The March Seminar will be held at the Castlereagh Boutique Hotel, 169-171 Castlereagh Street Sydney.

SUNDAY 29th MARCH

We have a very full practical program for our March Seminars. The 3 presenters have designed sessions that fit together to inform us of various ways to present improvisation and use of the body. This session will suit old and new teachers alike and will give opportunity for hands on practical work that we can take back and use with our own students.

Please encourage colleagues and senior students to attend this highly worthwhile day.
8:45 Doors open for Registration
9:00 Welcome and outline of the day,
9:10 Session 1 begins.
11:10 Morning Tea – provided
11:30 Touchstones – Sharing knowledge and methods of explaining the importance and paractical aspects of Body Language. Katherine Poulsen.
12:30 LUNCH – not provided. Groups generally find lunch at a local cafe or at the QVB.
1:45 Session 2
2:45 Session 3
4:15 Conclusion of Sunday sessions for members

OUR PRESENTERS and their sessions:

ANTHONY SKUSE is Head of Performance at Actors Centre Australia. He was Associate Lecturer for Performance Practices at NIDA from 2009 to 2012. Anthony will present a practical workshop where he will begin with outlining his approach to the mask, then run through warm ups and preparatory exercises for the masks.

Mask work is an intrinsic aspect of theatre from all cultures and forces us to think about the use of the whole body as we match our physical response to the mask character being created. Anthony, with his thorough knowledge of Commedia Dell’Arte will help us to work on the general zanni walk, breaking the vertical axis of the body, leading from different parts of the body/animals and how to use them as a way into the use of masks/characters and how that influences performance today. He will also look at the four major comic archetypes: the old man, the servant, the lover and il capitano and help us to ask what the scenario tells us.

This workshop will link with the improvisation workshop by Scott Parker and the Touchstones session.

If there are specific questions that participants want answered the workshop will be tailored to meet the needs of the room.

SCOTT PARKER Scott Parker is the Creative Director of Matriark Theatre with whom he has led creative development on numerous devised works. Scott’s work is centred around unlocking his audience’s imagination through simple, theatrical magic.

IMAGINATION GAMES
Structured Improvisation for Children

Children are natural improvisers, capable of inventing and dreaming up amazing flights of fancy from the simplest of starting points. In this practical workshop, devised theatre maker, Scott Parker will demonstrate how he harnesses this imaginative power using games and structured improvisation. Participants will learn exercises that nurture imaginative development and gently encourage students to play and tell stories for an audience using their bodies and voices as primary instruments.

KATHERINE POULSEN is a member of the Committee of the NSW Speech and Drama Association and will lead a peer discussion on the ways that we teach Body Language and the importance of this aspect of our teaching. As always this will be valuable for new and old teachers alike and needs input from everyone. So think about what you do and how you teach this and bring your ideas to share.

Touchstones: Body-Language and Gesture
Introduced and Facilitated by Katherine Poulsen

It is not just what you say but how you say it. Gesture and body-language are the unspoken and influential aspects of communication that can assist or hinder the performer/speaker. In this session we aim to open discussion on imparting and defining body-language to clients. Touchstones are sessions intended to foster communication of the wealth of knowledge between peers in the association inspiring our newest and most experienced members to learn and share.