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Course Description

Summary

What is action? What is character? What is an “event”? What are gesture, timing, rhythm and stakes? How do actors, playwrights, and directors collaborate to create an experience/event in space and time? How do illusion and anti-illusion collude and compete to make the representation “real?” This workshop/seminar offers theater artists the chance to examine their craft from the inside out. Tuesday afternoons we meet in a 4-hour block to allow for in class rehearsals and showings. Throughout the course everyone participates in all exercises and assignments. We tell stories, we act, and those who have never directed direct. We begin by exploring the energy in the body, focusing on stillness and release. We continue with physical exercises from both the eastern and western traditions leading into improvisation as a method for tapping the source of impulses. We touch on the Viewpoints as a tool for creating kinetic compositions spontaneously in space. In the text analysis section, we study the expression of action through structure, dialogue, and the importance of “events.” We consider “vocal action,” subtext, and freeing up the voice. By mid-term, everyone directs a short scene from one Chekhov play. In the second half of the term, students choose one contemporary play from which they will direct individual scenes. Directors and actors will work together to direct, rehearse, design, and present a public performance of scenes from one play of the students’ choosing. Following the example of Lynn Hernandez, I practice presenting materials and activities, and invite the students to present materials and activities, that respect equity, inclusion, and diversity. This embraces gender identity, sexuality, disability, age, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, race, nationality, religion, and culture.