WORKSHOPS
I'm Darren Yorke 👋 I'm from Longford. I'm a creator-performer making award-winning theatre for young audiences and facilitating Impro theatre as the playmaker behind Grand Stretch.
In 2014, fresh out of Trinity College Dublin with a BA in Drama & Theatre Studies, fierce notions, and no sense of direction, I took a risk and followed my now-husband Dave to Vancouver. Happening upon TheatreSports™ at The Improv Centre, I found a home away from home—training and performing with the team as their Education and Outreach Coordinator until 2016. Then, I wouldn't say it became my life, but I came to appreciate life through this practice.
I set up Grand Stretch in 2017. Rooted in Keith Johnstone's Impro and developed with inspiring artists around the world, my work with Grand Stretch has been shaped by my own curiosities and cross-disciplinary discoveries. Distilled into a philosophy, of sorts, I facilitate "play-making" in Playing Fields and Making Senses—counterbalancing acts of spirited play and artful making.
Games • Improvisation • Ensemble
PLAYING FIELDS
A six-part series for all adventurous adults.
Come together. For connection, creativity, and the craic.
Come as you are. Training is only sometimes a bonus.
Come and play.
IMPRO • THEATRE • CRAFT
MAKING SENSES
A six-part intensive in theatre-making through improvisation.
Bringing attention to what's at play —
within us, between us, and around us.
Bringing intention to how we play —
with a sense of Self, Status, Story, Space, Style, and Scene.
In practice. In performance. In life.
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