Fernan Rock Acting Lessons

I have many years experience as a theater artist and producer, including my craft as an actor, director, theatrologist, choreografer, producer and drama teacher. I was a leader on staff at Sonhus Ritual Theater Group in Brazil for over a two decades (1996-2018). My work involved daily and weekly assignments, as well as collaboration with other actors, directors, visual artists, video editors, art desiners, writers, dramaturgists, photographers and other artists and producers too.

I earned a Bachelor’s degree in Live Perfomance (drama theater, actor and director) from Federal University of Goias in Brazil in 2005. In addition to acting, I extensively studied sing lessons, physical theater, dramatic body mime, masks of commedia del’art, comedy, improvisation acting paticipated in workshops and presented in performances and plays at specific festivals around the country enhanced my ensemble-acting abilities and skills.

After 6 years producing independent projects, presenting, traveling and making connections with my theater group, I return to academy wordise and I earned my Master’s degree in Theater from Federal University of Uberlandia/Minas Geraes in Brazil in 2014.

I founder a theater group called Ritual Theater in Goiania capital of Goias state in Brazil in 1996. Since then, my theatrical interests have focused mainly on physical theater, mime, dance-theater and antropological theater resourches. In all these years I worked as a director of 20 shows and I performed or directed more than 40 performances, among works produced by the group Sonhus Teatro Ritual and works on special projects with students.

I travel to Germany, Argentina, USA and Japan to present theatrical performances, to train and take classes with master of Butoh Dance and also I was in Portugal, Spain, Colombia and Italy to exchange experiences and learn with others body mime, physical comedians and physical-visual theater artists and masters.

I published my book "The Ritual of the Actor in Group - Training of Actors as a Collective Culture" in 2017 telling our experience and sharing our discoveries about the shared actor's life, the skills and techniques acquired and developed together over the years.

Before coming to the USA in 2018, I completed 22 years as director of the Sonhus Ritual Theater Group and 5 years as director of the Sonhus Space theater in partnership with the Department of Education and Culture of the Government of the State of Goias in Brazil, where I worked with members from the community to develop exhibitions, presentations, films, live performances, concerts, workshops and festivals and art fairs, music, theater and animation films and short films.

Recently, I participated in presentations in which I was invited to take part with some local artists, especially with the collaboration of the Daipan butoh colletive. Also in a performance with Joan Lage at the Seattle butoh Festival. I gave a workshop during the month of May as part of the ongoing activities of the Seattle Butoh Festival and presented at the Festival the performance called The Shadows on a Pearl’s Skin. I created and performed a show called Lost in Translation at the Kirkland Performance Center, did a series of performances with the Daipan Butoh Colletive last year, including at the Japanese Garden in Seattle and at the Tashiro Kaplan Studio and also at the Seattle Butoh Festival. I did shows with local artists at the Velocit Dance Center last November. I sang a musical show on the BraziFest schedule at Seattle Center, on a huge stage under the Space Needle, gave some acting workshops, including The Theater of the Oppressed, created by the late Brazilian master Augusto Boal.

In my work as an actor, what fascinates me most is the possibility of being able to be everything that I am capable of imagining, just allowing myself to adapt the form, to shape myself in different ways, my physicality, my way of speaking, walking, gesturing and being. Introduce myself as someone else, with other characters and characteristics. As a teacher or director, I delight in making it possible for those who wish to express themselves in another way, means and good advice to challenge themselves and transcend their own limitations of communication, imagination, creativity and expressiveness.