BIF week 2020

All BIF week programs are held in English, with a maximum of 12 participants each. The programs involve 17,5 (Masterclass) and 21 hours (Intensive and Six-pack) workshops, a panel discussion, a tour of Berlin, a rehearsal observation, two jams, fun activities and tickets to any of the shows of IMPRO 2020.

Locations: Studio Puls Berlin, Möckernstrasse 111; Jugendkulturzentrum Pumpe, Lützowstrasse 42 (Masterclass and Intensive) and Ratibortheater, Cuvrystrasse 20a (Six-pack)

BIF week - Masterclass
Daniel Orrantia (Colombia): The body is a vehicle

There is an ancient belief that stories reside in a special place away from our world. In order to bring back stories from this mythical place, we have devised many vehicles. We have created songs, paintings, drawings, and alphabets. But what happens when the vehicle is our body? How do we use it as a medium for storytelling?

In this workshop we will work together to explore the physical characteristics of our bodies as vehicles to tell stories. Through directed exercises we will focus on ourselves, the space that surrounds us and the other performers. This will be an exploration of storytelling from your body with one of the world’s greatest and most diverse physical improvisers, with the aim of giving performers new tools and skills to enhance their practice and physical work on stage. So you can finally stop worrying about all of your scenes being just “talking heads”!

Daniel Orrantia’s practice pushes the boundaries between improvisation and physical theatre, bringing elements of clowning, mime, comics and painting as tools for expression and storytelling. He has been designing workshops and directing shows for different groups and festivals around the world.

As a performer, he has toured the world with Speechless - an improvised show without words. He founded and is currently running the PICNIC company, specialized in creating devised work and collaborating with different artists, who bring inspiration from diverse areas. Together with this team he founded and is directing the MonkeyFest - an annual impro festival, which happens in his home city of Bogotá in Colombia since 2011.

LEVEL: participants with at least 5 years of impro experience, who rehearse and perform on a regular basis and have a professional approach to their impro work.

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BIF Week - Intensive
Kayla Lorette (Canada), Gilly Alfeo (Germany) and Billy Kissa (Greece): Character work

Character work is one of the foundations of good improvisation. In this series of workshops, we will explore the steps to creating and living in a fully realized character and see how that ultimately benefits every aspect of scene work. From the creation of a character to how it interacts with others to its eventual evolution, you’ll be shown many tools to help ground you in your scene work. With a good character, you’ll find your audience is much more connected to what you’re sharing with them. The participants will work with three amazing instructors, who will focus on three different parts of your own individual character development:

Kayla Lorette – Creation: There are many ways to discover and create characters within an impro scene. In this workshop, you’ll explore those different entry points and see which one feels best for you! Be it physical, emotional or completely abstract, you’ll learn different tools to manifest a fully realized character, through finding your own, uniquely fitting way to approach character work.

Gilly Alfeo – Interaction: Once you’ve established a character, there’s chance for development. Believable character development shouldn’t come out of nothing. Encounter and interaction should trigger that process. Learn to recognize strong triggers for your character and grasp how to make wise offers that support a comprehensible change.

Billy Kissa – Evolution: The last chapter of this workshop will help you and your characters be open to change. Focusing on realistic and organic transitions, by recognizing how their experience evolves and reconstructs them, we can help the audience relate to our character's journey through change and evolution.

Kayla Lorette has been performing for over ten years. Her impro duo, The Sufferettes, won the Canadian Comedy Award for Best Improv Troupe in 2014 and 2015, with Kayla winning for Best Female Improviser in 2014. The Sufferettes have toured internationally, performing and teaching throughout Europe and North America. She’s also a prolific TV and film writer and performer, winning the Canadian Screen Award in 2016.

Gilly Alfeo leaped into the world of arts as a jazz-piano student at the Conservatory of Enschede in the Netherlands. He was later recruited as a pianist by Springmaus, Germany’s oldest commercial impro group.

What started as a liaison, became a lifelong passion - he soon became an impro actor and is now also the Artistic Director of the company.

Billy Kissa is an actress, who dove into the world of impro acting and teaching head first by completing ImproVIBE’s training. Since 2012 she has taught and performed in Greece, elsewhere in Europe, USA and Australia. She’s the co-organizer of Greece’s only international impro festival Mt. Olymprov and a member of the European impro network The SIN, the international collective for women improvisers Project Eve and the international troupe 3 Deadly Sinners.

LEVEL: Level: participants with at least 3 years of impro experience, who rehearse and/or take workshops on a regular basis.

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BIF Week - Six-pack
Tess Degenstein (Canada), Lee White (Canada), Sara Šoukal (Slovenia), Björn Harras (Germany),
Lád’a Karda (Czech Republic) and Keng-Sam Chane Chick Té (Reunion Island)

The Six-pack program of 2020 has been devised with great care towards improvisational diversity. Six teachers from six different companies will bring six different styles they most like to work with and introduce you to different skills that every passionate improviser should try to master.

