Directing Project: Terpsichore - All Female Identifying Physical Theater Production

"Terpsichore" is an improvised storytelling theatre piece in movement, dance, music and spoken word. The format is simple enough and focuses on actors breaking the 4th wall to tell captivating tales supported by their cast who operate as one entity like a Greek chorus to support the action of the story. Through dance, movement, co-creation and support, the cast weaves narratives that transport the audience to different times and places and blend fiction and non-fiction together in a heady phamtasmagoria of sound, movement and speech.

The workshop for this project itself is a crash course through decades worth of research, interdisciplinary study and artistic exploration. In a few hours, the performers will learn a shared vocabulary of group mind, movement, storytelling, dance, musicality and mime and object work to create something truly awe inspiring that will open up their creative centres and let them radiate as performers. The exercises involve mime, dance and movement, narration and storytelling, singing and vocal support, responsibly respectful contact improv, use of the environment and space, concrete and abstract deconstruction, points of inspiration and above all else support of fellow castmates and celebrating mistakes through repetition and support and elevating ideas until the whole piece becomes a matrix of unified thought. "Terpsichore" is designed to break the mould of what improvised theatre is expected to be, even from within the improv community. It urges performers to stand outside of themselves and their perceived limitations and co-create something truly extraordinary using skills they didn't even know they possessed before the process began.