Workshop: Introduction to Rasaboxes

Introduction to Rasaboxes Workshop

April 29, 2024

Segal Theatre

2:00 - 5:00 PM 

Rasaboxes is an interdisciplinary approach for training emotional expressivity through the use of breath, body, voice, movement, and sensation will introduce participants to the foundational core concepts of the training. Rasaboxes brings together:

• the concept of rasa from classical Indian performance theory and practice
• research on emotion from neuroscience and psychology
• experimental and experiential performance practices
• theories of ritual, play, and performance

This 3-hour workshop will be a “taste” of some of the basic Rasaboxes exercises. It is a somatic, movement-based workshop and participants are encouraged to wear clothing that enables freedom of movement (no jeans, skirts etc). The Rasaboxes Workshop will be led by Core Rasaboxes Teachers Rachel Bowditch, Paula Murray Cole, and Michele Minnick. 

You must RSVP to attend. This workshop is capped at 30 people, after which a waitlist will be started. 

Biographies: 

Rachel Bowditch is a theatre director and Professor of Theatre in the School of Music, Dance, and Theatre in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University.  She hold a Ph.D. in Performance Studies at NYU. Bowditch attended Ecole de Jacques Lecoq in Paris in 1998 and is a core teacher of TPW and Rasaboxes. Bowditch acted in Schechner’s productions of YokastaS (2005 and 2007) with East Coast Artists. She has taught and developed Rasaboxes and The Performance Workshop (TPW) since 2003. Her books include On the Edge of Utopia: Performance and Ritual at Burning Man (2010), Performing Utopia co-edited with Pegge Vissicaro (Seagull Books, 2018), and Physical Dramaturgy: Perspectives from the Field co-edited with Jeff Casazza and Annette Thornton (Routledge, 2018). She has presented her performance research nationally and internationally in London, Barcelona, Singapore, Mexico City, Bogota, Columbia, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Santiago, Chile, Berlin, and most recently, Haikou, China. For more about her artistic and scholarly work: https://rachelbowditch.com/ and https://vesselproject.org/

Paula Murray Cole is Associate Professor in the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance at Ithaca College, a teacher of the Alexander Technique, and a licensed massage therapist. Cole acted in Schechner’s Three Sisters and Hamlet with East Coast Artists. Her professional work centers on the development and dissemination of Rasaboxes and The Performance Workshop (TPW). She has taught and/or presented this work at colleges, universities, conferences, and independent arts organizations nationally and internationally since 1999. In 2009, Cole produced the only documentary video recording of Schechner teaching the whole of TPW, Crossing the Line: Inside Richard Schechner’s Performance Workshop.

Michele Minnick, PhD, CMA, SMT/E is a performance maker and producer, somatic movement educator, independent scholar, and teaching artist. She has taught, presented, and developed TPW and Rasaboxes internationally since 1998 in professional and educational settings in the US and Brazil. Minnick was a member of East Coast Artists from 1994 to 2005, translating and performing in Schechner’s production of Three Sisters (1995–1997) and performing in Hamlet (1999). In Baltimore she has been a member of Iron Crow Theatre Company and a core creator with Submersive Productions. In 2021, she launched Vital Matters, an interdisciplinary, arts-based laboratory for change that integrates somatics with experimental performance approaches to address environmental and social injustice and climate change in partnership with artists, scholars, activists and organizations in Baltimore. Minnick has adapted Rasaboxes for her work as a teaching artist with Arts for Learning Maryland since 2018.