ICARUS
PRODUCTIONS
Icarus Education
1 - 4 Year Old Theatrical Workshops
These courses focus primarily on building a foundation for theatrical concepts through games and hands on activities.
Creating a Character 1
1-4 Years Old
Some of our first interaction with the world are in the forms of our pets and wildlife. These first impressions are crucial to our understanding of the world and its many different moving pieces. For children, the first steps in acting comes in the form of mimicking the natural world around us.
These exercises will help students vocalize different natural sounds and learn to associate sounds and words with tangible objects and concepts. Students, with the hands on assistance of one-on-one instructors, will learn to vocalise and recognise the different characteristics of animals and common human roles.
Voice and Movement
2-4 Years Old
The way we express ourselves in daily life dictates our relationships with those around us. Effective use of body language and words leads to better relationships with our peers and more effective communication of complex emotional concepts. Students who participate in voice and movement excercizes will often find themselves discovering more about their own expression than they thought possible.
During this workshop, students will use their bodies and voices to explore themselves and their own feelings and attitudes, as well as learning to express their personalities through abstract processes. We will also explore using the parts of the body to express specific characteristics and motives, and how our voice and tone can affect our message and it's reception.
Characters In Our Lives
3-4 Years Old
Looking at our world from the outside can be difficult. There are so many moving pieces to keep track of, and so many aspects of daily life that are assumed to be understood. These range from volume control inside of buildings all the way to knowing which side of a busy hallway to walk on. For young children, it can be hard to understand some of these hidden concepts, and they are rarely given an opportunity to explore the world around them and express their findings.
This workshop gives students an opportunity to vocalize and physicalize the things they have observed around themselves in every day life. It will teach them how to express emotions based on descriptions and how to identify those feelings in others. Students will also cover archetypes and how they can apply to the people and roles in their daily lives.
Kindergarten - 5th Grade Theatrical Workshops
A more focused and detailed approach to the arts, exploring specific concepts and beginning to develop skills and techniques that will carry over to other aspects of daily life, even outside of the Arts.
Creating a Character 2
Kindergarten - 3rd grade
Characters and archetypes are instrumental in how we view the media we consume daily. From the damsel in distress to the masked outlaw, archetypes show us a more straightforward way of telling entertaining stories.
In this one-week session, students will learn about archetypes and how they are shown in media, and practice taking those standard character models and applying them to their life. The week culminates in students taking on the role of a character and creating their own story for the world they have created. These skills help students better understand literature they may read during the school year, as well as help them to explore their own creativity and storytelling.
Voice and Movement 2
1st - 5th grade
In the world of vocal performance, the readiness of a performer's voice and body is often taken for granted. It appears to the audience as if the performer is naturally capable of belting out long notes or nailing that problematic move. In reality, singing and dancing take hours and days of practice and warmups. Viewing your body as an instrument to be practiced with, rather than a stable constant, helps students realize their own potential as performers.
Voice and Movement 2 is a deeper exploration of the use of the body and voice to express complex emotional feelings, without the use of words. This 5-day workshop will help build the student's understanding of how their own body moves, and how each person expresses themselves differently. Students will also gain an understanding of how to warm up their voices and bodies healthily and safely.
Building and Ensemble
2nd - 5th grade
Working together with the people around us is arguably the most important skill we can develop. The ability of a person to cooperate and create with their peers in a scholastic or professional setting is a skill that is being lost more and more as we move towards a digital age. When students are working on a performance piece, whether that be a full-length play or a scene for a class, it is important to remember that collaboration is the key to a successful production.
In this 3 day workshop, students will learn to work with those around them on tasks that urge them to think outside of the box and to come up with solutions that require more than one leader. The culmination of this will be an experiment requiring students to put their heads together and design an exercise of their own.
6th Grade - 12th Grade Theatrical Workshops
Highly focused workshops that develop specific theatrical skills and explore deeper into the most interesting and useful theatrical skills that would not be found in a traditional high school classroom.
Fighting Your Friends
9th - 12th grade
Action movies are some of the most-watched movies of all time, and without the stunning fight scenes that make us all flinch for the actors on screen, they just wouldn't be as... well, action-packed. Fighting on stage is a skill that most young actors aspire to learn and are bound to try out at some point. It is our opinion that, with proper training and supervision, all young actors can be the next Avenger.
This 3-day intensive focuses on fight choreography and safety for actors on stage. It covers safe distancing for stage combat, basic fighting techniques used to fool audiences, and safety with combat props on stage. The culmination of these skills will be a short, choreographed fighting segment, performed at the end of day three.
Managing The Arts
6th - 12th grade
Theatre is a business and a complicated one at that. There are so many moving parts to every performance, and even more in the process that it takes to put a show on stage. As audience members, it is sometimes easy to overlook the process it takes to put a show on stage and how each person fits into the puzzle that is a theatrical company.
This single-day workshop explains the complexities of theatre as a business, and how they translate into a working performance. The culmination of this workshop is optionally a stop-in from an Artistic Director of a local theater or a working member of a national or regional theater.
Stage Craft
6th - 10th grade
Scenic work in theatrical settings is a complicated subject, and the people who fill these jobs often have some of the most vague and expansive job descriptions. Learning how to fulfill some of these responsibilities is important, both for technicians and actors, because it helps us to better understand the work our peers do to help create the collaborative art of Theatre.
This 5-day workshop will allow students to explore the basics of scenic drafting and construction, as well as giving students a safe, hands-on learning experience with real tools and materials used in theatrical work. After this experience, students will be familiar with different styles of lighting fixtures and be able to operate and effectively apply common power tools in common theatrical situations.
Voice and Movement 3
6th - 12th grade
Physicalization is arguably the most important tool in an actors repetior, second only to their vocal projection. The way an actor moves and vocalises on stage will define their performance more than any technical aspect or line reading. Actors who train the voice and body like an artist training on an instrument will see marked improvement, not only in their theatrical performance, but in the self confidence and social presentation.
In this five day course, students will use their voices and bodies to express complex characters and emotional truths. Their understanding of body language and vocal inflection will be put to the test as they interact without words, and move without restraint. The culmination will be a full ensemble movement piece, devised over the course of the workshop and performed at the end of day 5.
Creating a Character 3
6th - 12th grade
The way we express ourselves in daily life dictates our relationships with those around us. Effective use of body language and words leads to better relationships with our peers and more effective communication of complex emotional concepts. Students who participate in voice and movement exercises will often find themselves discovering more about their own expression than they thought possible.
During this workshop, students will use their bodies and voices to explore themselves and their own feelings and attitudes and learn to express their personalities through abstract processes. We will also explore using the parts of the body to express specific characteristics and motives, and how our voice and tone can affect our message and it's reception.
Elements of Improvisation
6th - 12th grade
Improvisation and devising are the foundation of creating theatre and live performance. Every piece was once a blank piece of paper and a dream. It take creativity to perform a piece, but to create entertainment from where there was nothing is what theatre artists strive for a chance to do.
This workshop varies based on class size and grade level to include the steps of improvisation and the process of devising a theatrical piece from the ground up. Students will learn to think on their feet and commit to their choices both on and off stage. This workshop serves as a place to foster and showcase the potential that every student has to create a performance worthy of the stage.