2026 Workshops
ESSENTIAL SHAPES IN SPACE:
MIME FUNDAMENTALS
Get comfortable playing with and manipulating the unseen potential around you! Find invisible objects a little hard to grasp? Know a thing or two about mime, but need a little help honing your skill? Learn some basic mime foundations for improving your artistic toolkit, and leave a little more elevated. This class is perfect for dancers, actors, clowns, improvisors, stand-ups, poets, mocap, cartoonists, jugglers, magicians, and screwballs
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24TH
4PM - 530PM
MIME:
THE SILENT LANGUAGE OF OUR FEELINGS
The emotional landscape of the human condition transcends spectacle. In this workshop with Sharon Diskin of the Chameleons Mime Theatre, we will explore the beauty of communicating beyond words, using the body to convey one of the most primal aspects of the human experience: our feelings. We’ll begin by exploring how motivated feelings can extend through the body into “form.” From there, we’ll use the language of "form" to develop an intimate, authentic connection with fellow performers and the audience — “getting a base.” Some of these techniques are derived from the methodology of Paul J. Curt is, founder of The American Mime Theatre.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25TH
1130AM - 130PM
CORPOREAL MIME VIA STATUES
This workshop is an introduction to key principles of Etienne Decroux’s Corporeal Mime through the study of statues. Decroux envisioned the performer’s body divided, then articulated in sequential segmented movement. Growing up in Paris, he was inspired by the statues he saw around him, particularly the work of Auguste Rodin, Camille Claudel, and other Early 20th Century artists. We will explore our Decroux performance body, presence in space, stillness, and movement by working from and studying some of these statues.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25TH
2PM - 330PM
MIME:
THE LANGUAGE OF CLOWNS
Yes, of clowns – but also of actors, dancers, puppeteers, and all physical performance artists. In fact, we can look at mime as a root discipline, taking what we express with our bodies in everyday life and working to amplify and clarify to performance level. Karen Hoyer provides a playful space to explore movement and stillness, abstract and concrete movement, status and relationships, action and reaction, wildness and control, challenging you to use your whole body to communicate. Mime is the art of using movement to create physical characterizations, express emotion nonverbally, and tell a story without depending on words. For clowns and other performers, mime is a vital tool for making physical choices that will take us out of everyday life and into a clownesque world of play.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25TH
4PM - 530PM
FUNDAMENTALS OF MASK
The mask, an amazing transformational energy, has served as a foundation of theatre since before the ancient Greeks, from the Commedia dell'arte to contemporary mimes and clowns. It is one of the most important tools used in actor training. Learn about energy, focus, economy of movement, and inner life in this workshop led by master teacher James Donlon and acclaimed modern mime actor Mikey Hays. Come ready to move, and discover the magic in the mask!
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26TH
10AM - 1130AM
NOT SUFFERING THE TYRANT OF LOGIC
Join Daniel Stein for a lecture and demo on finding the OUTRAGEOUS! in your work, play, and life
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26TH
12PM - 130PM
HUMAN MACHINE: TECHNOLOGICAL DRAMATURGIES IN ROBOTIC MIME
Berenice Dupuis’s physical workshop explores how performers can make the human body appear mechanical, digital, and artificially animated. Drawing from mime, animation dance, and robotic movement, participants will investigate the rhythms, materials, and uncanny qualities of automatons, robots, and androids.
They will use these techniques to create short physical sequences in which the body appears programmed, malfunctioning, or caught between the human and the artificial, while exploring their storytelling potential.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 26TH
10AM - 1130AM
HANDS AND FEET
Compared to the expressive power of the body, do the hands and feet play an important role in a mime actor’s performance? The hands of the mime can do more than simply mimic actions. When used skillfully, they can make the invisible visible. They can not only do, but show, and even become what the mime actor wishes to express. The mime actor’s feet can do more than move the body from one spot to another. They can transport them — and the audience along with them — from one environment to another. They can allow the mime to cross the stage in many styles or to walk a mile without ever leaving the theatre.
Lorin Eric Salm’s workshop participants will explore the possibilities of the hands and feet through mime techniques created and developed by the 20th-century masters of mime Marcel Marceau, Etienne Decroux, and Jean-Louis Barrault.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27TH
12PM - 130PM
