FIONA Griffiths

Dramaturgy of Clown: Rules? No Rules??

March 28 – 30, 2025
La Poêle, 5333 Casgrain, studio 307, Montréal
In English with French Translation provided

COST
250 $ + taxes

DETAILS

This fun and challenging course will improve your creation and performance skills. Enjoy frolicking with your clown persona, defining and refining the message for your turn, assessing your work, improving audience skills and making your turn repeatable. 

Using Pochinko’s 10 clowns rules and Linda Putnam’s 10 assessment principles, you will walk away with major tools for opening up the world of your clown while constructing and performing their stories. 

In the process we will explore the foundation of the Clown/Turn structure: 

Present Yourself, Take me into your World, and Leave me Transformed. 

Each class will be divided into body process and acting/scene study. Clown experience and training is necessary. Feel free to bring a turn to work on or develop your turn ideas throughout the course. 

There will be some readings and homework pre-course.

“Moments to celebrate our animalness, our humanness, our larger sense of God, moments when we touch each other deeply in a moment of laughter.” – Richard Pochinko

SCHEDULE
Friday March 28 – 10h – 16h
Saturday March 29 – 10h – 17h
Sunday March 30 – 10h – 17h

Fiona Griffiths

Fiona Griffiths, RN, BFA, MFA, MA, is a mentor, teacher, coach, and choreographer specializing in work with actors, clowns, and dancers. She is also a fitness professional and CranioSacral therapist. Fiona holds a BFA in modern dance and choreography and an MFA in multi-media performing arts and creative processes.

A passionate lifelong learner, Fiona has trained extensively in acting, clowning, and movement systems. As a multidisciplinary performer and creator, she toured nationally and internationally with her acclaimed dance/theatre productions.

Fiona co-founded and served as a ten-year director of Toronto’s Atelier Pochinko at the Theatre Resource Centre, where she was Artistic Director from 1990 to 1992. She has taught and coached artists across disciplines and worked in university theatre departments, including Yale, York University, the University of Toronto, and the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.

She spent 17 years teaching at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and nine years at the Manitoulin Centre for Creation and Performance. Fiona has also choreographed and coached for numerous professional theatre and dance companies.

As a member of The Canadian Artists Network (CSARN), a senior mentoring organization, Fiona mentored and trained with several artists in 2022, including a playwright, a performance artist, and a filmmaker. During a sabbatical year at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London (2007/08), she completed her MA (Honors) in Training and Coaching Actors and performed in Hotel Medea, which played at the Shunt Vaults in London and opened the Salisbury International Arts Festival.

Fiona’s awards include a 2016 Ontario Arts Council residency grant to research the older moving body, an Ontario civic award for her jury work on the York Arts Council, and a Canada Council B grant to study Linda Putnam’s work.

As someone with Dyslexia and ADHD, Fiona brings a deep sensitivity to the diversity of her students’ learning needs. Her teaching motto emphasizes creating challenging, educational workshops in a nurturing and supportive environment.

Théâtre Biscornu & La Brimbalante

Characters & Improvisation for Clowns
March 31 – April 4, 2025
La Poêle, 5333 Casgrain, studio 307, Montréal

Artistic level of participants: All levels are welcome, as long as you have a performing arts background.

COST
240 $ – 440 $ + taxes
Sliding Scale

DETAILS

François-Guillaume Leblanc (Théâtre Biscornu, Îles-de-la-Madeleine) and La Nab (La Brimbalante, Frelighsburg) team up to present a multifaceted clown workshop in Montreal, as part of the 2025 Montreal Clown Festival activities!

François-Guillaume’s focus will be on character creation. Starting from the clown state, participants will explore how to use posture, voice, and body movement to develop cartoon-like characters. With mime techniques and vocal sound effects, the workshop will help participants define the physical traits, clothing, and textures that bring their characters to life.

La Nab will guide participants through improvisation techniques to uncover and embrace areas of radical pleasure in play. Her approach emphasizes the expression of body and emotions, transitions between the subtle and the extreme, and the blending of styles (grotesque, absurd, poetic, dramatic, sacred).

A collaboration between the Montreal Clown Festival, La Brimbalante, and Théâtre Biscornu—don’t miss this opportunity to deepen your clowning practice!