All Will Learn to Wear Bowlers: Pig Iron Clown Workshop in NYC

PIG IRON THEATRE COMPANY presents A CLOWN WORKSHOP with Quinn Bauriedel and Geoff Sobelle in New York City WHEN: Wednesdays (June 10, 17, and 24) 2:30 - 5:30 PM WHERE: The Brecht Forum 451 West Street COST: $125 Pig Iron Artistic Director Quinn Bauriedel and Company Member Geoff Sobelle (creator of the international hit all wear bowlers) invite you to join them in an investigation of the world of the clown. What gets revealed when you stand alone in front of an audience? What pleasure can be found with the smallest mask in the world? In what discipline are you the world's leading expert? With little else than a red nose and the body that you inherited, the workshop will exploit each participant's unique sense of humor and way of uncovering the absurdity of being a human being on this planet. Take a leap into the unknown territory of your own lunacy. To register, contact Quinn Bauriedel at quinn@pigiron.org Pig Iron Theatre Company has been creating original performance works in Philadelphia since 1995, making plays about live music, dead people, neuroscience and thwarted love affairs through a unique method of collaborative creation and with a signature physical approach to character. Past collaborations have included work with the legendary director Joe Chaikin, playwright Adriano Shaplin, choreographer David Brick, and composer Cynthia Hopkins. Pig Iron's work has been seen at theaters and festivals in London, Edinburgh, San Francisco, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, Brazil, Germany, Ireland, Romania and Peru. The company's original works have met with critical acclaim and awards, including a 2005 OBIE; most recently, Pig Iron's Chekhov Lizardbrain was hailed by The New York Times as one of the top 10 theatre events of 2008. In September 2009, Pig Iron will premiere Welcome to Yuba City, a comic exploration of the mythic American West, at the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival. Find out more about their work at www.pigiron.org

Ira Seidenstein & Quantum Theatre

Ira Seidenstein is an Australian actor, clown, and clown teacher. He's been teaching, directing, and performing for over 30 years. Ira was a student of Carlo Mazzone Clemente (founder of Dell'arte) and of Danny Chapman, one of the great Ringling clowns (and one of the original founders of Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Clown College.) Ira also has an MA, is a PHD candidate, and has studied healing at the Berkeley Psychic Institute, and Iyengar yoga also. Ira has taught and performed with a number of companies, including Cirque du Soleil, Circus Oz, Circus Smirkus, Legs on the Wall, Chaplin's Eye, the Bell Shakespeare Company, and many more. He also coaches performers and shows on an international basis. In 1993 he developed a concept called Quantum Theatre, which he teaches and practices regularly. Quantum Theatre is a "unified theory" of performance that brings the actor from Slapstick to Shakespeare (one of Ira's many workshops is called Shakespeare's Clowns). He uses exercises he invented such as the Creative Twist, which uses the body as a moving, living statue to augment traditional and other methods of theatre, including Suzuki, ballet, Noh, and Kabuki. In 2005, Ira started the next phase of Quantum Theatre, I.S.A.A.C. (International School of Acting AND Clown), which is not a school like a building but a school of philosophy and practices. It should be noted that Isaac means "To Laugh" in Hebrew. Here Ira describes Quantum Theatre: Quantum Theatre has three systems and each has ten principles. For example, the Principle of One, represents that all work in theatre is drawn from ones self. The Principle of Two represents the polarity and balance of opposition the Yin/Yang or masculine/feminine energies within oneself. Central in Quantum Theatre is the Principle of Four, the integrative use of Body-Voice-Performance-Creativity. The Principle of Four is practiced in a spiral twisting movement that looks like da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man with arms outstretched horizontally. The end of the spiral twist is a held shape that looks like the chi gong pose called ‘embracing the tree’. The Suzuki Actor Training Method uses a similar shape called a ‘statue’. To find out more about Ira's work, visit his website listed below: http://www.iraseidenstein.com

Toronto Physical Performance Workshops in November

Toronto clown Adam Lazarus and guest instructors Susanna Hood and Meagan O’Shea will present three weeks of workshops focusing on physical performance techniques. These 5 day courses will challenge students to take risks, hone their improvisational skills and push through performance inhibitions to find the pleasure of being present, space, rhythm, fixed point, complicity, focus, flop and play. Students will have daily work on building spatial and body awareness Each week will focus on a different subject: Week 1: The Physical Body and Le Jeu Monday Nov. 5 - Friday Nov. 9 Week 2: Introduction to Bouffon Monday Nov. 12 - Friday Nov. 16 Week 3: Building a Performance Monday Nov. 19 - Friday Nov. 23 All classes will take place at Pia Bauman's School of Ballet and Creative Movement, 6 Noble Street, Toronto. Classes will be held from 10 am- 2pm. On Saturday Nov. 24 & Sunday Nov. 25 there will be class showings at Theatre Passe Muraille that are Pay What You Can, with money going back to the students. Costs: (all costs in Canadian dollars) $300 for 20 hours of instruction over 1 week ($240 equity) $590 for 40 hours of instruction over 2 weeks ($470 equity) $870 for 60 hours of instruction over 3 weeks ($700 equity) To get more complete information, visit http://www.quiptake.com/Workshop.asp