Playing True is great for any style of performer—dancers, actors, performance artists. My teaching incorporates many techniques from Balinese Monkey Chanting to European Clowning while focusing on Philippe Gualier’s method of Le Jeu www.ecolephilippegaulier.com . Le Jeu-game and play-is the basis of everything, the pleasure and desire to be a performer. Playing on stage is the same as a child playing at cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, mad scientist... In this workshop you will find how great your desire to play is while learning some principle techniques of Philippe Guaulier: complicity, fixed point, and playing with your partner for an audience.
We will say we are actors, we will be scared and we will fail, but hopefully if our pleasure to play is great enough we will discover the piece of magic inside that makes the audience adore us. We learn to put character on top of this pleasure to play, never killing this pleasure, but increasing it by searching for complicite and jokes with our partner and the audience. Philippe Gaulier describes,
Never should an actor playing a melancholy character be melancholy. On the contrary. while always showing his pleasure, he will at every moment indicate that none of this is for real and we will believe him precisely because none of this is for real. In the theatre, we don't believe what is true. We believe - in honor of our childhood no doubt - what is false, totally false.
The student will question their training and themselves, “Is my pleasure immense enough to entertain thousands of spectators, or not so immense? If not, leave the stage. You won’t be loved enough.
Jon Morris has taught in New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Nashville, and was a 2003 Tennessee Williams Fellow at the University of the South. He currently stars in Fuerzabruta, the NYC hit show from the creators of De La Guarda. Recently featured on Good Morning America in January, Vogue Magazine in February, and NY Magazine in March. On screen he created, wrote, and stars in Surf & Turf(Myspace/Fox Storyteller Finalist), written and hosted Newslam on HBO online, starred in a Sundance Short directed by Valerie Faris & Jonathan Dayton. On stage he has clowned with Cirque du Soleil, acted at the Guthrie Theatre, danced with Diavolo Dance Theatre, Acted & Directed at the Evidence Room and with Ken Rhot, starred in the Fabulous Monsters Ramayana2k4 (5 drama desk nominations), and was a company member of Tony Award winning Theatre de la Jeune Lune in Minneapolis. He has produced, performed, directed original work around the world. Jon holds a B.A. from the University of the South and Michael Howard Studios, New York. 2008 recipient of the Spring Artist Residency at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center and was a 2007 Finalist for the Center Theatre Group’s Sherwood Award. He was awarded the prestigious Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to study Movement Theatre with Phillipe Gaulier in London, Pantheatre in Paris, Gurukulam in India, and Balinese Dance in Bali. He is The Windmill Factory.
“Working with Jon is exciting and interesting.
We never knew what he would bring to the table from day to day.”
--Jean-Francois Bouchard, Cirque Du Soleil
“A unique opportunity to learn from a master of technique.”
Martin Brady, Nashville Scene
The Course
