Faculty

Amy Russell, Department Chair

BA, Yale University

MFA, University of Tennessee

Amy Russell is the director and chair of Naropa University’s MFA at LISPA. She created the program at Naropa's Boulder, Colorado campus, where she directed it for two years before bringing the MFA program in Lecoq Based Theater to London.She studied at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq from 1990 to 1992, and completed her pedagogical training with M. Lecoq in 1997–1998, as well as the course in scenography (Laboratoire d'Etude de Mouvement). She also holds an MFA from the University of Tennessee, and a certificate from the London Academy of Music and the Dramatic Arts. She has worked as an ensemble member with the Lecoq based Touchstone Theatre, and has toured the United States and Europe with several collaboratively devised shows.As a playwright her credits include five professionally produced plays. For Company Ajar, which she co-founded, she wrote Je t'embrasse, Elvis, which toured to Avignon in 2000, and her award-winning show, Killing Lincoln, continues to tour in the United States. Amy has taught Lecoq based theater in the United States and abroad, and is also inspired by her study of Topeng with I Made Djimat in Bali. She has studied mask creation with Donato Sartori in Italy and I Made Muji in Bali.

Thomas Prattki, Director of LISPA

Thomas is the former pedagogical director of the Jacques Lecoq International School of Theatre in Paris, where he taught for almost a decade. He is a graduate of the Jacques Lecoq School, where he attained the pedagogical training programme diploma as well as following the course in scenography (Laboratoire d'Etude de Mouvement).

After his graduation he joined the Swiss based theatre company MÜMMENSCHANZ and performed with them for several years around the globe. His interest in a more holistic approach to creative expression led him to continue his studies at the Dürckheim Centre in Rütte, Germany. When he was asked to become a teacher at the Jacques Lecoq School, he returned to Paris.

After the death of Jacques Lecoq, he became the pedagogical director of the school. He has toured the world as a guest teacher, giving lectures, workshops and master classes in more than twenty-five countries. He also collaborated with Simon Murray in writing a new book (JACQUES LECOQ/Routledge 2002) about the pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq.

Instructors

Ilan Reichel

Ilan works as a choreographer, movement teacher and director. He has been a senior tutor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) since 1985. Born in Israel, he trained at Israel’s National Drama School, studied extensively with Dr. Joshe Feldenkrais and is qualified as a teacher of the Alexander Technique. He also studied English literature, painting and drama at the City Literary Institute, London.

Amongst others, he has given workshops at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts, the Israel National Theatre and together with director Peter Brook at England's National Theatre Studio. Since 1994 he has been part of RADA's annual teaching team at Tokyo's Subaru Theatre Company. He has directed plays by Sam Shephard, Samuel Beckett, Arthur Miller, Yeats and Sophocles and has worked with his own theatre company, In Motion, since 1992.

He teaches Movement Foundation and Physical Preparation in the Initiation Course at LISPA.

Kenneth Lewis

Kenneth is a highly qualified physical training specialist with more than twenty years of experience in the teaching of acrobatics, gymnastics, body conditioning, martial arts and sports massage. He holds among others a Gymnastics Coaching Award, a British amateur Gymnastics Award, a British Trampolining Award, a Pilates Based Matwork Certificate and a Sports Massage Therapist Diploma. He trained in Shaolin Kungfu, in Phor Kune Kungfu and in Hapkido. He performed as an acrobat in Circus Senso and in the Zig Zag Dance Company. As an acrobatic teacher he works among others at the Circus Space, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Marymount-Fordham London Dramatic Academy. Mr. Lewis teaches Acrobatics and Martial Arts in both the Initiation Course and the Advanced Course at LISPA.

Louise Crowley
MA Voice Studies, Central School of Speech and Drama, London

Louise, born in New Zealand, trained first as an actress, before shifting her focus to broadcasting in the nineties. Since then, she has narrated documentaries for leading networks and satellite television channels, worked as a radio newsreader and was chief daytime continuity announcer on Britain’s channel five.

She holds an MA in voice studies from London’s Central School of Speech and Drama and teaches voice in several major drama schools as well as coaching private clients within the acting and broadcasting industries.

Louise will teach voice in the Initiation Course.

Guest Instructors 2003–2004 include:

Frances Barbe

Frances works as a teacher, choreographer and performer. Born in Australia, she received her Bachelor of Arts at the University of Queensland. She trained classical ballet at the Royal Academy of Dancing, modern dance at the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing and Butoh dance with Tadashi Endo, Katsura Kan, Bishop Yamada, Carlotta Ikeda, Yumiko Yoshioka, Minako Seki and Lynne Bradley (Zen Zen Zo). She trained the Tadashi Suzuki Method with Ichiro Nakayama and SITI Company (Anne Bogart).

