Class Overview: This two-day intensive brings together voice, movement, and clown into one integrated training. We’ll explore presence, play, vulnerability, and the body as an expressive, responsive instrument — working across disciplines to open new possibilities in performance. Each day includes three focused 2-hour sessions — voice, movement, and clown — with time to rest and reset between. This is a space to take risks, follow impulses, and develop a more connected, alive presence in your work. Open to both newcomers and experienced performers. A mix of experience levels is always welcome and keeps the work fresh.

Instructor:

John Beale is an actor, teacher and director based in Toronto, Ontario (and Nosara, Costa Rica) . He serves as the master teacher of Clown and Bouffon at Humber College’s Theatre Arts Performance Program and also teaches acting, mask, clown, improv and scene study at Seneca and Randolph Colleges, character study at George Brown College and Embodied Presence at Stratford Festival’s Birmingham Conservatory. He has led public performance workshops in clown and presence for over 20 years as well as acted in television, film and theatre for over 30 years. He earned a Merritt Award for his performance in The Crucible with Two Planks and a Passion Theatre Company. John is a graduate of Philippe Gaulier’s prestigious International Theatre School in Paris and also trained, performed and taught extensively with the acclaimed Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Janine Pearson was born and raised on a farm in southern Saskatchewan (Treaty 4 territory) where much of her character was influenced by the prairie and its settler people. In recognizing the original caretakers of that land, the Cree, Assiniboine and Saulteaux First Nations, Janine wishes to participate in building bridges that acknowledge our broken treaty relationships. She obtained a Bachelor of Music in singing performance and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in acting from the University of Regina. She also earned an Associate Diploma in singing performance from the Western Board of Music at the University of Alberta. She then traveled to Germany to study at the Humboldt-Institut, after which she enjoyed a brief but successful career as a singer and actor before meeting some life changing vocal difficulties. Like so many great teachers, these personal struggles gave birth to a journey that changed the course of her life. In her quest to find a marriage between the singing and the speaking voice, Janine enrolled in the ADVS programme at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (London, England), where she studied with master teachers David Carey, Meribeth Bunch-Dayme, Cicely Berry and Patsy Rodenburg. After graduating with a ‘first’ from RCSSD, Patsy Rodenburg recommended Janine to newly appointed Artistic Director David William at the Stratford Festival in Ontario. She joined the coaching team, where she assisted, apprenticed with, and was mentored by Ann Skinner, Michael Mawson, and Bernard Hopkins. Through these great artists Janine learned a respect for the student: to listen, to see and in the end, to guide rather than impose.

Brad Cook is a theatre creator, actor, puppeteer, movement specialist and co-artistic director of Blue Bird Theatre Collective. Selected creations include; Maanomaa, My Brother (BBTC/Canadian Stage), Body 13 (MT Space), Frankensteins Ghosts (Inter Arts Matrix) and BBTC’s upcoming creation Bush of Ghosts. As an actor and puppeteer selected credits include; the head of Joey in War Horse (National Theatre of Great Britain/Mirvish), King Lear (Cosmic Fishing), Charles Dickens Writes a Christmas Carol, Pearl Gidley, Radio Leacock, Twelfth Night (Lost & Found), The Importance of Being Earnest (Guild Theatre Festival). Selected movement and puppetry direction credits include; Richard III, Death and the King’s Horseman, The Breathing Hole, Treasure Island, Breath of Kings: Rebellion and Redemption (Stratford Festival), The Neverending Story (Stratford Festival/NAC), Western (Next Stage), Lord Sword (Inter Arts Matrix), The Lark, The Trojan Women (Lost & Found Theatre), King Lear (Cosmic Fishing Theatre). Cook has taught movement at the National Theatre School of Canada, University of Waterloo, Randolph College for the Performing Arts and The Birmingham Conservatory for Classical Theatre and has supported the company at the Stratford Festival for 8 seasons as a movement coach.