The Glass Contraption has led numerous workshops and residencies both as a company and as individual artists, bringing our unique approaches to theater-making to community-based organizations around the globe, to schools in each of the five boroughs of New York City, to conservatory training programs and to fellow artists. Behold!

COMMUNITY-BASED COLLABORATIONS

The Glass Contraption partners with community-based arts and outreach organizations to create and carry out one-of-a-kind residencies that celebrate and explore the stories, dreams and talents of the individuals in that given community. Drawing from elements of theater, clown and music, individuals and groups work together to transform the stories and characters from their communities, along with found objects and junk, into moving, hilarious and poetic works of theater.

Collaborations include:

The Topsy Center, Grootvlei, South Africa
February, 2005
July, 2007

JL Zwane Center / Siyaya Music Theater and Dimpho-di-Kopane Theater Company, Cape Town, South Africa
August, 2007

JL Zwane Center / Siyaya Music Theater – NYC Residency
June, 2008

Media Artes, Macedonia
July, 2008

Special Workshop:
Center for Theatre of the Oppressed, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
July, 2009


SCHOOL WORKSHOPS AND PERFORMANCES

The Glass Contraption leads clown and collaborative theater workshops for students in schools and afterschool programs. The workshops and full-length residencies focus on ensemble building, creative problem solving, risk-taking, skill-building, free play and improvisation. Through a blend of clown, games, music and theater, we expose students to elements of these artistic forms while bringing forward each student’s humor and talent and creating opportunities for group collaboration. TGC has also paired the presentation of original company shows with workshops and residencies.

School and Community Outreach Programs:

The 52nd Street Project, NYC
PS 20, Urban Assembly of Arts and Letters, Brooklyn
Baltimore School for the Arts
The Brearley School, NYC
DreamYard Project, NYC
The Ensworth School, Nashville
Falconworks/Off the Hook, Red Hook, Brooklyn
Harpeth Hall Academy, Nashville
Holy Trinity Workshop, Long Island
If This Street Were Mine, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Nashville School of the Arts
Jaffa Project, Tel-Aviv
PS 107, Brooklyn
St. Ann's School, NYC
Spoke the Hub/Gowanus Arts, Brooklyn
MET Singers, Nashville
Valley Stream High School Choir, Long Island
Vibe Theater Experience, NYC
Young Audiences, NYC

UNIVERSITY/CONSERVATORY RESIDENCIES
and PROFESSIONAL WORKSHOPS

The Glass Contraption leads professional-level workshops and residencies in Clown, Physical Theater and Ensemble-Based Theater. These workshops present an opportunity for students to experience the company’s approach to creating original, ensemble-devised, clown-based work and to bring those insights and approaches to their own work as an artist and as a human being. Largely influenced by our mentor, master clown teacher and director, Christopher Bayes, TGC’s workshops bring students through a carefully crafted series of exercises that expand the student’s use of his/her voice and body, enable them to re-discover their sense of curiosity, imagination and play on stage, introduce them to the principles of the comic world (and its potential for great tragedy), awaken the poetic body in preparation for farce and verse and develop complicity between performers on stage and between the performer and his/her audience. The student’s relationship to all other forms of drama is profoundly changed through this work.

Select workshops and residencies include:

Interborough Repertory Theater, NYC
TheatreBridge Program at Brown University, Providence
Yale University, New Haven
Marymount Manhattan College, NYC
New School University, Eugene Lang College, NYC
Northwestern University, NHSI, Chicago
The Orchard Project, NY
Revolucion Latina, NYC
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
University of the South, Sewanee