Improvisation and Play: Puppets and Humans Telling Stories with

In this two-day workshop, Yann Van Den Branden of Quicksilver Productions will lead you on improvising between a puppet and a human, using a screen to keep the puppeteer from being visible to the audience . Honest interactions, storytelling, comedy and play will be covered as well in this 10-hour class. There will be plenty of stage time and direct feedback.
Skills offered in class: Retraining your improviser brain to work with a puppet, Human to puppet interactions, working with a puppet screen (hidden puppeteer).
Dates: 11/16 & 11/17
Time: 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Location: Unexpected Productions’ Market Theater
Maximum Students: 20
Cost: $150
Prerequisite: Basic Improv
Teacher Bio:
Since 1999, Yann Van den Branden is the Artistic Director of Quicksilver Productions. He likes to divide his work as an actor between theatre and television. Playing as well in regular theatre, musicals and television series. Yann has a passion for improv theatre and he likes to perform in all kinds of formats.
On tv, he played during two seasons in the Belgian version of “Who’s line is it anyway” and later he even dared to host a one hour live improv show, on national TV. It became a weekly live show that provoked a lot of controversy. Typically for his high energy way of playing is his on-going search in finding a balance between going “totally crazy” and trying to involve things out of his personal life in his improv story telling. In 2004 he created “the Wake”. An improv format that he brought with Quicksilver to Stockholm, Seattle, Edmonton, Victoria, Ljubljana, Vienna, Berlin and Amsterdam. In 2006 he stretched the limits of improv again by bringing a Muppet show-inspired improv show to Belgium. The audience was fascinated by the weird show “Ploesj!” and the more serious “Shakespeare and puppets”.Although he prefers long form improv, he always stays in touch with the fast and shorter forms of improv like theatresports and improv-match. That Yann and his Quicksilver team are knowing how to excel in this kind of improv, became clear in 2006 when they won the World championship of theatresports. In 2007 they even won the open German improv championship in Hamburg. The last 15 years, he has been touring around in the world to perform and to teach improv. From Victoria and Seattle to Rome over Boston and Berlin, passing Tokyo, Bologna, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Zurich, Lisbon and Paris. But the last couple of years, he can often be found teaching puppet workshops all over Italy.