ABSTRACT
In this third chapter detailing the pedagogy of the Month-Long Intensive, the focus is on Body Work, namely Movement/Dance, Clown and Fight. Building on John Broome’s principles of exuberance through release and Trish Arnold’s physical swings through the body, Movement combines with Dance (formal Elizabethan and traditional dance steps) and culminates in original choreographies by faculty members. The Clown progression offers vocationally transferable skills including training play, presence and the actor/audience relationship. The progression springboards off Merry Conway’s work, with faculty members incorporating their own trainings from Jacques Lecoq, Keith Johnstone and commedia dell’arte, and leads to an exploration of bouffon. The Fight progression focuses on B. H. Barry’s mantra of ‘through form there is freedom,’ combining precisely choreographed forms with the psychophysical impact of violence in Shakespeare’s plays. Tony Simotes’s mentoring of female fight teachers is noted. ‘Bringing it all together’ is the Elizabethan World Picture Day (the brainchild of movement teacher Susan Dibble and Director of Training Dennis Krausnick), and the Actor/Audience progression concludes with the final sharing of Shakespeare scenes and the regenerative potential of language.
