Spring 2023
Connecting up : online. Connecting the Body,Voice imagination and Feelings. tutor Max Hafler
The Shakespeare Connection: online. The Character and the Audience.
Tutors Max Hafler and guest tutor Liz Shipman
Holding on and Letting Go, an in the room workshop on balancing, rising and Falling
tutors Declan Drohan and Max Hafler
The Polarities of Being
online workshop on Polarity for scene, character and play.
tutor Max Hafler
The Shakespeare Connection
In Shakespeare more than any other playwright, we the audience are friends and collaborators in the characters and we, the actors are friend and collaborators with the audience. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Richard the Third as we accompany him on his dark journey of villainy. As actors and lovers of Shakespeare we might explore these questions; “Is the audience a character?””Can we be sensitive to the audiences energy and can we allow that to affect the character themselves?” “Is the audience complicit in the character’s journey?” “In soliloquies, how does the audience energy affect the actors choices of direct address or introspection?” “How do we as artists make these decisions?” Through exploration of the text, and Michael Chekhov’s exercises we will try to explore these questions which take us to the heart of what must be a live event.
Fee 120€/ 130$
Liz Shipman—Director/Choreographer, Specialist in Psychophysical Actor Training, Acting Shakespeare and Active Integrations.
Co-Artistic Director of the Meisner/Chekhov Integrated Training Studio in San Diego (2013-present),Co-Artistic Director of the Kings County Shakespeare Company (NYC) where she directed and/or choreographed over 50 productions (1983-2001),Certified Laban Movement Analyst, self-taught & trained in the Chekhov work
(1987-present). Her approach integrates the work of Michael Chekhov, Rudolph Laban, Irmgard Bartenieff and Arthur Lessac.
In 2020, she launched Virtually Shakespeare, a recurring course on Zoom. Liz relishes working with language-rich texts & creating work that engages both the actor & the audience through heightened atmospheres & fully committed performances.
Max Hafler is the author of Teaching Voice, and “What Country Friends is This?” both published by Nick Hern books. His work on Shakespeare with young people using the Chekhov Technique is documented in the second book . Max trained at LAMDA and worked as an actor for several years before expanding into play writing, teaching and directing. His company Theatrecorp was dedicated to presenting classical work in the West of Ireland, which included Shakespeare, Beckett, Lorca, Marlowe and Webster. .
Polarities of Being
23rd May – 13th June 4 workshops 16.00 – 18.00
Online with Max Hafler.
Within every quality exists its opposite. Within the bully there exists the bullied. Within the Courageous, somewhere there exists the Fearful. Within the Lucky lives the Unfortunate. Within the Trivial lurks the Profound. How we see our characters as negotiating these opposites or polarities, as Michael Chekhov called them, can indicate to us something that resonates with us as performers,
Finding the polarity of a character, and working with the polarity in a speech, or indeed a characters journey through the play, provides us with resonant pathways which are both liberating but keep us on track in our work.
Not only that, but,using the whole play, polarities can live in the production as the spine of the play or devised piece. They can guide directors, actors and designers to a Feeling of The Whole and a holistic production where directors,set and actors fold together in a common purpose, without destroying the creative individuality of each artist involved.
Cost 100€ waged/80 unwaged
Holding On and Letting Go
Welcome visitors to your site with a short, engaging introduction. Double click to edit and add your own text.
– working with Balancing , Rising, and Falling (using the body to explore the specifics of terror using The Crucible )
In this day long, in-the-room workshop, we will be exploring the inner dynamics and outer expression of ways to play characters on a knife edge. We will be looking at the different ‘pulls’ of what Michael Chekhov called the Three Sisters, (balancing, floating(rising) and falling) and like much of his technique we will be finding these primarily in the body. Using these processes you can find very specifically intangible sensations and feelings for the character and we will be exploring these using short scenes from The Crucible, the play about the Salem witch trials, which was written as a response to the McCarthy trials of the 1950s. The play, set in a harsh unstable world of the religious right, with dangers within and without, is somewhere everyone is trying to find balance and safety... (parallels with our present reality are all too apparent.)
Declan Drohan and Max Hafler are the tutors of Chekhov Training and Performance Ireland.
Free T shirt if you are amongst the first 5 booked! Please indicate size on registration.
Venue NUI Galway.
Saturday May 27th 10 - 5
cost 60€
email chekhovtpi@gmail.com