Workshops

Małgorzata (Gosia) Różalska

WORKSHOPS FOR IMPROVISERS

Małgorzata Różalska (Gosia/Róża) – improviser, trainer and director based in Gdynia, Poland.

She’s been doing improv since 2004, teaching improv at Gdańsk University since 2007, she’s traveled 20 countries performing, directing and teaching. She graduated, among others, film directing and cultural studies, and she mixes all that with improv. She’s touring Poland with stand-up comedy. She’s a nerd, always curious, searching for freedom and adventure.

WORKSHOPS:

As improvisers, we are actors, directors, and screenwriters at the same time. During my film directing studies, I spent many hours working on translating those tools to make improvisers better live-filmmakers. Good directing is good communication. A good director is responsible for their art and is aware of what they love the most in movies. They must know what they want, what is important to them, and what they want to tell. Because consciousness is the foundation of choice.

“You are confusing the sky with the stars which are reflected in the pond at night.” /A. Sapkowski, „The Witcher”

What is the worst thing you have done in life? What makes someone good? Nobody is just good or bad. We should never judge our own characters, leave it to the audience. Make your hero truthful, take them seriously, ignore stereotypes. So the audience can feel the flaws of the heroes and reasons for villains, leave them with questions for them to answer, so they have something to talk about on their way home.

You and your partner. In crime. In the story. In improv. No matter how many people play in a show, the base is the two-person scene. It’s the perfect way to tell all the stories in the world, with different dynamics between two characters. Through love. Hate. Secrets. Duties. Shrek and Donkey. Arya and the Hound. Jules and Vincent. Claire and Frank Underwood. Rick and Morty. Let’s explore the most popular dynamics between two characters. Workshop based on film directing and screenwriting.

Workshop focused on truthful female characters, inspired by the book of the same title by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, combined with screenwriters’ ways to build strong female protagonists for films. The Wild Woman is a part of each one of us. You can find her in stories, myths, and fairy tales. That’s the spirit full of power, creativity, joy and instincts. Let’s focus on how we behave on stage, what our strengths are and what we fear, and let’s not be afraid of power, love, anger, revenge, compassion, and other energies that we hold back too often.

Dive deep into the multidimensional reality around us. Do your plants like you? What does your heart tell your brain? Is your guardian angel watching you right now? The whole world interacts, consciously or not. Nothing is real, everything is possible. In this format you may find a whole improv spectrum, from realistic, emotional connections, through surreal reflections of our world, to an abstract quantum realm.

Being alone in the spotlight can be scary. But it may be a wonderful opportunity for our character’s secrets, to show who we really are, when no one’s watching. Don’t just stand there waiting nervously to be „saved” by others. It may be a gift of trust from other players who are giving you space. It can be a moment of honesty and intimacy between you and the audience. So why are we scared? In this workshop we will take our time and the stage. Share ourselves with monologs. Build the reality of the scene, as an invitation for others to join. We’ll put baits for others, so they want to jump to the trap. And we will bravely look into the audience’s eyes. And then we’ll discover that on stage we are never alone.

Bill Hicks said in his stand-up that we are driven by two forces – love and fear. Because of this, we can cross our boundaries, we can fight the hardest with the ones we love. In this workshop we will focus on „normal people”. Using reality. Love, lack of love, dreams, fears. What hides inside of us, what drives us, and what happens when we get what we desire. The audience wants to engage, feel something, not only laugh. Because a simple love story has bigger power than the battle of wizards at the top of Mount Everest.

Use what you love and turn it into improv. Choose a genre, or your favorite author’s piece and make a format out of it. In this workshop, participants will learn how to harness the richness of styles to fully capture the spirit of a chosen author, director or a broader genre. We’ll be analyzing and interpreting rules and patterns that define a particular style – and use the toolbox of improv to bring it on stage.

Good stand-up comedians know that improv is a skill that can enrich or even save a show. Do improvisers know that stand-up can help them understand how to make people laugh? Comedy has a language. Let’s use the precision of stand-up tools and combine them with the spontaneity of improv to build humor, maintain rhythm, and interact effectively with the audience.

This workshop is an advanced improviser’s playground. At the beginning of the improv adventure, you learn how to make the scene work. Then you learn different ways to do it. Now it’s time to do it your OWN way. During this workshop we’ll gather all the tools that we’ve experienced so far, and we’ll use them in different combinations to experience that a good „Freeform” is not a lucky guess, but a result of spontaneous, but conscious decisions along the way. If improv is freedom, this is as close as we can get to reaching it.

“Nature gave us one tongue and two ears so we could hear twice as much as we speak”, said Epictetus. Listen. And react. What does “Let your partner shine” mean? How not to be afraid to improvise with a stranger? How to play a format that you’ve never heard of? How to not let others cross your boundaries? In this workshop you’ll jump on stage with someone you’ve never met, in a scene you’ve never planned, and you’ll learn how to survive. Get in trouble. Fall in love.

Is mutual language necessary for communication?  Let’s share our cultures and find out how similar we are on a human level. We all heard from our parents when we were kids, „if your friends jumped out of the window, would you do the same?” – even if it was window, fire or off the cliff. We’ll work on scenes in foreign languages, the ones we understand, and the ones we don’t. We’ll ask the right questions, to cherish the diversity, and play scenes which make audience members talk not only about improv, but also cultures. Is it already obvious, I have a degree in cultural studies?…

Improv is a muscle. And muscles need to be trained, to be strong and flexible.  This workshop is a training session. And I will make you sweat. Impossible warm-ups, disconnecting body and mind, burning the brain, and switching it off and on, combo-exercises. No discussion. No storytelling. Improv gym. Improv crossfit.

Let’s put fictional characters in the physically existing scenery and see how it affects the story – because there is no easier way to feel like in a movie than to treat your surroundings as a movie set.
 

Improv can be art. Use visual tools to compose a stage picture. Direct the audience’s attention with a focus point, silence in the noise, singularity in the group. Get inspired by painting, poetry, architecture. Compose a baroque scene, use a renaissance perspective. Appear from the darkness as in chiaroscuro. This is the workshop with the absolwent of an Academy of Fine Arts. But don’t bring crayons.

INTRODUCTION TO IMPROV:

If you’re just starting your improv adventure, this is the workshop for you. If you gathered a group of friends and you want to spend time not only in a pub, but creative and fun, this workshop is for you. Short forms are games, very joyful and dynamic. Maybe you know the “Whose Line is it Anyway” show, or you’ve seen some improv live. But it takes more than watch football, to know how to play football. In this workshop you will learn some games, you will laugh at yourself, you will work on your confidence, cooperation, storytelling, taking actions in your own hands, and you will drop the shame and fear of being judged. And that will let us play as kids, and discover, what’s over horizon.

If you’re just starting your improv adventure, but you’d like to try something different than short forms, this workshop is for you. Using improvisational theatre, and movie directing, we’ll work on building logical narration, and believable characters. We’ll touch the energy that is calmer and more demanding than games. We’ll discover our scenewriting skills, and or duties to the audience. We’ll try different longforms, concrete already existing formats, and way of thinking, that lets us create our own.