Immersive Makers Workshop Series

with Tom Pearson

Spring Series – April 11 through May 30.
Thursdays from 7:00PM* to 9:30PM Eastern Time (2.5 hrs each) $600 for all 8 Sessions

Drop ins and subsidized sign ups available later in spring.
Third Rail Projects Gift Cards accepted.

ON ZOOM

SIGN UP NOW

Tom Pearson, co-founder/director of Third Rail Projects and director of the Global Performance Studio will be teaching some of his most popular sessions as an 8-part, two-month suite of offerings on Zoom. The series includes: Creative Cartographies, Scenario Development, Collaboration & Co-Creation, Frameworks, Sensory Design, Movement-based Practices, Conflict & Dramaturgy, Creative Practices.

These workshops are a deep dive into the techniques and practices Tom uses in his collaborative works for dance, theater, site-specific, and immersive productions. It offers explorations for mapping concepts and structures, scenario, and scene development, directing from the audience perspective, movement-based practices for site-specific and immersive theater, designing sensory environments, structuring creative practices, and working with designers, performers, artists, and audiences to co-create meaningful works. The series will cover an array of creative modalities and lean strongly towards site-specific and immersive collaborative processes.

Experience is not a requisite, only an interest in learning more about the multimedia components and multilayered processes Tom uses in his collaborations with Third Rail Projects, with other artists/communities around the world through the Global Performance Studio, and as a consultant and advisor. All creative backgrounds and disciplines welcome.

Syllabus:

April 11
Creative Cartographies: 
World building, thought partnerships, idea mapping for immersive, site-specific and proscenium-based works.

April 18
Scenario Development:
Devising and directing interactive projects from audience point-of-view.

April 25
Collaboration & Co-Creation: 
Personal and team style, collaborating with designers, performers, and audience as co-creators.

May 2
Frameworks: 
Structures, stanzas, ceremony, and other frameworks for designing containers of legibility.

May 9
Sensory Design: 
Environmental design, art, and ephemera as well as creating sensory maps that help 4-dimensional experiences.

May 16
Movement-based: 
Choreography and image generation, site-specific leanings, soft bodies and hard surfaces, addressing longevity and repeat stress.

May 23
Conflict & Dramaturgy: 
Finding meaning through archetypes, mythologies, and conflicts with self, scene partners, environment, and audience.

May 30
Creative Practices: 
Ideation, iteration, daily practice, and self-care for art-makers, for individual projects and larger bodies of work.

EDUCATIONAL OFFERINGS

My workshops, classes, and higher education curricula are open to all persons, abilities, and backgrounds. I focus on multi media approaches and lean into immersive and site-specific modalities that center experience design. Combining material culture and audience-centered narratives, mixed-media projects that employ theater, art, choreography, and poetry as well as ceremony, artifact, and mythos, my lesson plans are all about crafting interactive experiences. Drawing on my background in performance studies, archetypal and scientific psychology, dream practices, ritual, and ceremony, I aim to put students at the center of their own creative practices. Most of my courses emphasize originality and explore methods that support immersive ideation as well as other participant-centered endeavors. Together, we concentrate on different aspects of the creative process and how to build and sustain a practice that not only nurtures and causes us to thrive in our generative work but also helps us plan for creativity, hold space for it, and center it in our daily lives.