Teaching Team
- Thomas Prattki
- Abigail Dooley
- Anna Kistel
- Ariel Gutierrez
- Cat Gerrard
- Hajo Sch�ler
- Jenny Andreasson
- Jonathan Young
- Kelley Soul
- Lionel M�nard
- Marina Rodr�guez Llorente
- Patrick Soul
- Peter Oechsle
- Philipp Schaefer
- Valentina Bordenave
- Viatcheslav Kushkov
Thomas Prattki
LISPA Team
Thomas is the Founder and Director of LISPA.
He is the former pedagogical director of the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris.
As a performer, he has toured the world with Mummenschanz, a world renowned company combining movement, puppetry and visual arts. He has directed, taught and lectured in over 30 different countries at institutions such as the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis USA, the Aarhus Theater in Aarhus, Denmark, and the Ilkhom Theater in Taschkent, Uzbekistan, among others.
His most important reference point next to the pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq is the strongly Jungian and Zen based work of Maria Hippius and Karlfried Graf Duerckheim, where life, art and spiritual practice all serve the same purpose: to become transparent for the grand movements of Life and how they resonate in our body and personal life.
Abigail Dooley
Guest Teacher
Abigail is a theatre director, teacher, performer and scriptwriter, specialising in devised theatre. She trained at East 15 Drama School, Ecole Philippe Gaulier and LISPA.
She has performed, directed and devised with many companies including Compagnie Philippe Gaulier, Keith Johnstone, Spymonkey, Told by An Idiot, Peepolykus and Trestle Theatre Company. She is joint Artistic Director and performer with the theatre company - A & E Comedy, whose play, Enter The Dragons, won the Best of Brighton Fringe award 2017.
Over the last 25 years Abigail has taught extensively at drama schools and Universities, including Mountview, ALRA and Middlesex University. As a scriptwriter, she won Hat Trick Productions Sitcom Mission Competition and has made a number of short films, including a TV sitcom pilot with Spymonkey Theatre Company.
Anna Kistel
Guest Teacher
Anna was educated at the School of Visual Theatre in Jerusalem as well as the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris. Engagements at travelling theatre „Los Dilletantos,“ puppet theatre „Ha Karon“ (Jerusalem), clown solo „Brilli“, travelling theatre „Ton und Kirschen“, clown duo „Vorsicht Grenze“, Berlin Youth Dance Theatre „Kiekkebuk“, Theater Strahl „Klasse Tour“. Anna is an actress and author for award-winning company Familie Flöz.
Ariel Gutierrez
LISPA Team
Originally from Buenos Aires, Ariel has a background in international politics, Literature and Performing Arts. He studied at the Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacques Lecoq in 1996 and joined LISPA in 2011, where he completed the Advanced Devising Practice program as well as the pedagogical training.
An active collaborator with companies in the US, Europe and Latin America, he also holds a PhD in Modern Languages and Literatures from the University of Miami with an emphasis on Performance. His dissertation “Scenic Landscapes: The theater in the global city” explores the relation between globalization, theater and non-conventional performance spaces.
Cat Gerrard
LISPA Team
Cat is a performance-maker, storyteller, director and teacher from London. She trained at Drama Studio London and LISPA.
Cat has toured Europe with solo work and with various puppetry, physical theatre and storytelling ensembles, including Theatre Témoin and Impronta Theater. She is Artistic Director of storytelling company TailSpin.
She has been exploring the depths and heights of voice, text and telling - as a practitioner and a teacher - since 2010, colliding her cross-arts interests with a movement towards wholing.
Hajo Sch�ler
Guest Teacher
Hajo Schüler trained at Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen.
He has worked as an actor, choreographer and director at several playhouses, inlcuding: Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Essen Theatre and Philharmonic, Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, Burgtheater Vienna, Schillertheater NRW, Frankfurt Opera, Centro Cultural Recoleta Buenos Aires and Ballhaus Ost Berlin.
Hajo's teaching work comprises assignments at the University of the Arts Berlin, the Folkwang University of the Arts Essen, and the University of Music and the Performing Arts Stuttgart.
He is also the co-founder and Artistic Director of award-winning company Familie Flöz.
Jenny Andreasson
Guest Teacher
Her main focus has been to investigate and highlight works by female playwrights and writers both contemporary and throughout history. She holds a master's degree in directing from the Dramatic Institute in Stockholm 1998-2002 and also holds a PhD in Political Science from Uppsala University.
Jonathan Young
Guest Teacher
Jonathan Young is an award-winning theatre maker, writer and teacher. He trained for two years with Jacques Lecoq at his school of theatre and movement in Paris, before studying contemporary clowning with Philippe Gaulier and Sue Morrison. In 2001, he set up a touring company, Shams, and was its artistic director until 2012. Shams created intelligent and playful new work, often using multimedia elements, clowning, site specific or immersive projects.
