Think bold, think big!  The Clowning Workshop offers the opportunity to learn practical, immediately usable skills that can be used to make bolder and more fearless choices in performance.  Students will begin by working on attitude, presence, physicality, and using their own personality as a foundation for clown performance.  The workshop will continue with work on solo, duo, trio, and group scenes, creating multi-faceted characters, and practical work on looking out at an audience, knowledge of venue, and the rule of 3, 5, 7, and 9.

Event Registration and Ticketing Powered by Event Espresso

For beginners/intermediate/advanced. Led by the company. Storytelling without words – mime techniques will be taught and incorporated in the creation of characters and short scenes. Students will learn how to move with simplicity, clarity, and precision and will work collaboratively to create scenes done entirely without dialogue.

Event Registration and Ticketing Powered by Event Espresso

Thursday, April 5th at 2pm

Reserve a seat
** Use discount code QUEST **

=======================

FREE PHYSICAL COMEDY WORKSHOP FOR KIDS AND ADULTS

FRIDAY, April 6th 10am – 11:30am

To participate register on Joe’s website

In this workshop Ramesh Meyyappan will focus on the visual aspects of characterization. Participants will make use of sign mime* and explore the use of characters with mimed props, playing multiple characters and character transitions. While the attributes of stock, stereotypical characters will be explored, participants will also look at some of the subtle nuances of characterization in performance. Striking characterizations are exaggerated to create a comic or grotesque effect.

*  Sign Mime is a technique whereby the performer remains stationery whilst using their bodies and hands to visually represent objects, events or actions.

Event Registration and Ticketing Powered by Event Espresso

Try out Stilt Walking for Free! Twenty Minutes of Fun! Stilt Walking Sessions with Nana Projects’ Stilt Walkers. Ages 9 and up! Families encouraged to stilt ogether! This is an abbrieviated version of Nana Projects stilt walking workshops and allows participates to try out stilts! Registration starts at 10:30 am. Includes Safety Instructions. Parents must stay with children during the workshops.

**Participants will be required to sign a safety waiver and be instructed on stilt safety. Participants  must be registered (reg opens at 10:30 at the Gallaudet Mall and remains open until all slots are filled).  Parents must stay with their children during the workshops.

Event Registration and Ticketing Powered by Event Espresso

A lab to explore the convergence of our tasks as creators and performers. As creator/performers, we think it up and we put it on stage. We like it that way, but sometimes our tasks as creator and performer interfere with each other. Some examples from experience: Maybe we’re with an audience and we start re-examining some choice we made in the studio. We are mid-gesture in a performance, but we are trying to remember a note we want to give a fellow performer. As we present new material to an audience we are distracted by the curiosity to see how it’s playing. We listen as “playwright” instead of playing as actor/performer/dancer/clown. While developing work in the studio, we overlook or even avoid a choice because of some limited notion of ourselves as performers. We struggle to find the balance between making the material even better and exploring/discovering/inhabiting it as it is.  This lab will address through creative exercises the intersection of our dual roles, seek ways to avoid their collision and some guidelines for what we can do when they collide. Mark Jaster, lab leader, served as teaching assistant to Marcel Marceau, and has taught locally for The Shakespeare Theater (Master Class), The Maryland Opera Studio, The Maryland Youth Ballet, to name a few, and in countless Artist Residencies.  He has been creating and performing his own material for a million years, and since 2006 has been Artistic Co-Director of Happenstance Theater, collaboratively devising and performing a series of critically acclaimed original works.  Past QuestFest participants may remember him as the Roustabout in Lost and Clown’d with Willy Conley and Eric Beatty, or as the Emperor in White Frost Falls with Willy Conley and Shizumi.

Venue: Gallaudet University

Event Registration and Ticketing Powered by Event Espresso

Try our stiltwalking and expand your visual theatre skills through height! This condensed version of Nana Projects stilt walking workshops allows participants to learn the basics of stilt walking and dancing including safety, balance and movement expression on stilts.

Event Registration and Ticketing Powered by Event Espresso

The Quest Fest puppet performance master class can be best described as, “Make a puppet show in three hours.” Fifteen to 20 participants will meet at Black Cherry Puppet Theater and be divided into two work groups. They will be presented with a brief overview of puppetry and simple ways to make puppets and performances. They will then be given a central theme like a folktale, myth or conflict to develop into a short puppet show in about two hours with the materials provided. After they’ve used their allotted time, they will perform for the other group. This class is based on Black Cherry’s in service training program designed to help teachers explore how puppetry can be integrated into a school’s curriculum.

Venue:  Black Cherry Puppet Theatre, 1115 Hollins Street, Baltimore, Maryland
Schedule: Tuesday, March 27 @ 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Cost:  $35; QuestFest Pass – FREE!
Register: On the Creative Alliance website
Participants: General public; maximum of 20