Days
Hours
Mins
The Fool Within: Self-Discovery Through Clown and Mask
January 25 - February 01, 2020
Sarah Lowry
Donna Oblongata
This six-day intensive works deep parts of the imagination and the self, to help break down personal, creative and emotional blocks. The workshop combines the pioneering clown work of Richard Pochinko with Drama Therapy techniques to turn creative play into a tool for self-discovery and growth.
The course is emotionally rigorous and quite physical, but in a way that is accessible to all bodies and abilities. We’ll use our bodies, as well as paint and clay, to explore our own imaginations and to express what we find. But this is by no means a visual arts or theater class—no experience necessary!
Each day begins with physical warm-ups meant to connect students with their bodies’ own impulses. From there, students will explore their relationships to color through imaginative exercises and paintings. Finally, each student creates a mask, which they use as a tool to explore hidden aspects of their own inner world.
These exercises are supplemented with Drama Therapy techniques to help facilitate each student’s own unique journey through this material. These therapeutic exercises may involve exploring difficult moments that came up during the work, increasing one’s own self-awareness, or helping integrate moments of personal growth. This workshop will ask the group to practice being comfortable with the unknown inside each of us and to remain curious about what we find.
With an awareness that each of us brings our own and our community’s diversity of histories, wounds and resiliencies, this intensive holds a trauma-informed lens. Each participant will have choice and support to follow their own impulses, both in the clown work, as well as in their own therapeutic/healing process.
Why clown?
Every culture has clowns-- people whose role is to speak truth to power, upset the social hierarchy, and amplify the messages of the divine. But in order to do this work, a clown must be able to laugh at themselves. They must share with us their struggles and their humanity. Otherwise, how can we trust them?
This workshop provides a safe (and fun) way to begin the journey of discovering what is most beautiful, alive, and ridiculous within you. And from there, finding how that deeper connection to the self allows for greater connection with others and the world around us. And of course, you’ll also get to wear a red nose.
Particular aspects of focus for this workshop:
Schedule
Saturday, January 25th
Sunday, January 26th
Monday, January 27th
Tuesday, January 28th
Wednesday, January 29th
Thursday, January 30th
Friday, January 31st
ABOUT THE TEACHERs
Sarah Lowry
Sarah Lowry is a trained mental health counselor specializing in Drama Therapy and Somatic Experiencing®. Lowry currently serves as an individual and group clinician at Centerpoint Adolescent Treatment Services in South Burlington, Vermont, where she serves teenagers and thei...
Donna Oblongata
Donna Oblongata is a theater artist, writer, and clown teacher living in Philadelphia. She first studied the Pochinko clown technique in 2006, with master teacher Sue Morrison. The pedagogy had a profound effect on her, changing the way she approached performance and creative wo...
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