Explore techniques in clowning, puppetry, mime, and pantomime. Students gain knowledge and skills involved in producing engaging clown characters, as well as skills in comedy and puppet construction and characterizations. This course not only encourages student’s technical understanding of these topics, but also provides exercises to consider the characters as storytellers.
This course explores skills and methods of creative engagement that moves beyond the typical actor/audience relationship. Clowning, in particular, pushes the performer to reimagine their own expressive nature and to invest deeply in the audience response. Students can use this course to break themselves free of preconceptions about performance and their own role in creative missional work.
Creative expression is not limited by anything but your own imagination. This course is an examination of a variety of performance techniques which broaden the student’s understanding of how the creative arts can impact their community and the world.
Students are encouraged to create biblically based performances and to use the skills learned throughout the course as part of their own missional and biblical framework.
All the skills and techniques learned in the course are intended to be part of a student’s growth in creative missional expression. The exercises provided are directly connected to the missio Dei.
Mime, Puppetry, and clowning are creative works which rely heavily on the perspective of the audience. Creating works within the context of lived experience is vital to creating truly engaging performances.
Creating a character and constructing a performance must always have a sensitivity toward cultural diversities. The examples throughout the course are taken from a wide variety of cultural perspectives.
This course focuses on the practical skills needed to create characters and performances within these specific disciplines.
Exercises and assignments have direct hands-on aspects which cultivate and grow the students direct experience with the material.
