for hunkering)
Water/snack

BRYAN BROWN has studied physical theater extensively in New York City, Europe, and Los Angeles. His latest reconnaissance was 6 weeks in Wroclaw, Poland intensely working with instructors gathered by the Grotowski Institute as well as a profound worksession with Song of Goat (teatr Piesn Kozla). For almost a decade, Bryan has researched with various physical theater investigators including Stephen Wangh and Raina von Waldenburg, Shinichi Iova-Koga, Mary Overlie and other Viewpoints practitioners, the members of Odin Teatret, Commedia dell'Arte instructors, Contact Dance originators, as well as the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. The deepest application has been the process of creating, leading and learning with various experimental ensembles culminating in the work with Artel.

Friday, March 7, 2008

Developing your Actor's Practice

The Will is in your Actions
Laboratory Theater Work for the foundations of performance training
Based on Eastern European and Russian Traditions

March 22 and 23
11am
4 - 6 hours depending on will of participants that day.

Both days:
$150
$100 (students)
One day:
$90
$60 (students)
Limited scholarships available

[via]Corpora Studio
6575 Santa Monica Blvd
Hollywood, CA 90038
Contact: bryan@viacorpora.com or 213.249.1690


Workshop Description:

Aim -


This workshop aims to provide applicable experiential knowledge for the actor's practice, the incentive to develop the will to practice, and the connection between the will, body and voice that is the heart of the actor's craft through the coordination of intense physicality, rhythm, text and song work.

For those actors with an established practice, exposure to new approaches will deepen and challenge your practice and aim to strengthen your will through active extension of that will into the world.


Practicalities of workshop –

The design of the work is to meet each participant's edge. Through discovery of joy and ease within rigorous discipline as well as the continuous switching of the plugs in our brains (experiencing text as movement, song as text, movement as song, so on), a meeting of new physical, vocal, emotional and spiritual doors is approached. Encountering these doors we experience the opportunity to undomesticate ourselves by entering through them. Whether we choose to or not remains a matter of our will, but repeated experiences begin opening ourselves to deep listening and recognition of our will as both the carrier and dependant of the wills of others, thereby allowing mutuality and musicality to ignite our will towards greater expression, connectivity and presence.


What we hope Participants walk away with –

A desire to never give up on themselves
A new experience of their will and its relation to body, voice and performance
A connection of text with movement/action
The will as the vehicle for expression through Text, song or movement
A sense that one's practice or a new depth in that practice has begun
Potential future collaborators
Exercises for Ensemble Regimen

Necessities:
Clothes to move in
Text (something you are emotionally connected to. Poems or classical text recommended.)

You might want:
A long sleeve shirt/sweatshirt (during breaks)
A few shirts (you will be sweating a lot)
A notebook and pen (time for hunkering)
Water/snack


BRYAN BROWN has studied physical theater extensively in New York City, Europe, and Los Angeles. His latest reconnaissance was 6 weeks in Wroclaw, Poland intensely working with instructors gathered by the Grotowski Institute as well as a profound worksession with Song of Goat (teatr Piesn Kozla). For almost a decade, Bryan has researched with various physical theater investigators including Stephen Wangh and Raina von Waldenburg, Shinichi Iova-Koga, Mary Overlie and other Viewpoints practitioners, the members of Odin Teatret, Commedia dell'Arte instructors, Contact Dance originators, as well as the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. The deepest application has been the process of creating, leading and learning with various experimental ensembles culminating in the work with Artel.

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Ongoing Weekly Classes

FREEDOM BOUND:
Foundational Worksessions towards your own physical approach to the performance craft
with Bryan Brown

Now twice a week!

Mondays and Thursdays

mornings
$20 / limited scholarships available
limit of 10 students
private sessions also available
bryan@viacorpora.com or 213-249-1690


The Raft: from Practice to Performance
with Bryan Brown

This weekly session aims to deepen your craft as a performer, to strengthen your foundation while steadily building towards a solid product. To investigate and create the personal process of taking the internal, expansive experiences discovered in practice and organically allowing them to grow into a rich and nuanced performance.

This worksession is on need basis working with particular participants demands and schedules. Normally in the studio, occasionally we work outside, in parks, on trails, or at the beach. bryan@viacorpora.com or 213-249-1690.


AIKIDO
"The Way of Harmony"
A martial art dedicated to peaceful conflict-resolution
with Andrew Reichart Sensei
presented in association with Theatre Dojo

Thursdays

7pm-8:30pm
$20 per class
or 5 class block for $75
beginners always welcome
questions? call Andrew Reichart Sensei at 510.388.4483

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

What is a Theater Laboratory?


Grotowski wanted his theater to be like the lab of Niels Bohr that his older brother Kazimierz once worked in,
a place for continuous exploration.