As a chorographer, performer and director, she has a strong interest to link contemporary dance, physical theatre and Butoh. She has choreographed, performed and directed in Australia, Japan and Europe. As a teacher she worked among others at the University of Queensland/Australia, the Makki International Academy in Kyoto and Hiroshima, the Butoh Centrum Mamu/Germany, the University of Kent at Canterbury and at Exeter University.

She was granted a research fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts in conjunction with Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation and University of Kent at Canterbury 2001 to 2004.

Alan Fairbairn was born in England and trained at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq from 1985 to 1987, from which time he has worked as an international performer, director and teacher. In 1998 he founded Theatre Decale, which toured throughout Europe for several years. From 1991 he also toured with the German company Confederacy of Fools. In 1996 he joined the Belgium-based company The Primitives and made with them Cook It! and Wash It!. He continues to tour these shows world-wide (recently to Australia, Japan and the United States). In 1998 he set up the British-based company Out of Synch. The majority of his work as a director and performer has been devised theatre with a strong comic element. His career in film has included recent roles in Vivre Me Tue (2002, Jean Pierre Sinapi) and No Man's Land (2002, Denis Tanovic).

Susana Lastreto

Susana was born in Argentina and studied theatre and literature in Uruguay before deciding to become a student of Jacques Lecoq in 1975. Since then her artistic path has led her into writing, directing, acting and teaching. She has written more than ten plays, which were all published in France and in South America. Many of them have been performed in Argentina and Uruguay. In 1990 she formed her own company—Groupe Rire, Rage et Resistance—and directed many plays which toured in France and internationally. She won the prize for the best new French novel in 1989, and was given a distinguished mention in the novels category of the Prix des Lettres in France in 2002. In 1998 she was asked to become a teacher at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq. Since 2002 she has been the artistic director of the Education Department for Contemporary Writing at the Theatre du Rond-Point in Paris.

Michael Murphy

Michael Murphy, born in Ireland, is an actor, writer and director. He trained at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris, where he complemented his training by taking the yearlong pedagogical training course to become a certified teacher of the Lecoq method. He is based in County Wicklow, Ireland. Michael is a founding member of Barabbas, one of Ireland's foremost physical and visual theatre companies. As an actor he has appeared in all the principal Irish theatres, including The Tempest and The Comedy of Errors at the Abbey Theatre. He has appeared in many films, including The Commitments, directed by Alan Parker, Butcher Boy by Neil Jordan, and The Last September by Deborah Warner. As a writer and director his work includes the award-winning The Last Days of Ollie Deasy, based on Homer's Odyssey. Recently he has worked on a feature-length film in collaboration with the Irish Film Board.

Adele Thompson

MA, Cambridge University

Adele works as an independent dancer, choreographer, stilt artist and teacher. She was a founding member of Stomp’s European Touring Company, performing with them in their sold-out season at London’s Royal Festival Hall, and in the Oscar nominated film Brooms. She also works in contemporary circus incorporating dance, abseiling, aerial and stilt work. She choreographs for theatre, stage, television and community and runs her own project-based company of dancers, circus artists, musicians and other artists, Barking Dog Dances.She teaches choreography, physical theatre, rhythm musicianship, contemporary dance and stilts at such institutions as Cambridge, Middlesex, London Contemporary Dance School and Circus Space. She is currently delivering freelance workshops worldwide whilst personally developing further skills in Latin American percussion, Japanese Taiko, African drumming, stilting and Spanish.

Workshop Instructors:

Kevin Crawford

Kevin Crawford is a founder member of the Roy Hart Theatre company, recognized for its ground-breaking research on voice in theatre. Over a twenty-five year period, initially in London and subsequently based in the Cévennes area of the south of France, Kevin performed in many of the core works of the company. After being a director of the company for four years he was appointed to a full-time post as Specialist in Vocal Skills and Interdisciplinary Training at The School of Drama, Trinity College, Dublin on its professional Actor Training program. In the summer of 2002 Kevin returned to France where he is now resident. His current research centres on interdisciplinary strategies for approaching heightened text and emotion in Greek and Shakespearian Tragedy as well as the use of voice through the Feldenkrais technique.

Marcela Lorca

Marcela became Movement Director for the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis/US in 1991 and has since coached more than seventy plays. She is also Head of Movement for the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater BFA Actor Training Program.

Born in Chile, Marcela studied dance, architecture and theatre design in her home country, before moving to the United States. She has worked with the National Actor's Theater in New York, Long Wharf Theater in Hew Haven, National Opera of the Dominican Republic, Grupo del Centro and has toured extensively the US and Europe. She has also taught at New York University, USA national conferences and the Guthrie Experience for Actors in Training.

She has a recipient of a McKnight Fellowship for Theater Artists and a Mc Knight Choreographic Fellowship.

