Playing abroad or receiving foreign companies, we might experience the language barrier.

For most players, improvising is creating a story by talking. But what if you improvised in a language which is not your mother tongue? Or what if you’re playing with people who don’t understand you?

In this workshop, Sébastien will explore the unexploited benefits of not mastering the language in which you’re improvising. We’ll start with exploring silences and sounds, and then we’ll to move to perfectly understandable gibberish. Once we perfectly understand each other, we’ll play with misunderstandings that can happen when improvising in foreign languages.

It can be challenging, both technically and morally, to play a foreign character. How to explore our knowledge of a culture without entering the cliché or hurting people’s feeling?

Accents and clichés are the entrance hall of playing foreign characters. We’ll explore them and then deconstruct them.

In this workshop, Sébastien will explore the main nationalities played in improv, and extend it to the least often seen ones. You will focus on your strengths and practice on the characters you’re less confident with.

We will also play with turning the clichés around. Instead of a pasta-loving Italian and a Japanese judoka, why not having a Japanese seducer and an over-obedient Italian? Obviously, while still respecting accents, body language, and cultural references!

When you sing your lines in improv, you’re telling the story. When you’re singing in a group, you’re adding layers and depths. You set the foundations of even more solid musical stories, using the power of the group.

In this workshop, Sébastien will focus on the three C of polyphonic singing: Chorus, Choir, and Counterpoint. Chorus creates a meeting point and anchors the song, for both actors and audience. Choir gives an exciting feeling of connection among the improvisers. Counterpoint allows improvisers to reach more melodic diversity while playing with contrasts in the stories.

Progressively, we will reach the complexity of rehearsed musicals, while keeping the authenticity of improv.

The workshop is designed for improvisers who have experience in musical improv and want to broaden their improv singing skills. However, the workshop is open to anyone who thinks they can benefit from it.

In this workshop, Sébastien will help you to explore your emotions. By reacting to the present moment, we will see how we can use emotions to tell the story. We will practice silences and looks to give more depth to the scenes. We will also use emotions to create the characters and establish the relation between them.

Improvising using your emotions can allow you to create more realistic stories. Your acting becomes more subtle, the characters more intense and their relationship more powerful. If you feel it, the audience will feel it too.

The workshop is designed for experienced improvisers who want to take their acting further, especially in exploring longer forms. However, the workshop is open to anyone who thinks they can benefit from it.

When we improvise, too many things go through our minds. The risk of breaking out of the scene is huge.

A whisky glass, a pirate outfit, a spaceship… The audience’s imagination actually sees the scene the actors create. Be it laughing to a partner’s joke, walking through a table, wondering what to do next… They all have the same consequence: it takes the audience out of the story for a split second. We then see actors instead of characters. Their imagination has to create everything, once again.

In this workshop, Sébastien will focus on the mindset and tools to always remain focused. You will be able to take your audience further, where the actors disappear, to create stories full of characters.