Improvisation: Self-With-Others with John Britton

A one-day introduction to Self-With-Others - an improvisation based approach to training the individual performer within an ensemble. The work is joyous, physical and transformatory, and is used to teach performers across disciplines - theatre, dance, clowning, site-specific work, performance art and improvisation.

This workshop will combine the core exercises of Self-With-Others with a series of improvised and structured performance-making tasks, offering participants the space directly to translate their training into practice.

Combining individual and group work, structured improvisation and fixed training exercises, Self-With-Others is a profound psychophysical approach to encountering your blockages, possibilities and needs. It asks you to be brave in acknowledging your pleasure, urgency and desire as a performer. It asks you to be generous to others and to yourself. It asks you to play in detail and with fire in your eyes. It asks you to dare to laugh and to dare to go deeper into your own performance.

The workshop will be facilitated by DUENDE's artistic director, John Britton. He is an internationally renowned director and teacher of physical performance, and he is Artistic Director of DUENDE and Founder and Director of The DUENDE School of Ensemble Physical Theatre.

For over twenty years John has been developing ‘Self-With-Others’. Though primarily offered to professional performers, the work is also used in educational, community and social-development contexts. His professional work encompasses teaching and directing across circus, dance, theatre and site-specific performance including recent engagements at India’s National School of Drama, Colombia’s Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Stockholm’s Ballet Academy and elsewhere.

As a director, John has recently directed interdisciplinary work in Mumbai, Bogota, Seattle, Athens, and Bangalore, and in 2019 he will direct shows in Mumbai, Kolkata and Athens. In 2013 he published ‘Encountering Ensemble’ (Bloomsbury/Methuen) - a core text on ensemble and physical training which is now used around the world and recently published ‘Climbing the Mountain: The Performer’s Journey Into Presence’.