Impro(ve) your Playback Performance

Impro(ve) your Playback Performance

In our sessions people laugh... a lot. They also learn tonnes... come and join us as we learn Playback Theatre performance skills.

By Impro(ve) Your Soul

Select date and time

Sun, 25 May 2025 15:00 - 19:00 GMT+1

Location

Hope Baptist Church

The Bridge Hebden Bridge HX7 8AD United Kingdom

Refund Policy

Refunds up to 7 days before event

About this event

Come along and join Duncan from Impro(ve) and Threadbear Theatre for a Playback Theatre performance training session at Hebden Bridge's community hub, Hope Baptist Church.


This unique style of improvised theatre brings real-life stories to life, as shared by the audience. At the session you'll participate in warm-up games and activities, learning how to collaborate and respond to each others' offers. The atmosphere is filled with gentleness, laughter, care, and openness. Feel free to join in as much or as little as you like.

We'll then move on to the core concepts in Playback Theatre and the structure of a performance.


At the end of the day we will present a short Playback performance to an invited audience for them and us to enjoy.

  • 3-4pm Warm-up and connecting through Play.
  • 4-5pm Playback Techniques: Shortforms, Music, Cloths, Longform.
  • 5-5.30pm a light meal together to chat and debrief.
  • 5.30-6pm set-up for the perfomance.
  • 6-7pm open performance to an invited audience.


Session cost £20, Free places available on request - message us on here or email to duncan@monkeyheads.co.uk


Objectives – What you’ll walk out with:

An understanding of what Playback is and its place in the Improv Pantheon, an ability to make physical connection a key part of your practice, the bravery to make big choices, support when you need to and the belief that you will be supported when you lead.

Who should come to this? Anyone who wants to:

  • Become more supportive
  • Be more trusting and open
  • Really begin to work in ensemble with your fellow performers
  • Challenge their assumptions about what Improv is
  • Add more options to your skills and performative offers


What's not to like. Fun should be hard work... But hard work should be fun.


We look forward to seeing you there!

Tags

Organised by

Impro(ve) Your Soul

Our events are all Improvisation based, whether for performance or for training and personal/professional development.

Impro(ve)...

In our sessions people laugh... a lot.

We run weekly: refugee, 55+ and recovery sessions for free. We also run open sessions for anyone to join.

Becoming a supporter means you help build an ImprovNHS (free to use). It'll be free because of this platform: https://ko-fi.com/improveyoursoul .

#improvNHS #monkeyphilosophy

Help us open up access to improvisation for more humans... help us keep our community support sessions free at the point of use (an ImprovNHS if you will), so more humans can access the benefits of Improv. and all of its lovely social and health related brilliance. We run sessions for refugees and asylum seekers, humans in recovery from addiction, older humans, younger humans, humans with diabilities, humans in need of mental health support EVERY WEEK.

We don't think availability to cash should be a barrier to our sessions. The more we have as a fund on here (https://ko-fi.com/improveyoursoul), the more we can do in the real world.

A new model of community funding... each donation or monthly addition to this opens up our ability to deliver sessions to those in our society who have less advantages and more barriers to living their best life. https://ko-fi.com/improveyoursoul

Testimonials:

  • "... a distinctive flavour full of subtle herbs and spicy kebab."
  • "It's a rare opportunity for me to engage in whimsey, in contrast to the dour grey pragmatism of modern existence."

Website: https://www.monkeyheads.co.uk/

Monkeyheads...

Duncan and Colin combine to create a surreal soup of silliness, where there can be love, laughter, tears and tantrums. Improvised theatre that teeters on the edge of calamity and tweaks the beak of impending doom.

We are regular visitors at the British Improv Project, Nottingham Smash Night and performing throughout Yorkshire for over 10 years. We combine over 90 years of improvising experience (aka living and existing) to bring you a menagerie of badgers, dinosaurs and occasionally humans.

Testimonials:

  • "If Samuel Beckett did Improv, this is what it would look like” UK Improv Project
  • “11/10 Genuinely incredible”, “Delightfully strange” Nottingham Scratch Night Audience
  • “It broke all the Improv rules... but it was compelling” Jon Trevor, Director, Birmingham Improv Festival

Website: https://www.monkeyheads.co.uk/

 

ThreadBear Theatre...

Our events are a chance for people to reflect on their time together, or on a specific theme they wish to explore. For anyone interested in developing skills of listening, improvisation, fluidity, personal storytelling and music that are intrinsic to this form of theatre.

We create a ritual space where any story however ordinary or extraordinary can be told and immediately made into theatre.

Testimonials from audience and workshop participants:

  • "Absolutely brilliant. Please come back again and again and again."
  • "The effect from the four people on the stage was amazing – funny, sad, despairing, baffling, miniscule but overwhelming. The way these actors re-enacted the emotions and the essence of the story in just a few minutes was uncanny in its clarity..."

Website: http://www.threadbeartheatre.com/