THE COLLISION SERIES
BALDWIN & BASQUIAT
A Different Kind of Scene Study
Created and taught by Hamp Fluker of Fable & Sow
Presented in partnership with our sister organization, WildHeart: Center for Performance and Embodiment Practice
In celebration of Black History Month at The Barn at WildHeart
The Collision Series is Fable & Sow’s scene study laboratory, built for actors who want to put the craft under pressure.
Classical and contemporary scenes collide with artists, thinkers, and ways of seeing that were never designed as acting techniques, and we discover what happens when we bring them into the acting room anyway.
For our first Collision, James Baldwin and Jean-Michel Basquiat become our theatrical and acting thought leaders.
What happens when Baldwin and Basquiat teach us how to act?
For generations, actors have entered the work through Stanislavski, Sanford Meisner, Uta Hagen, Stella Adler, and the traditions that grew from their teaching. Their contributions remain foundational. But those techniques also emerged from particular worldviews, cultures, lived experiences, and understandings of human behavior.
No single lineage can account for every body, identity, history, or way of moving through the world.
The Collision Series does not discard that inheritance. It widens it.
And that is where Baldwin and Basquiat enter the room.
Baldwin gives the actor a relentless attention to human behavior: language and what lives beneath it, intimacy and distance, desire, identity, power, contradiction, and the complicated space between what human beings say and what they reveal.
Basquiat offers another kind of provocation: instinct, image, rhythm, fragmentation, repetition, composition, disruption, and the courage to make the mark before explaining it.
What happens when those ways of seeing encounter Shakespeare, Chekhov, Williams, Wilson, Parks, or a contemporary play? What happens when they become tools for investigating character, disrupting an obvious choice, listening to another actor, or finding the behavior underneath the words?
That investigation happens on our feet.
This is, first and foremost, an intensive study of acting.
A small ensemble of 8–10 actors will work exclusively on two-hander scenes.
Two actors. One relationship. Nowhere to disappear.
Across five Saturdays, scenes will be rehearsed, investigated, dismantled, and returned to as actors deepen their relationship to text, body, impulse, behavior, composition, and one another.
Reading and conversation around Baldwin and Basquiat will live alongside the scene work, not as an academic exercise, but as provocation for the actor. Their ideas become questions we can test in the room.
The aim is not to imitate Baldwin or Basquiat. It is to let their ways of seeing disrupt our own and discover what becomes possible for the actor when the lineage of our teachers grows larger.
On the fifth and final Saturday, the intensive culminates in a showcase of the work.
Five Saturdays. Two-hander scenes. Eight to ten actors. One final showcase.
Dates: Saturdays, January 30–February 27, 2027
Time: 10:00 AM–2:00 PM
Training: 4 hours per session / 20 total hours
Location: The Barn at WildHeart, 183 E Rd, Wallkill, NY 12589
Enrollment: Limited to 8–10 actors
Scene Work: Classical and contemporary two-hander scenes
Final Session: February 27 showcase
Tuition
Standard Tuition: $525
Early Enrollment: $475
Register during the early enrollment period and use code EarlyCollisionBB at checkout.
Fable & Sow Founding Members: $425
Founding Members may use code FoundersCollisionBB at checkout.
Accessibility/BIPOC Rate: $385
BIPOC actors and those accessing this community rate may use code BipocCollisionBB at checkout.
Payment plans are available. We want the work to be accessible, so we encourage actors who need additional flexibility to choose a payment plan rather than letting the upfront cost be the barrier.
THE COLLISION SERIES
BALDWIN & BASQUIAT
A Different Kind of Scene Study
Created and taught by Hamp Fluker of Fable & Sow
Presented in partnership with our sister organization, WildHeart: Center for Performance and Embodiment Practice
In celebration of Black History Month at The Barn at WildHeart
The Collision Series is Fable & Sow’s scene study laboratory, built for actors who want to put the craft under pressure.
Classical and contemporary scenes collide with artists, thinkers, and ways of seeing that were never designed as acting techniques, and we discover what happens when we bring them into the acting room anyway.
For our first Collision, James Baldwin and Jean-Michel Basquiat become our theatrical and acting thought leaders.
What happens when Baldwin and Basquiat teach us how to act?
For generations, actors have entered the work through Stanislavski, Sanford Meisner, Uta Hagen, Stella Adler, and the traditions that grew from their teaching. Their contributions remain foundational. But those techniques also emerged from particular worldviews, cultures, lived experiences, and understandings of human behavior.
No single lineage can account for every body, identity, history, or way of moving through the world.
The Collision Series does not discard that inheritance. It widens it.
And that is where Baldwin and Basquiat enter the room.
Baldwin gives the actor a relentless attention to human behavior: language and what lives beneath it, intimacy and distance, desire, identity, power, contradiction, and the complicated space between what human beings say and what they reveal.
Basquiat offers another kind of provocation: instinct, image, rhythm, fragmentation, repetition, composition, disruption, and the courage to make the mark before explaining it.
What happens when those ways of seeing encounter Shakespeare, Chekhov, Williams, Wilson, Parks, or a contemporary play? What happens when they become tools for investigating character, disrupting an obvious choice, listening to another actor, or finding the behavior underneath the words?
That investigation happens on our feet.
This is, first and foremost, an intensive study of acting.
A small ensemble of 8–10 actors will work exclusively on two-hander scenes.
Two actors. One relationship. Nowhere to disappear.
Across five Saturdays, scenes will be rehearsed, investigated, dismantled, and returned to as actors deepen their relationship to text, body, impulse, behavior, composition, and one another.
Reading and conversation around Baldwin and Basquiat will live alongside the scene work, not as an academic exercise, but as provocation for the actor. Their ideas become questions we can test in the room.
The aim is not to imitate Baldwin or Basquiat. It is to let their ways of seeing disrupt our own and discover what becomes possible for the actor when the lineage of our teachers grows larger.
On the fifth and final Saturday, the intensive culminates in a showcase of the work.
Five Saturdays. Two-hander scenes. Eight to ten actors. One final showcase.
Dates: Saturdays, January 30–February 27, 2027
Time: 10:00 AM–2:00 PM
Training: 4 hours per session / 20 total hours
Location: The Barn at WildHeart, 183 E Rd, Wallkill, NY 12589
Enrollment: Limited to 8–10 actors
Scene Work: Classical and contemporary two-hander scenes
Final Session: February 27 showcase
Tuition
Standard Tuition: $525
Early Enrollment: $475
Register during the early enrollment period and use code EarlyCollisionBB at checkout.
Fable & Sow Founding Members: $425
Founding Members may use code FoundersCollisionBB at checkout.
Accessibility/BIPOC Rate: $385
BIPOC actors and those accessing this community rate may use code BipocCollisionBB at checkout.
Payment plans are available. We want the work to be accessible, so we encourage actors who need additional flexibility to choose a payment plan rather than letting the upfront cost be the barrier.
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