Your Characters Have a Life
Your Characters Have a Life
15 JUN 2024
with Marta Borges and Pedro Borges
6 HOUR CLASS
Breathe new life into your improvised characters!
Saturday 15 June 2024
10.30-17.30 (6 hours with 1 hour lunch break)
Rue Général Leman 145
€85
You know when you are in public transportation and start looking at people, inventing their life stories in your head? Everybody does that, let's admit it. We love to explore lives, to imagine people behaving at home, at work, in love. Every anonymous person has a complex story inside. A restaurant waiter is not just a waiter: he has a house, a pet, family, relationships, he has history, ambitions and phobias, let's explore them! And when we look at the character again... it won't be just the generic waiter, it will be a universe of feelings, behaviours and dreams.
In this workshop we will work on techniques to deepen the knowledge we have about our characters, during a scene. We will use flashbacks, illustrations, ghost memories, alternative realities, monologues, plenty of techniques that allow us to jump out of the scene to get additional information about characters and then come back to it and see it in a different and richer perspective, their words will have subtext, their behavior will gain weight and we can easily explore stories from that.
There will be a one hour luncbreak.
About the teachers
Pedro and Marta are pioneers of improv theater in Portugal; they’ve been pushing its boundaries since their inception in 2008. Marta is the first professional female improv performer in Portugal and was the only one for a number of years in the country. Being one of the first improv groups ever created in Portugal, which started originally as a big troupe (an eclectic mixture of 12 professional actors from 4 different countries), they are pioneers in this area and Marta is a trailblazer, opening a path for other women in Portugal.
Os Improvaveis are the only team in Portugal teaching improv consistently, with new training courses selling out every year, open to everyone, not only actors or future improv professionals. They have trained over 300 improv students since 2011 on their Improv Training Course. Many of the current improv groups in Portugal were born out of classes Os Improvaveis taught. For that reason, they have left their imprint deeply within the Portuguese improv community. Pedro and Marta have dedicated themselves fully to improvisation theater and we make a living out of improv. They believe improvisation should be a shared skill.
Pedro and Marta have also shared the teachings of improvisation and its valuable soft-skills in dozens of corporations, from local small businesses to multinational companies, startups and Universities such as Microsoft, BP, Sony, Citroen, Jansen, Pfizer, PwC, PlayStation, and many others. They take it upon themselves to bring Business Improvisation closer to the corporate world, breaking barriers and making “yes and…” a living and useful concept for everyone outside a theater stage.
Both Pedro and Marta also work with scripted theater, cinema, tv, radio and voiceovers.
Over Os Improvaveis’ 15 years of existence, they have travelled the world and represented Portugal and the Portuguese language in many festivals. Some of these include: Chicago (2009, 2010, 2012), Rio de Janeiro (2011, 2014, 2018, 2023), São Paulo (2018), Amsterdam (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017), New York (2013 e 2014), Berlin (2013, 2018), Wurzburg (2015), Greece (2014), Maiorca (2015, 2016, 2017, 2019), Salento (2015), Boston (2016), Copenhagen (2016, 2017, 2018), Stockholm (2016), Piombino (2016, 2018, 2022), Roma (2017, 2019, 2022, 2023), Barcelona (2018), Prague (2018), Pádova (2018), Riga (2018), Milan (2018, 2019), Oslo (2019), Florence (2019), Brest (2020), Madrid (2022) and Tolfa (2023). Internationally we had the pleasure of acting in venues such as SESC Copacabana, Teatro Laura Alvim and Teatro Café Pequeno (Rio de Janeiro), iO Theater, ComedySportz, Apollo Theatre and Athenaeum Theater (Chicago), Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre Chelsea e Gershwin Hotel (NYC), Compagnietheater (Amsterdam), Châteauneuf (Oslo), Off Musical (Florence), English Theater, Mehringhof-Theater, Pfefferberg Theater and Ratibortheater (Berlin), Teatro DIVADLO 21 (Prague), Improvisation & Co (Stokcholom), etc. Marta was also the Portuguese representative in the “OUR LIVES” European Project, a Creative Europe Programme, between 2017 and 2019.
They had the honor of participating and representing the Portuguese improv viewpoint in the international documentary “Thank You, Del: The Story of the Del Close Marathon’, directed by Todd Bieber, among such great artists as Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, D’ Arcy Carden, Matt Bessler, Adam Mckay, Robin Williams, Bill Murray, Louis CK, Nick Kroll, Michael Cera, Zach Woods, Matt Walsh.