What has law got to do with improvisation? What would it mean to improvise with or in law? What if improvisation was essential to law’s very operation? Or law to improv’s?

As part of Eavesdropping, Liquid Architecture and Melbourne Law School are calling for participants in Hydra, an experimental workshop on improvisation in legal advocacy run by Associate Professor Sara Ramshaw (University of Victoria), author of Justice as Improvisation: The Law of the Extempore (2013).

Inspired by John Zorn’s classic improvised musical game piece, Cobra (1984), Hydra is at once about oral agility and deep listening. It takes Zornian techniques and transposes them into the key of justice, so that it is concerned with rules more than rhythms and principles more than pitches, but always the necessity of judgment to performance, no matter the context.

Hydra will take place in the Moot Court Room at Melbourne Law School on Thursday 16 August. There will be two sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Depending on your availability, you may attend one or both.

Participants are invited (but not required!) to perform Hydra at Make It Up Club on Tuesday 21st of August.

To sign up or for more information, contact Dr James Parker on parker@unimelb.edu.au