Tear Us Loose: A Bouffon Workshop with Adam Lazarus

Join award-winning actor, director, and teacher Adam Lazarus for a three-hour workshop on bouffon. Dive into a world of hypocrisy, razor-sharp satire, and physical precision. Experience the pleasure of being present and explore the utter joy of mocking the people and institutions that wield power in society.

This workshop is designed for both professional and pre-professional actors, dancers, writers, critical thinkers and physical performers, wishing to increase their performance palette. Working in the tradition of French Master Teachers Philippe Gaulier and Jacques Lecoq, the forefathers of physical theatre, this master class will challenge students to take risks, hone their improvisational skills and push through performance inhibitions.  The workshop aims to help actors find the pleasure of being present and the utter joys in mocking the sacred and critiquing the people and institutions who have power and influence and who set the rules for how society should function.  

The bouffons travel in gangs and emerge out of the ghettos and swamps to look at and confront the mainstream world, to poke it and to unveil hypocrisy in all its forms.  A study of the bouffon ideally leads toward play, hilarity and incendiary critiques. It is with the performer's pleasure to move, to sing, to cry and to dance, that the audience is drawn in and the performer's beauty is pushed out. Games and exercises are used to discover students' pleasure to play and mock social deceptions while simultaneously making audiences love you.

Adam Lazarus was the artistic-director of the Toronto Festival of Clowns for ten years and is a graduate of and former apprentice to Master Teacher Philippe Gaulier. He has taught at the National Theatre School of Canada and the University of Toronto.

Fee: $30, payable in advance.

Space is limited - email meganj@pigiron.org to reserve your spot.