Fun and Games with Jane Nichols

COME PLAY!!!

Come play with a fearless cohort of actors, clowns, improvisers, tragedians, poets, singers, dancers, writers, fellow fools, and birds of a feather looking to tap into an ancient and essential creative force—FUN.

Come play around and find out that:

Laughter is more than it's cracked up to be. 

Play isn't all fun and games—it’s just plain FUN!

CLOWNING IS SERIOUS BUSINESS! And that’s NOT funny! 

Laughter. Play. Clowning. The beating heart of this workshop.

Laughter 

In and of itself a sweet surrender to our common humanity. In a group, a community organizer. Any group laughing together is, for that moment in time, a single organism. It has agreed spontaneously, on an unconscious level, that something is True and Life-affirming.

Play

A state of freedom and heightened energy in which our behavior is surprising, virtuosic, unique, truthful, and idiosyncratic. How you play is how you have FUN. FUN is a very personal matter, and it is happening nowhere but NOW. Play exists for its own sake. We play “for the Fun of it.”

The playing actor is a dangerous actor—a free, thrilling, surprising, alive, vital creative force, in which moments are discovered and engaged with vigor and delight. If you aren’t playing, you're hiding or protecting yourself. You’re keeping yourself accurate and socially acceptable. And the audience will be as bored as you are. When you are playing, you are having Fun. And when you are having Fun, you are Free to get to the heart of what is True of you and of the moment.

Unless you are willing to Fail or risk looking ridiculous, you can't Play.

Clown 

You, ridiculous and unafraid of Failure, playing with and for the Audience with the Conviction, Commitment, Dignity, and Desire of an innocent and open-hearted fool.

This workshop is happening:

Saturday, October 24 and Sunday, October 25,

10:30 AM–4:30 PM

at Brooklyn Art Haus (24 Marcy Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211)

About Jane Nichols

Jane Nichols is an actor, teacher, and director. Her teaching brings together skills and techniques of le jeu, physical comedy, clown, bouffon, improvisation, and mask. 

She has studied with Philippe Gaulier (Ecole Gaulier), Clive Mendes (Theatre Complicite), Ronlin Foreman (Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre), Michael Kennard (co-founder of Canada’s Mump & Smoot, and master teacher of the Richard Pochinko Native American mask/clown technique), Avner Eisenberg (Avner the Eccentric), Davis Robinson (author of Physical Comedy Handbook), Keith Johnstone (Impro and Impro for Storytellers), Bolek Polivka, (world-renowned Czech clown), and Merry Conway, her first and most impactful clown teacher whom she met at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA.

Jane was the founder/artistic director of Crosswalk Theatre for Children in Boston, a company grounded in the teachings of British educators Brain Way and Dorothy Heathcote. Applying her knowledge of child drama, Jane created and implemented a curriculum for the Shakespeare & Company elementary and junior high school program, which continues to this day.

Jane has held teaching positions at Shakespeare & Company, the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, Juilliard, Harvard University, ART, ACT, Brown University, the Actors Center in New York City, Stella Adler Conservatory, Emerson College, Simon’s Rock College of Bard, and University of Washington.

She has directed shows at Harvard University, Columbia University, Brown University, University of Washington, Washington Ensemble Theatre (WET), Intiman Theatre, Seattle Shakespeare Co, Seattle University, Cornish College of the Arts, and Room Circus Medical Clowning. With her company of former clown students, Logic Limited, Ltd., she devised: Desdemona’s Dream; Schaden, Freude, and You: A 3 Clown Seminar; TiVO la Resistance; New Shorts; and A Night at the Trojan Wall: A Clown version of the Iliad. With Cirque du Soleil clowns John Gilkey, Daniel Passer, and Wayne Wilson, she worked to develop and devise the cabaret Your New Best Friends.

Acting credits include roles at Dallas Theatre Center, Portland Stage Co, En Garde Arts, Synapse Productions, New Georges, Shakespeare & Company, Gloucester Stage Co, Nora Theatre, Lyric Stage, Berkshire Public, Counterpoint Theatre, Cambridge Theatre Co. Film and TV credits include: School Ties; Heights; The Living Room Waltz;  Ed; Law & Order SVU; America’s Most Wanted; Connect With English; and Rachel’s Dinner with Olympia Dukakis. She has done numerous voice overs and commercials.