Developing vitality & stage presence: workshop by Peter Lichtenfels & Alex Boyd

Developing vitality & stage presence: workshop by Peter Lichtenfels & Alex Boyd, June 21st, 2015, Hackney, London

Calling all actors, performers or those interested in exploring and learning more about acting! This workshop is for you!

This event will take place in Victoria Park near Bethnal Green Tube in East London from 2-4pm on Sunday 21st June.

The two hour session will explore and develop actor training specifically in the practice of energy cultivation and expression as a next step forward from established theatre training practices into alignment and breathing.

We will use methods from Lishi (see below) to look at how to apply qi (life force/energy flow) in acting, including voice, sound, silence, spoken word, gesture, posture, movement, stillness, and engaging with people, things, space and time.

Workshop Donation: £15

The Weihai Lishi Quanfa is a whole-body practice that trains in movement meditation and qi work. It dates back over 3000 years, and has elements in common with a number of Daoist practices, including yin/ yang/ harmony/ instruments/ health. One of the few complete family traditions, it unexpectedly came to public knowledge in Europe in the early twentieth century, and is unique in its breadth of practice.

Peter Lichtenfels is a professional theatre director and writes on Shakespeare and contemporary performance. He was the Artistic Director of the Traverse Theatre during the Scottish National resurgence in Britain in the 1980s, and was the Theatre Director (Artistic and Executive) at the Leicester Haymarket Theatre where he introduced radical international, diverse and alternative theatre to the UK. He has championed cross-cultural theatre throughout his career and is committed to interdisciplinary work among theatre, dance, and performance art. Before expanding his international career, he combined his professional theatre directing with an academic post at Manchester Metropolitan University, the at the time the only university conservatory program in the UK, and has gone on to develop MFA degrees, and PhD programs in Practice as Research.

Dr Alexander Boyd's international work with 'Lishi in Performance' develops Asian methods for working with energy, breath and alignment with people working professionally in theatre, sport and other western embodied practices. Alex completed his PhD in Performance Studies and Critical Education at UC Davis, California in June 2014. He has been pivotal in establishing various international not-for-profit organisations that allow his research in embodied learning, to be applied and developed to benefit various communities. This includes organizing and delivering traditional community based classes and courses in a Daoist whole-body breathing system for the UK charity Lishi International, of which he is a Trustee. Alex currently lives in the Netherlands and commutes to teach weekly Lishi workshops between Amsterdam and London. As a Senior Visiting Lecturer to Leeds Trinity University in the UK, Alex co-coordinates and teaches on a foundation level degree program that he co-developed. Alex travels extensively in Europe, the USA and Asia.

Lynette Hunter is a Professor of the History of Rhetoric and Performance at UC Davis. She has written and edited over 30 books and many essays in a range of disciplines from the history of rhetoric and literature, to philosophy and feminist theory, to post/neo-colonial studies (especially in Canada), to the history of science and computing, to women’s history and gender studies (from the early modern period), to performance studies. She has scripted, devised, produced and toured, several theory performance installations in Europe and North America and explores alternative ways of disseminating modes of knowing within aesthetics and scholarship.