Residency Model

DIRECTING TEXT WITH THE PHYSICAL ACTOR

This five-day intensive will give an insight into the Pulse rehearsal process – a physical approach to staging text. Pulse is a kinetic improvisational strategy for working with linear narrative and character to create text-based physical theatre.

This intensive introduces a particular directorial approach to the physical actor and text. It will be of particular interest to directors who can draw from the visceral experience of being an actor and are interested in using their own improvisatory skills in rehearsal to direct text. The Pulse process necessitates the use of performance skills from a director such as, quick and imaginative thinking, physical and imaginative fluency, collaboration, keen observation and the ability to work‘ in the moment’. During this Master class participants will experience how to wait, watch, recognize and capture what the actors offer.

During the intensive we will work through several layers of the Pulse rehearsal process. All participants will play one of the characters during the intensive in order to understand what the director is searching for and specifically to aid the director to empathize with the actor.

OpticNerve Training

FOUNDATION PULSE

This five-day intensive will introduce and explore the Pulse physical performance and theatre-making principles. Working through the fundamental and then more complex layers of the work, participants will embody a shared language enabling them to collaborate and create. Each participant will be challenged to move beyond their habitual performance modes and to extend their physical, vocal and imaginative fluency and clarity within an improvised structure.

This workshop will appeal specifically to actors with an interest and facility in physical acting (body and text) and collaborative artists seeking to challenge their own theatre-making processes.

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

Come on a journey with a group of like-minded explorers into the land of theatrical creation. Be there as 'life is being breathed into something that didn't exist', witness the magic of process and enhance your viewing experience. Gain insight from a rare glimpse into a unique process. Come with us...behind closed doors.

Behind closed doors will enable you to follow the progress of an OpticNerve production with the opportunity to explore the script from page to stage, view rehearsals, talk vision with the director and process with the artists.

THE SNAPSHOT

A live performance is an evolving organism. The Snapshot represents our response to this ever-changing art form. Several times during the performance season ensemble artists, the director and audience members will have the opportunity to interview each other unearthing responses to this live performance moment. A temperature reading; a snapshot.

This is a unique version of a Q&A. The audience will help us interrogate our practice where responses may be verbally or physically realised.

PULSE JAM

Ensemble and Training Participants

Just as musicians come together to have a ‘jam’ Pulse players who have never met on the performance floor come to this session to improvise together.

Armed with a set of shared performance principles they are simultaneously the creators and the creation. This session is a forum to practice skills, find collaborators and invest in your performance fitness. There will be half an hour of guided physical preparation before the Jam begins. The Jam is facilitated rather than taught.

Audience Enrichment