History of a theater laboratory

Claims for laboratory status in the theatre really began in the early decades of the twentieth century. Before that, there were clearly pockets of actor training in the West which were both investigative and systematic — Ian Watson traces the genesis of actor training back to the early 1700s in Britain and in France to 1786, with the birth of the Royal Dramatic school in Paris. But it was the late nineteenth century’s love affair with science and technology which spawned a new scientific rhetoric in the theatre, a development begun by Delsarte’s proto-behaviorist study of actors’ emotions. Delsarte’s work may have been criticised for its mechanistic approach but it heralded a new interdisciplinary language for actor training, a language which drew on the common associations of the scientific method: rigour, objectivity, systematic interrogation.

The laboratory in Russia

This language was never more embedded than in the Russian tradition of actor training; in Stanislavsky’s system (and in the ‘sub-systems’ of Meyerhold, Michael Chekhov and Richard Boleslavsky). From his first experimental Studio in 1905, to his final project, the Opera-Dramatic Studio, Stanislavsky’s preference was to develop a research culture outside of his main institution, the MAT. These satellite activities allowed Stanislavski a creative space to work with young actors and were designed to share what he called "the results of ... research into stage techniques". Increasingly, the research agenda was uppermost in his thoughts, and that agenda was couched in scientific terms.

The Opera-Dramatic Studio, Stanislavski's final project was to be the laboratory he called for in his essay, October and the Revolution ... He made it quite clear to the young actors and directors he gathered around him that there could be no question of gearing their work to performance; it would be done for its own sake, as research.

In Meyerhold's work, the appropriation of scientific terminology was both explicit and calculated. Indeed, of all Stanislavski’s pupils, his is the most emphatic use of an interdisciplinary language, fusing theatrical 'laws' with scientific laws — Huntley Carter called Meyerhold's actor training system, biomechanics, "the science of motion in acting". Meyerhold was founder of GITIS, the State Institute for Theatrical Art, an umbrella organisation which was responsible for the training of some of the key practitioners of the twentieth century, including Grotowski.

From Meyerhold's perspective, GITIS grew out of his attempts to realise an "exemplary model" of revolutionary theatre. Meyerhold's vision was of a mutually supportive, interactive organisation incorporating a stage, a workshop and a training school in which: "the discoveries in the workshop would affect the training in the school as well as what was exposed on the stage" in a three-fold symbiosis.


Everyone learned — students and teachers alike. It was a laboratory for working through the foundations of a new aesthetic.


GITIS was to be: A place unique in the planet, where the science of theatre is studied and drama is built. Exactly: 'science' and not 'art' — 'built' and not 'created.' Clearly for Meyerhold, the laboratory walls extended much further than the building in which he was working — the Zon theatre — for the experimental attitude he was adopting at a local level was reflected on a much grander scale — the huge social experiment of the October revolution itself. Central to this commitment to science was the emphasis on outcomes — the impact science had on the people. Such an emphasis may in part explain the popularity of the machine as a ‘symbol of the new age of mechanical and scientific industrialism’, as Carter puts it. The machine stood for productivity, for the benefits technology can bring a new society. Thus, the work of the laboratory was not seen in isolation. The laboratories of the Russian revolution fed the technological advancement of the society, the electrification of the country, for example. From a theatrical perspective, Meyerhold's work at GITIS established the same principle. The experimental findings in his workshop informed the presentations on the stage — the 'product' of a theatre industry.

The Threefold Model

Firstly, Meyerhold’s ‘exemplary model’, devised in the early 1920s, to be contrasted with Stanislavsky’s secluded investigations in the Opera Dramatic studio which set the stage for later instances of process-dominated practice such as Grotowski’s and Anatoly Vasiliev’s. With such work, there is no imperative to disseminate the research findings beyond the walls of the laboratory, no measurable outcome.

Secondly, Meyerhold’s model sees research as part of a wider picture. His laboratory shared with some of us that old fashioned notion that teaching is an integral part of research. It then extended that idea to incorporate research and teaching into the making of an original creative act — a performance.

Thirdly, is the related issue of outcomes. It is interesting to note that some ninety years ago in the new Soviet Union the research agenda was still pre-occupied with outcomes! The context is clearly a mechanistic one, related, as I have said, to the necessity to produce. But for Meyerhold it nevertheless promoted a dynamic symbiosis of original workshop research, pedagogy and performance.

The engine room of this triangular research model was the experimental workshop, described by Maria Valenti in recognisably research-oriented terms:

The students were not required to present preconceived conclusions, but were expected to find new paths, along with Meyerhold and his colleagues, to create new concepts of theatre.

