Bard Live is our performance study track, and these workshops are hosted by some incredibly dynamic stage performers. The ideals of basic stage competence lead into the study of different types of stage presence and their uses, including humor, drama, & shock. Mastery of this track creates legendary personalities, and grouping them together for possible street theatre is an end goal. These workshops entail theatrical training and can be emotionally challenging at times.

BL1 Stage Competence

BL2 Charismatic Presence
BL2-1     Humor & Poetry (Ira Liss)
BL2-2     Everyday Theatrics (Louise Jayne Moriarty)
BL2-3     Poet as Magickal Beast
BL2-4     Slam Dynamics (Seth Walker)

BL3 Legendary Performance Characteristics (Marcus If & Ira Liss)
BL3-1     Street Theatre Workshop
BL3-2     Love Shovel Poetry Troupe

Course Descriptions:

BL2-1  To Stage or Not to Page? (Is That a Question?)   (Ira Liss)
Let’s play with theater, dance and story. Let’s see beyond our usual selves. Let’s grow and blow our infinite, interconnected crayon mind. Let’s recover our secretly ticklish, inner layer through sound, motion and laughter! (Shall we work and play with passionate colors and jumbo ideas we’ve not seen before!?)

Find Your Bigger Self  (Play Outside the Lines!)           (Ira Liss)
Let your foolish self out! Come out and play!
Let’s explore our creativity using a mix of art forms.
Let’s play with movement, storytelling, theater, improvisation and more – to explore and expand our self-expression.
Rediscover your surprising spontaneity as we use words, story, sound, movement and theater to go beyond our usual ways of expression.
Jump into a fun-filled space where our unique, individual physicalities, movement, sounds, words and voice are honored.
Push onward, outward and inward without ever feeling like you’re pushing or being pushed. After all, it’s all play and laughter! Go beyond your usual, artistic boundaries where the air may feel slightly less familiar – and yet may become very exciting!
Let’s break through our hidden boundary lines into our bigger selves – using ridiculousness, games and the wisdom of fools. Let’s mix it all up and come out with more we can do!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
In our culture, we tend to separate art and artists into different fields that may or may not overlap: dance/movement, written word, spoken word, music, visual arts, theater, performance. (Of course, there are many more varied forms and sub-divisions we could list as well.)
Suppose, just for a moment, that there were no separations between the many, varied arts and ourselves. Suppose, we could cross our interior border lines and drop external arbitrary boundaries. Imagine. What would be possible?
For a little while, let’s express ourselves without our old habits, preferences and identities intruding. What might we do? How might we transform?

BL3 Legendary Performance Characteristics     (Marcus If & Ira Liss)
In this workshop we will examine the performance characteristics of some of the most renowned performers to ever exist on the stage, screen, radio, and in poetry. We will note what made them unique, and have some fun demonstrating and emulating these features. We will follow up with a discussion on what concepts and techniques can be useful to poets and other performers when crafting their own individual voices and performance styles. This workshop will feature Acting prompts as opposed to Writing prompts.