Philipp Schafer

Philipp was born in Germany, where he began his artistic career as a drummer and percussionist. Later he studied with Jacques Lecoq in Paris and also with Philippe Gaulier (Ecole Philippe Gaulier) and John Costopoulos (Actors Studio New York). His interest in a creative link between movement, rhythm and theatre leads him after many years of performing to study with Reinhard and Cornelia Flatischler, the creators of Taketina. The quest for the hidden rhythms in life and their application to the performing arts has strongly influenced his work as a performer and a teacher. Philipp is the founder of Mauvaises Herbes Theater and Theaterakademie, an independent theatre company and training center for performing artists based in Berlin, Germany.

Past Workshop Leaders in Boulder, CO
Have Included:

Robert Rosen

Robert Rosen, a native of Minneapolis, studied at the Dell'Arte School of Mime and Comedy in Blue Lake, California, with noted commedia teacher Carlo Mezzone-Clemente and at the National Circus School in Paris. He is a graduate of the Ecole Jacques Lecoq. Robert was a founding member of the Theatre of Communities in 1970 and helped to develop the Guthrie Theater Outreach Program from 1972 to 1974. From 1974 to 1975, he directed the Theatre Program at the Science Museum of Minnesota. He has performed with Circus Toni Boltini in Holland and Cirque de Paris, and he toured France with a street theatre show that he created with Dutch, Swiss and American performers. With Jeune Lune, Robert directed The Cloud Keeper (1984), conceived and directed Circus in 1986, and co-wrote the script for 1789. He has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and has written numerous articles on theatre and management, including a recent article for the Journal of Arts Management. Robert played The King in The Nightingale and Barrault in Children of Paradise. During the 1992–93 season, he directed Jeune Lune in Molière's Scapin. In 1993–94, Bob adapted Gozzi's The Green Bird for the stage and designed the lighting for Germinal. He directed and co-authored Jeune Lune's record-breaking adaptation of Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Bob appeared as Yvonne in Honeymoon China, Cardinal Richelieu in The 3 Musketeers. He directed Jeune Lune in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, played Ragueneau in Cyrano, Laurent in Tartuffe, and The Golem.

Erik Ehn

Ehn is married to scenic artist Patricia Chanteloube-Ehn, the charge at Berkeley Rep. Scripts include the Saint Plays, Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling, No Time Like the Present, Wolf at the Door, Tailings, Begnner, Ideas of Good and Evil, and an adaptation of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. Plays produced at Theater of Yugen, Intersection (both San Francisco), Undermain (Dallas), Annex, Printer's Devil, Empty Space (Seattle), Sledgehammer (San Diego), Frontera (Austin), Theaterworks (Tulsa), Perishible (Priovidence), BACA (Brooklyn). Co-founder/co-artistic director - Tenderloin Opera Company, San Francisco (with Lisa Bielawa). He is a graduate of New Dramatists; a rat.

Jin Woo Yoo

Jin Woo Yoo has taught movement analysis at Ecole Jacques Lecoq since 2000. In addition to the Lecoq School, he has taught workshops in France, Korea, and the United States. He has also worked internationally as an actor, dancer, director and choreographer. He attended the Seoul Institute of Dramatic Art, and graduated from the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in 1998.

Giovanni Fusetti

Giovanni Fusetti is co-founder of Kìklos, and pedagogical director of the Scuola since its foundation in 1999. After a long experience in street theatre and social theatre, he has studied in Paris at the Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacques Lecoq , where he also attended the third year pedagogical training program and LEM (Laboratoire díEtude du Mouvement) . Afterward he taught improvisation at the Ecole under the direction of Jacques Lecoq. He has concentrated his work in theatre creation, working with Il Triangelo, Circo Crappo, Teatro Osvaldo, The Clod Ensemble, Pantakin da Venezia and Tre Magi Teatro. As a pedagogue he runs workshops internationally, collaborating with theatre companies, theatre schools and universities, around Europe and in USA. His pedagogical research includes training in Theatre in Education, Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed and Gestalt Therapy at the Ecole Parisienne de Gestalt. In his pedagogy, he is integrating physical theatre with different practices of physical and emotional awareness, for the training of the actor/poet/creator. In his earlier life he has graduated in Agricolture and Ecology at the University of Padua. He seeks to be fully alive while on this planet.

Jonathan Becker

Jonathan Becker has toured Europe, Asia, and the United States. He has appeared as an actor in programs with most of the major symphony orchestras in the U.S. and Canada. He co-founded and was co-artistic director of Les Scenkrates in Luzern, Switzerland and the Broduer Brothers in Paris, France. Since 1988 he has collaborated in the development of 10 original plays and taught at colleges, universities and regional theaters. Jonathan owns and operates Emerald Green Studios, a production studio specializing in the creation of masks and puppets. He is a graduate of Ecole Jacques Lecoq and has an MA in acting and directing from the University of Akron.

Carter Brown
BA, University of Vermont