What I believe is striking about this model is that, as a self-sustaining form, all areas of this symbiotic triangle feed into Meyerhold’s agenda of innovation, not because they are in themselves research but because the environment in which the activity is taking place, the wider picture, is essentially research-centered. And by that I mean:

· it stimulates originality and creativity
· it is underpinned by a set of theoretical principles
· it is designed to test the validity of those theoretical principles and to feed those findings back into the loop
· it utilises an organic system of dissemination.

In this holistic framework it is not necessarily the ‘instance of practice’ which is under scrutiny but the surrounding research environment. Research, like nature, abhors a vacuum.



The above excerpt is from a speech given by Jonathan Pitches, author of Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting
The opening line is from The Grotowski Sourcebook, eds. Schechner and Wolford

Monday, February 25, 2008

Master Worksessions with Russia's "zasluzhenniy deyatel" of Folk song and dance



Karagod
: Discover and Explore Your Folk Voice

(A joyous voice-movement workshop in the ancient Russian tradition of village songs and games)

Karagod – a festive ritual of song, dance and games

March 15 and March 16, 2008
Saturday and Sunday
1 - 5 PM
viaCorpora Studio
6575 Santa Monica Boulevard
Hollywood, CA 90038
Cost: $80.00 per day, or $150.00 for both, limited scholarships are available.
Reservation: $50.00 non-refundable deposit to hold your space (payable by check or through PayPal / Credit Card at www.viacorpora.eventbrite.com )
Additional Information: bryan@viacorpora.com or 323-871-8382

ViaCorpora presents a weekend of vocal workshops in Russian folk singing with Evgeniya Osipovna Zasimova suitable for singers/musicians, actors, directors and dancers interested in Russian/Slavic culture or the application of song work to theatrical performance.

Day One – Level 1 (Open to All)
Discover your Folk Voice – exercises in open throat voice technique (“white voice”)
Experience the joy of creating harmonies
Learn basic Old Russian village songs, their meaning, cultural/historical context, and significance in rituals
Learn the movements that accompany these songs and why they help you discover the depth and color of your voice

Day Two – Level 2 (Open to participants of level 1 and advanced folk singers)
Learn specific techniques to expand and strengthen your folk voice
Practice the creation of Russian harmonies and dissonances, rhythms, ornamentations, and resonant sounds
Learn intricate Old Russian village songs, their meaning, cultural/historical context, and significance in rituals
Learn the movements that accompany these songs and why they help you discover the depth and color of your voice

You do not need to be able to speak/read Russian or read music to participate in either day.

Evgenia Osipovna Zasimova, a professor of solo folk singing and dance at the Moscow State University of Arts and Culture, is considered a "zasluzhenniy deyatel" or national treasure in Russia. She has been leading expeditions to Russian villages to learn ancient and traditional songs, dances and games for over twenty-five years. Her ensemble, Karagod, performs at some of the most prestigious concert halls in Russia and abroad as well as provides music and musicology for numerous film and theater productions.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

A Workshop to inspire Workshops!

On Feb 17th Bryan and Olya held a free workshop for 8 students (primarily from CalArts) in order to share our work with younger performers as well as to expand the potential and purpose of Artel's teaching opportunities.

With no set timeline or criteria, the workshop was an exercise in meeting. How do artists interested in something verbalized as similar meet to work with minimal discussion, meet by letting their bodies speak, meet by entering the unknown?

For three hours we traversed a series of exercises aiming at the expansion of awareness, of listening, of glowing. We all experienced the edges of ourselves and shared in the support of that experience as an ensemble of players should. As many of Bryan's recent worksessions have, this workshop ended in a jam of sorts with the intent of pursuing the expression of the freedom found in moments throughout the day's work.

As we discussed the practicalities of the work at the end, Olya asked how many hours a day the participants all worked together (as she was not involved in the setting up of the workshop and therefore believed they were all in the same level at CalArts). But in fact, two of the participants had never met any of the people in the room before!

Everyone expressed a desire to continue the work on a regular basis and this, together with Bryan's ongoing weekly sessions, have led us to realize how much our approach is needed in the Los Angeles community, the need for a transmission of a new approach to the creation of a strong practice a performer can call their own craft, one which allows them to meet and work with anyone at anytime, if even they just met that day.

So, at the least, monthly workshops will be forthcoming. Please email bryan@viacopora.com , call 213.249.1690, or check this blog regularly for more information.

Center for Performance Research in crisis!