For the past 20 years, Jonathan has also worked freelance as a performer, writer and director/dramaturg with other UK theatre companies. Since 2008, he has regularly taught movement, devising, clowning and theatre at drama schools and universities, including LAMDA, LISPA in London and Berlin, Guildford School of Acting, Birkbeck and Manchester Universities.
He is a qualified Feldenkrais Method practitioner and a screenwriter. His first short film, Padlock (2016), co-written with director Ben Hyland, won Best Film at the Bottle Smoke Film Festival and Best Thriller at the New Renaissance Film Festival. He is currently developing feature film and TV projects, as well as a new clown-theatre show.
Kelley Soul
LISPA Team
Kelley has worked professionally as an actor, director, stage manager and arts administrator.
She trained as an actor, director and dramaturg at the University of Northern Colorado (1994), before completing her MFA in Actor Created Physical Theatre at Naropa University (USA) in collaboration with LISPA.
Before moving to Europe, she performed with a number of US-based theatre companies, devising experimental work, whilst working as an arts-in-education activist with the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Kelley completed the pedagogical year at LISPA in 2004, and has taught with the LISPA team since 2005. She is also a visual artist, working primarily in acrylic, ink and watercolour, and has a deep interest in the creative space that is opened when different artistic and educational practices meet and transform.
Lionel M�nard
Guest Teacher
Lionel worked for 10 years with the Company Marcel Marceau before joining Philipp Genty's Company.
As a director and choreographer he has worked beyond others with Philipp Glass at the Carnegie Hall, Michael Jackson and Marcel Marceau at HBO, Claude Lelouch, Jean Paul Goude and Lea Seydoux. at the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Luxembourg Philharmonic, the Warsaw mime centrum, the Valencia Festival in Venezuela and the Sydney Festival.
Marina Rodr�guez Llorente
Guest Teacher
Marina studied theater at Institut del Teatre de Barcelona. In 2009 she moved to Berlin to work with Familie Flöz (Mask theater), and from 2013 on played in the piece “Hotel Paradiso” with shows all arround the world. In 2011 she created Kazibaze Theater Company, with which she organises the bilingual theater Festival for Kids “Kindertheater Reihe”.
In 2012 she began to work with the company Theater Am Tisch, as an actress and director of “ALTBAU”, a Site Specific theater piece, which played in many different apartments of the German capital.
Patrick Soul
LISPA Team
Patrick graduated from Cambridge University in 1991, following this with PGCE training. In the mid-1990s he founded and ran a music school in Bristol before joining the LISPA team in January 2005.
In 2006 Patrick completed an MMus in Jazz Performance from the the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and he is a keen jazz musician and composer with over 20 years of experience both performing and writing in many different styles of music. In London he sang for seven years with the London Vocal Project, one of the top jazz gospel groove music groups in the country, and has performed with them at London's best jazz clubs as well as at the Royal Festival Hall and the Barbican.
Peter Oechsle
Guest Teacher
Psychologist, Zen Teacher and initiatic therapist. He lives in Ibach in the Black Forest and has worked for over 30 years at the Duerckheim Center in Todtmoos Ruette.
He gives workshops in guided drawing, embodied mythology and personal process at LISPA Berlin.
Philipp Schaefer
LISPA Team
Philipp is an actor, clown and licensed TaKeTiNa Rhythm Teacher. An alumnus of Jacques Lecoq, he has performed his show “stäx rhythmclown” in street theatre festivals all over Europe. As a teacher he has worked at theatre schools and universities such as LISPA, Universität für Musik und darstellende Künste (Vienna) and Bayerische Theaterakademie August Everding (Munich).
He is a drum circle-facilitator and works as well with Himalayan singing bowls. “Rhythm is my tool as a clown and as a teacher in order to create a space for new experiences and personal development. There is no need to learn a new instrument, since you are the instrument. You will find out how to play it in the best possible way.”
Viatcheslav Kushkov
LISPA Team
Viatcheslav Kushkov studied Sports and Movement Science (HU Berlin, Germany) and Intercultural Communication (Russia).
From 2003 to 2010 he taught at the State University in Pyatigorsk. 2012-2017 assistant to choreographer and movement teacher Professor Martin Gruber. Viatcheslav studied Suzuki (M. Gruber) andMeyerhold’s-Biomechanic (G. Bogdanov).
Since 2016 Viatcheslav has been a lecturer for movement at the University of the Arts and the acting school HfS “Ernst Busch” in Berlin. Working as a sport therapist, he combines extreme with healthy movement possibilities and practice bodywork methods like Talmi (M. Gruber), Isogai/Flower-treatment (N. Watanabe), Being-in-Movement (P. Linden). He has about twenty years of experience in different martial arts (3. Dan Aikido, Systema Instructor, Taekwondo, Lubki) and he is co-founder of the Martial-Arts-Convention-Berlin.