Tess Degenstein: Impulse

The starting workshop of the Six-pack program aims to further connect improvisers with their impulses. Through exercises, scene work, and coaching, you will learn to play with less hesitancy and more fearlessness. Emphasis here is not on cleverness, but on playfulness, and joy. We will investigate how to inspire our scene partners and, in doing, surprise ourselves. When was the last time you surprised yourself?

Tess Degenstein has performed across her home country of Canada, most recently touring Rebecca Northan’s hit off-Broadway show Blind Date. Internationally she has performed and taught in Vienna, Berlin, London, Oslo, Atlanta, and New York. She has been nominated for multiple Canadian Comedy Awards for her ensemble work in the impro troupe The Bad Dog Repertory Players, and the webseries Space Janitors (CSA Winner).

Lee White: Listening and acceptance

Listening is one of the most important skills an improviser can have, yet too often our scene partner's words and the meanings behind them are neglected. Can we turn down our ego and open our senses to what is really being said? Yes, we can. With a focus on listening to our partner and accepting their offers, this workshop will have you giving more and making your partner look like the star. Ask not what your partner can do for you, ask what you can do for your partner!

Lee White is most known for being part of the famous impro duo CRUMBS. He has been performing and teaching impro (almost) all his life, touring with shows and workshops all over Europe, Asia and North America. Aside from CRUMBS, Lee has been involved in the invention and development of numerous new shows/formats. He has performed in countless plays and independent films, television, as well as stand-up comedy, all over this planet.

Sara Šoukal: Enjoy the silence!

So many times as improvisers we rely on words alone to tell the story or express our emotions, forgetting that our body is already telling a story. We will challenge ourselves with every improviser’s nightmare: how to improvise without words. In this workshop we will explore ways to listen to our bodies, we will limit ourselves to minimal talking in the scenes and we’ll rely on the expressiveness of our movement alone!

Sara Šoukal has been performing in improvisational theatre since 1994, first as a member of the first children impro troupe in Slovenia and later in Slovenian High School and National Improvisational League, where she still performs today. She founded her own company Impromobile in 2010, where she explores long form impro. She collaborates with many different impro troupes in Ljubljana as a teacher and a performer and travels to festivals all around Europe and the USA.

Björn Harras: Acting

The essence of acting is … acting. That does not mean you pretend to be a character, it means you are the character. But how can we slip into a character quickly? And when we got it, how can we sustain the character, even if we just created it? The answer lies in the inner processes, which help you to stay in the character and also let it change automatically.

Björn Harras is originally from the centre of Germany - a town called Erfurt where he started playing impro 18 years ago. He studied acting at the art State University in Leipzig and after that moved to Berlin. He has played lead character roles in different series on German television for several years, the most successful being Gute Zeiten, Schlechte Zeiten and has also performed in numerous theatre roles in Berlin. Since 2008 he is a part of the Berlin IMPRO festival host theatre Die Gorillas.

Lád’a Karda: Flow

When you have no ask-fors or topics from the audience, everything depends on the flow between the improvisers. During this workshop we will explore possibilities of how to find and keep the flow on stage and even forget about the fact, that you are improvising. When we have no rules, we have to find them with our partners and try to define the game that we are playing. It is like playing in our childhood again … but you are doing theatre … but it doesn’t feel like theatre, it’s actually playing again.

Láďa Karda holds a Master’s degree in alternative and puppet theatre from DAMU in Prague. He is an avid pioneer of solo impro, a singer, a bass guitar player and a songwriter. He can be seen performing at NoD Theatre or the famous Studio Ypsilon in Prague. Láďa has been a member of Just! Impro ensemble since 2010 and in 2015 he established his own experimental impro group 20,000 Jews Under the Sea.

Keng-Sam Chane Chick Té: Finding your inner clown

Clowning is the essence of impro itself, the religion of reaction towards the audience and for yourself to create a story that comes true to you and the others. In this workshop we will use some techniques from Rudolph Laban, a Hungarian choreographer, who worked on the body as the tool to tell a story, and the variations that we can experience with it, and from Claudia Notalle, a clown from France, who has explored clowning in a particular way, putting the emphasis on the connection with yourself and among all the audience members.

Keng-Sam Chane Chick Té is an improviser from the Reunion Island. He has been teaching and performing impro in many different countries in Europe, Australia, Asia and North America. When Keng-Sam is not busy travelling, he is producing the FERIIR Festival. Since 2010, he is also the founding member of the company La Bagasse, which specifies in long and short form shows on the Reunion Island.

LEVEL: participants with at least one year of improv experience who rehearse and/or take workshops on a regular basis.

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Schedule.

Registration.

MASTERCLASS
Early bird cost: 279 Euro
Regular Cost: 319 Euro

INTENSIVE AND SIX-PACK
Early bird cost: 329 Euro
Regular Cost: 369 Euro

Early bird cost only with full payment and registration until Dec 31st 2019. The price includes workshops, other scheduled activities and a festival pass for all the shows of IMPRO 2020.

There is the possibility for the Masterclass and Intensive participants to have simple lunch at the workshop location on Friday, Saturday and Sunday for the additional cost of 20 Euro – please choose the option in the registration form.

Please register by clicking the "Book" buttons after the description of each workshop.