CPR, the Center for Performance Research in Wales, is facing the struggle inherent in all theater practitioners lives, the sand we build our castles on is perilously close to the ocean. The Center for Performance Research in Wales, a deeply important enclave of theatrical research is in jeopardy of losing its funding! CPR is a model for Artel's [via]Corpora. For over ten years they have been creating international networks, offering some of the foremost worksessions in physical and voice work in theater today, publishing important journals and books (their next two years are almost solely committed to Polish theater and Grotowski). Wales has made itself stand out and seem like a beacon of light to artists who are underappreciated and undervalued in their own countries and now the Welsh government is disregarding this international "status" that it was beginning to develop and going the way of all conservative governments in an economically unfriendly time. In our letter of support we quoted this from Stanislavsky which seems mightily apropos:


The theatre is not a luxury in the life of the people, but part of its bread and butter. It is not something one can quite well do without, but something incontestably necessary for a great people....You can't postpone the art of the thetare for a while, padlock its workshop, and suspend its animation for a time. Art cannot go to sleep and then, when it suits us, wake up again. It can only go to sleep for ever, by dying. Suspend it, and it will perish...returning to life only centuries later, if then. The death of art would be a national catastrophe.


You can view letters of support from around the world here: centreforperformanceresearch.blogspot.com
For direct information: www.thecpr.org.uk/
To view/sign the petition please visit: http://www.gopetition.com/online/17052.html

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Conscious Birth Movement workshop and screening



Elena Tonetti-Vladimirova, one of the leaders in the Conscious Birth Movement in Russia and the US, is coming to Los Angeles April 5 and 6 for workshops on Limbic Imprint Re-Coding.

Pilates Sports Center, Encino 11 am - 6pm Sat & Sun $400 single/$750 couple for more info/register: Crystal@BirthintoBeing.com (530)566.0199

Limbic Imprint re-coding invokes our emotional and physical memory of Bliss, unlocking the mysteries of our behaviors and realigning our actions with our emotions and desires. You too can enjoy the delicious, juicy experience of comfortably owning a body, being fully engaged in life, and loving it!





A screening of Elena's powerfully informative film Birth As We Know It will be taking place at our Art|Works Theater Thursday March 13th. 7pm. $10 - 15 donation.

Now in 44 countries, this stunningly beautiful film is receiving global recognition as the most profound and comprehensive guide to Conscious Birth. Impactful, inspiring and informative, the film is a journey into the miracle of Life and the nature of birth.

See a trailer at www.BirthAsWeKnowIt.com


Monday, February 4, 2008

The latest on Alexander Technique at [via]Corpora


Sharon Jakubecy is on a minor hiatus. Please read posts below for more info on the benefits of Alexander Technique or visit Sharon's Alexander Technique LA website at our extensions link to the right. Sharon is an excellent teacher who takes the time and care to help performers and non-performers alike to find more ease and alignment in their body and mind. We highly recommend her workshops.

If you have taken Sharon's workshop and want to take more of them or you haven't gotten the chance to yet, but want to, please contact Bryan at bryan@viacorpora.com to help hasten Sharon's time away from the studio.
Thank you

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Mask and Clown Worksession

Mask and Clown Performance Workshop
with Alyssa Ravenwood
6577 Santa Monica Blvd. 90038
Studio B


Free Introductory Workshop:
Monday, January 21, 7 - 10 pm
Limited Enrollment - must register in advance


Ongoing Mask and Clown Performance Workshop
Monday nights, 7 - 10pm 
Session 1: January 28 - February 18
$120
Limited Enrollment - must register in advance


An introduction to mask and clown performance techniques. Learn to express yourself with greater spontaneity and physical dexterity.

Appropriate for people with no physical theatre performance background and for experienced performers looking to practice and expand their skills.

About Alyssa Ravenwood:
An award winning physical theatre director, performer and mask designer. Artistic Director of the new Los Angeles mask troupe, Ravenwood Performance Group. A graduate of the Dell'Arte School of Physical Theatre. She also studied Clowning with Sue Morrison at the Canadian Clown Institute and Commedia with Ole Brekke of the Denmark Commedia School.

For more information visit www.alyssaravenwood.com

Registration:
www.a;yssaravenwood.com/workshop
ph: 323.227.8028
email: ravenwoodmasks@yahoo.com
credit card payments accepted through PayPal

Friday, January 4, 2008

clown, mask and Kelman work

[via]Corpora is pleased to announce that we are in talks with Alyssa Ravenwood, graduate of Dell'Arte and phenomenal maskmaker, to begin teaching a series of developmental classes in clown and mask work as well as an ongoing Kelman-based class.

[Kelmanworks, developed by the late Scott Kelman, is a mindfulness and body-based approach to the creative process. This unique and innovative process is open to anyone interested in accessing more creativity into their art, work and lives and has benefited thousands over the last 45 years. For more information, www.kelmangroup.com ]

The clown and mask developmental series is looking to begin the week of January 21st.

Check back here for updates or email bryan@viacorpora.com for more information.

For information on Alyssa please see her gorgeous websites:
Alyssa Ravenwood
Masks: www.ravenwoodmasks.com
Film and Theater: www.alyssaravenwood.com
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