This 2-day LIVE workshop will provide actors, dancers, directors, dramaturgs, and choreographers with an actionable toolkit for using Laban’s ideas of EFFORT into practice. The combinations of Weight, Space, Time, and Flow form 80 possible specific choices for expression, and functionality.

In dance, this provides an endless range of options for dynamics and helps us find deep functionality for challenging movement sequences. For theatre, every character in every play can be broken down to a set of qualities they tend to most, and each line of every play can be analyzed for its specific qualities. Using EFFORT in speaking and moving is a portal to specificity, and a way to break the habits of the performer, at the service of the show.

These ideas can also be used in larger, compositional choices, and to help design the flow and tone of a whole work. It is an extremely activated way to view and devise part of, or whole, performance.

We will use Effort to analyze, speak, and move inside the various possible choices for expression, and offer them a lifetime of new information that can be used to create a character, challenge their habits, and devise in a deeply specific, clear, and objective way.