Switch – Wechselwirkung eines Clowns

Intensive exploration of personages/ characters

Over the past 30 years Shelly Mia Kastner has absorbed and refined herintensive training from Ecole Jacques LeCoq, Ecole Philippe Gaulier andLondon Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. She has applied thistraining to her performances in Cirque Du Soleil, Traditional theatre,Variety,TV, Voice over work and Street theatre. She now shares thisknowledge by teaching her blend of Jeu (play), clown and personage(character) to be used as tools of creation for the physical performer.

This workshop will focus on personage; exploring physicality, breath andthe inner life of a character and how it can be affected, strengthened anddriven by the elements. This is a process of externalizing physicalconcepts with the body, and then gradually internalizing them to be adriving engine of the character.

Externalizing: Discover how your body would move and react if it wasone of the elements or different matters (physical substances).

Internalizing: Discover how this can be internalized to the character’semotional engine.

Interaction: Discover how this internalizing process can guideimprovisation and interaction with other characters on stage.

The goal of the work shop is to give the performer tools to create differentand unique characters that can be comedic, dramatic, or melodramatic.Characters whose inner emotions come to physical life that can be seenall the way to the back row of the audience.

Shelly’s Bio: Shelly Mia kastner from Strange comedy is a clown and character actressoriginal from Montreal Canada, where she then went on to train classicaland musical theatre at the prestigious theatre school in London UK ;LAMDA, then furthered her studies with Ecole Jacques LeCoq and EcolePhillip Gaulier as well as training as a trapeze artist. One of her Goals wasto combine her theatrical work with her aerial which she ended up doingwith creations such as the comedy aerial tango with a flying puppet,called the” Taxi ChaCha” and an aerial slumber party titled Les FillesauLit.

She also worked with a mask theatre company Theatre Transformation inChambèry France performing with half character masks.

Shelly went on to becoming one of the main comedy characters the PetitBébé of Cirque du Soleil’s Mystery in Las Vegas USA.She has filmed TV commercials as well as numerous voice overs inMontreal Canada.

Other works include Make a Circus in San Francisco as a main characterand Trapeze artist as well as the flyer in a triple trapeze act in CirqueIngenieux, where she met her current clown partner and husband JasonMcPherson.

Duo Strange Comedy uses a combination of clown, comedy magic,physical theatre and circus arts. They are most known for theirsurprisingly unique illusions and loveable characters, where they haveperformed everywhere from the top German Varietés, theatres in QuebecCanada, and all over Europe, outdoor festivals as well numerous televisionshows.