Quiddity Theatre
- Workshops (John)
Psychophysical Training Through Movement Improvisation
‘Psychophysical Training’ - an approach to training performers that treats the mind and the body as a holistic unit. The training enables a performer to identify habits and patterns through engaging in physical work and therefore to alter those habits and patterns. Through detailed and hard physical work, the training brings the performer face-to-face with him/herself, allowing identification and removal of the blockages that stand between where a performer currently is and the realisation of her/his full potential.
My training works through a combination of fixed and improvised physical exercises, always explored in the context of a developing Ensemble. The key driver for this training process is that the performer must actively seek and engage with pleasure in all of their work. This does not mean that a performer only does what they like, it means they search for what they like in what they must do.
For the last decade I have been developing approaches to the holistic and developmental training of performers. This work underpins the MA I run at Huddersfield University. The work originates from an interest in synthesising the work of the European Laboratory School of theatre training (Meyerhold, Grotowski, Barba, Staniewski) with the improvisational work that emerged from the USA in the 1960s and 1970s. The work has developed to a point where I combine rigourous and disciplined concentrational work with movement improvisation – offering students a combination of structure and freedom through which to identify and develop their own aesthetic and technical capacities. This work has proved useful to artists across a range of disciplines. I have worked extensively with Circus Performers, Dancers, Actors, Musicians and Physical Theatre Practitioners. In slightly modified form, this work is integral to a process of Creativity Training that I have been developing with colleagues at Huddersfield University.
Ensemble
I am particularly interested as a director and a trainer of performers in the idea of Ensemble. The psychophysical training work really asks an individual to identify two domains of performance. The first is their internal landscape – the processes of their mind and body, over which they can come to exercise control. The second is the world outside of themselves, which they can influence but not control – thus they need to learn how to allow their impulses to be read by others and how to respond to the impulses that they receive while performing. This approach to inter-performer communication places individual development and ensemble development in parallel. It offers the chance to create ensembles where performers remain individuals, but individuals who are sensitive to and in communication with the individuality of their co-performers.
Improvisation
In the training that I run, I use movement improvisation as vehicle for developing performance capacity. However I am also interested in Improvisation as a performance form in its own right. When I teach improvisation I work primarily from a movement base, encouraging a pleasure-based approach to solo, duet and whole group improvisation. I encourage performers to value and exploit, but not be limited by, the technical skills they have acquired through their training. Usually when I teach improvisation I like to offer a performance so that students can also see the work I am teaching in the public domain.
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