CFPA is a place for intersections. Art is stronger when created from divergent perspectives.
In addition to engaging local artists, national and international artists host workshops at CFPA. Workshops reflect our commitment to ongoing creative development, offering performance makers the space, mentorship, and community to deepen their practice as they create and present works. Workshops are structured to:
spark engagement among performing arts, artists, and audiences
develop artists at all career stages
build relationships across artists, disciplines, identities, and experiences
illuminate performance in the center and margins of our community
Workshops are offered on a sliding scale—no artist is turned away for lack of funds. Each workshop incorporates a public event component.
past workshops
Dancing Magic Together
Keith Hennessy is a San Francisco-based artist who describes his workshops by saying, “All kinds of things can happen…Some events or exercises or sessions might really flow and connect. Others will disrupt or redirect flow. Creating gaps that need to be bridged or jumped. I come in with a few ideas, a virtual suitcase of accumulated exercises and scores, and then I improvise. And collaborate. The participants’ desires and experiences will shape our conversations and inform my proposals.”
Using Your Truth in Improv
Blackout Improv, an all-Black improv group composed of actors, comedians, activists, and teachers, explored improv as a tool in daily life. Improv can be a means of utilizing everything you’ve got to get everything you need. It allows you to ‘roll with the punches’ and be your best self in every moment, by acknowledging every gift you’re given and supporting those around you.
The Personal Politics of Place
Emily Mendelsohn spent a decade investigating cross-cultural performance, from Rwanda to Brooklyn. This research helped her identify key elements to support artists in: 1) opening up their personal constellations of identity, history, and culture; 2) integrating what’s discovered in creative practice. The group was invited into this art lab to explore transformational potential—for artists and audiences—in understanding ‘where we are’, as we strive envision where we want to be.
Ritual Performance of Identity & the Human Body
Saúl García-López presented from his book, A Handbook for the Rebel Artist in a Post-Democratic Society, and a conducted a human installation exploring the iconography of funeral/rebirth as an exercise in identity reinvention. The installation of collective altars, with the human body as the medium, examined memory, gender, ethnicity, migration, and politics. García-López shared physical, perceptual, conceptual, and poetic techniques to create live art imagery, transforming bodies as primary sites of creation.