The Hideout is bringing the legendary Joe Bill down for a weekend intensive on March 4 & 5. Students will spend eight hours of advanced instruction from noon-4:30pm on Saturday and Sunday (with a brief break each day). You can also register for each day separately if you can’t commit to both.
Joe Bill Weekend Intensive
Saturday: Ruthless Mindfulness in Improvised Scenes and Stories
March 4, noon-4:30pm (4 hours, with a brief break)
In this workshop we’ll play with the idea of Listening, Initiating, Reacting and Responding. This idea is the marriage of “working from the inside out” and “working from the outside in”. We are bringing our minds into playful harmony and releasing the demands of ego driven unity.
As the title suggests there can be many instantaneous battles, for thousands of reasons, that pop up in your brain on the journey to playing whatever is in front of you as you improvise. The psychology of presence and emotional truth of the moment, discovering context organically and then building on THAT, is slightly different than the psychology of playing with a declared style or structure of story (or scene) before you begin improvising.
The similarity lies in the idea that all improvisation is an active meditation that honors what is going on NOW in a way that is emotional, strategic and active. You must play the scene that is here, not the scene that you want to be here. At its core this workshop offers tools for productively dealing with what is in your head in order to serve yourself, your scene partner(s) and the scenes and stories that you are creating together.
Joe Bill Weekend Intensive
Sunday: Personal Diagnostic, Improvising as YOU
March 5, noon-4:30pm (4 hours, with a brief break)
Are you an Improviser that often gets one of these two notes: “You usually play characters that are close to yourself” or “You should try to play characters that are closer to yourself”? I want to help give specificity to these two pieces of feedback so that you can make them more personally actionable. What does it really mean to improvise as YOU?
We will begin the workshop by declaring the feedback that each of you receives, both from others AND from yourself, and see how that’s working in serving your goals, hopes and dreams as you are improvising. We will play with the ways you can receive feedback and immediately make it actionable. I will share tools that can help unlock yourself from “being in your head”, for whatever reason.
You will do lots of scenes and have lots of interactions in exercises. I’ll offer feedback, tools and skills that can help you be more accepting, aware of and confident in the Strong, Vulnerable, Subjective and Objective PRESENCE OF YOU.
$149 for the full Intensive / 8 hours / Limited Space / Class held at Hideout Studios – 2505 E 6th St, Unit C
Or $79 for either Saturday or Sunday separately (4 hours each)
Joe Bill is widely regarded as one of the best teachers of Scenic and Comedic Improvisation in America today. He currently teaches, performs and is the Director of Corporate Training at iO Chicago. He is also on the faculty at The Second City Training Center where he teaches intensives in Duo Improvisation and Improvisation for Actors. He is one of the founding members of Annoyance Theater Chicago where, for 12 years, he performed in and/or directed more than 60 different shows. Joe first learned Improvisation and in 1977 studied and worked with Del Close from 1985 through the mid 90’s.
Joe tours internationally featuring innovative formats in Long Form Improvisation including BASSPROV with Mark Sutton, (Annoyance Theater Co-Founding Member and Artistic Director for Training and Development at The Second City). They have been heralded by the NY TIMES: “BASSPROV refreshingly has the feel of a quiet character study…jokes emerge organically, using wordplay, character quirks and quicksilver wit.”
In the last year Joe toured Eastern Europe, teaching and headlining with Jill Bernard (Huge Improv Theater – Mpls.) in their hit Duo show SCRAM! He headlined with Chicago Improv Goddess Susan Messing in Messing With a Friend at the Miami Improv Festival, with Lee White (CRUMBS – Winnipeg) in their show PARADIGM in the U.K., Germany, Switzerland and Italy, with International Improv Legend Patti Stiles (AD – Impro Melbourne) in Paris and Rome with their show Our Play, with Israeli Powerhouse Inbal Lori in Brest, France with their show That Date and with David Razowsky (Host A.D.D. Comedy Podcast) in Razowsky & Bill at Wurzburg (Germany) Improtheaterfestival and at Improvention in Canberra, Australia.
Joe performs in The Del Tones, The Armando Diaz Theatrical Experience and Musical Armando at iO Chicago. He has played as a guest in The Scene and Chica GO-GO at The PIT in New York City, with Let’s Have A Ball and ASSSSCAT 3000 at UCB Theater in New York & L.A and with Kornfeld & Andrews at Magnet Theater in New York City.
He has performed, directed, taught and served as an Artistic Adviser for a number of Improvisation/Comedy Theaters & Festivals all over North America, Europe, Australia and South Africa and at every major Improv Festival in The United States.