This FREE 1 or 2-day workshop is part of an ongoing experiment in explicitly bringing work with energy/qi to acting training.

Main teachers:

• Regina Gutiérrez – actor/film/corporal mime

• Alvaro Hernandez – actor/ dramaturg/playwright

• Lynette Hunter – performer/movement teacher

• Peter Lichtenfels – international director

What an actor has to do is learn to have presence. Actors train to create both physical and vocal scores so they can then release themselves from the technique and depend on the pathways the body has learned to follow in the training. Most actor training exercises precisely focus on practising these skills that release the actor from the predictable, put them in that ‘moment’ of undecidability that opens the presencing space for their fellow actors and the audience. These workshops specifically develop performance training to build these scores through energy work.

Workshop 1: Monday 3rd July 2017: 12.30pm - 3.00pm

The first workshop focuses on movement and building presence on stage with the body rather than the face. The embodied pathways an actor trains-in are built on alignment, on breath, and on energy/qi. The first two are key to contemporary western acting traditions. Our work builds on them to develop performance training through energy work practices in embodied traditions such as Lishi which have centuries of experience in qi cultivation and expression.

Workshop 2: Tuesday 4th July 2017: 12.30pm - 3.00pm (attendance at Workshop 1 required)

The second workshop focuses on voice and vocals making them present so they do something rather than mean something: for example, they touch the ear of another person, they make the air move, they move energy in some form. Most important they get unhinged from their conventional meanings so that they carry energy each time they are spoken aloud.

Basic introductory information:

Participants will benefit from some training in breathing and alignment techniques, but these are not essential to the workshops. The acting training, suitable for stage and for film, will focus on building physical and vocal scores for improvisation, situation, and scene work.

Lishi:

The Weihai Lishi Quanfa is a whole-body practice that trains in movement meditation and qi work. It dates back over 3000 years, and has elements in common with a number of Daoist practices, including yin/yang/harmony/instruments/health. One of the few complete family traditions, it unexpectedly came to public knowledge in Europe in the early twentieth century, and is unique in its breadth of practice.

Regina Gutiérrez is a multi-disciplinary performing artist and theater educator specialist in the areas of movement, physical theater, and acting for stage and film – including corporal mime, acrobatics and scenic combat. She has participated in numerous productions as an actress, assistant director, and producer, working on social and activitst projects as well as with, among others, Guillermo Gomez Peña and the choreographer Jon Jasperse.

Álavaro Hernández is a performance artist, theater director, actor, playwright and professor at ASAB Columbia. He has received a number of international awards, and has participated in and created pieces of street theater, physical theater, collaborative theater and other types of performances with artists and communities in Asia, Europe and Latin America. He has been the artistic director, playwright and dramaturg of Entropico Teatro since 2003 and has collaborated continuously in artistic and research projects with indigenous communities of Amazon and the region of Putumayo in Colombia.

Lynette Hunter is currently a movement teacher at University of California Davis, where she also teaches performance studies, and international theatre and dance. Writer and editor of numerous books and articles, she currently researches in the area of politics and embodiment.

Peter Lichtenfels is a professional director and professor of Theatre and Dramatic Arts at University of California Davis. He directed Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2016 at the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center, took a production of Shogo Ohta’s Plastic Rose to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2014, and in 2017 directed Shogo Ohta’s Elements for a scholarly conference in intercultural theatre.

Special Notices:

PLEASE NOTE THAT PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEO MAY BE TAKEN DURING THE WORKSHOPS. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO HAVE YOUR IMAGE USED FOR RESEARCH OR PROMOTION PURPOSES PLEASE MAKE THIS KNOWN TO THE EVENT ORGANISERS.

If you are visiting London specifically for the Workshops we can try and help you find free or cheap accomodation with friends and family of people in our network - please contact us below.

Please consult a GP for advice if you are in any doubt whether taking part in a low to moderate intensity movement and exercise workshop is for you. It is important that you exercise within your own range of movement and at an intensity that suits YOU. Please be comfortable at all times and do not over exert yourself or be harmful to other people!

CONTACT (for further information or enquiries):

alex@lishi.org Dr Alex Boyd

+44.77536.11768