This workshop is an intensive, specialized, one-week, immersive program in the training and application of rasaboxes and a suite of psychophysical exercises out of which they were devised. Participants can develop their skill-set in this special, psychophysical approach to working with the aesthetic expression of emotion and its application to performance composition. Daily training includes hatha yoga and extensive breath, voice and movement work.
Rasaboxes exercises range from the very simple and personal expression of each rasa individually by means of drawing, breathing, gesturing, sensing, and vocalizing to complex combinations of rasas performed by several people simultaneously. From composing the body and guiding the breath, the work leads step-by-step to sound and movement exercises that may use objects and texts, music, masks, songs — and more. During each workshop, new ways of accessing and expressing the rasas are found.
Participants learn to apply the rasaboxes work in performance compositions by mixing, layering, and scoring the eight rasas in ways that create complex expressions, dramatic characters, and psychophysical emotional relations. Workshops include discussions about the theories that gave rise to the formation of rasaboxes, and theories and researches that continue to foster its development as an approach to performer training. The workshop is designed to accommodate a range of skill levels and interests of professionals and students including actors, directors, performance artists, musicians, choreographers, playwrights and drama, movement, and dance teachers and/or therapists.
Costs: Standard summer school rates apply - $780 includes all related fees
Housing: $22 per person per night, or $138 per week based on double occupancy
Dates and Location: June 20-24, 2011, Milo Smith Tower Theatre, Ellensburg, Washington
More Information, Application, and Course Description:
www.cwu.edu/~theatrePrint a brochure: http://www.cwu.edu/~theatre/program/graduate/institute/PDF/2011%20Rasaboxes.pdf
American Theatre Magazine (January 2011) reports:“....Schechner's theoretical précis Rasaesthetics blends the Natyasastra's performance theory with contemporary emotion research, neuroscience and Antonin Artaud's Western call for "an athlete of emotions." Schechner specifies that acting "is the art of presenting the sthayi bhavas so that both the performer and the partaker [i.e., the audience] can 'taste' the rasa."
Schechner and his East Coast Artists colleagues Michele Minnick and Paula Murray Cole have developed a series of orderly training exercises that combine breath, sound and movement with nine of the Sanskrit rasas, helping actors safely and effectively explore a wide range of emotions. .... Introductory and intensive rasaboxes workshops have been offered at the Actors Movement Studio since 2005, as well as the Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Wa.”See full article
http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/jan11/move.cfm
