Performing Arts - SOA 2009

All supply lists have been posted.

Acting: Playing on Stage (E1)

with Robin Mello
Skill Level: All

Explore the basics of the actors' craft with theatre games, communication, and role-playing. Join the fun as we dramatize on stage! Individuals also have a chance to work on improvised scenes and engage in creative theatre explorations. This is a class geared to the beginner and intermediate skill level - those who want to connect (or reconnect) with their emotional and expressive spirit.

Instructor Bio:
Robin Mello, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor within the Department of Theatre at UW-Milwaukee where she oversees theatre teacher certification and teaches storytelling and oral history performance. A professional actress and storytellers for over twenty year, Robin has produced original works for the National Women's Hall of Fame, and the Boston Museum of Science, among others. As a teacher-scholar she writes and researches in the area of creative arts learning, human development, mythology, and storytelling.

Acting II: Scene Study & Improvisation (F1)

with Robin Mello
Skill Level: Int/Adv

Want to hone your dramatic skills? Then this is the place for you. This workshop is designed for participants who want to go beyond the basics and have some experience in acting. This class will focus on scene study and role play to explore the actor’s craft: Participants will also play and review with the different forms/ideas of theatre performance such as Creative/Method Acting, Stanislavsky, Montanaro, and Growtowski.

Instrumental Lessons (C5)

with Christopher Powers
Skill Level: Beg/Int

Students receive a private or semi-private 20-25 minute daily lesson for mandolin, guitar, harmonica, or other folk instrument; songwriting, improvisation, performing, harmony singing, or just how to become a better musician. Decide on a reasonable goal for the week and bring any music that you specifically wish to work on. The instructor will supplement this with appropriate study material to aid you in your goal. Students need to bring their own instruments, and an idea of what they would like to work on. If possible, they should contact the instructor ahead of time so he can track down appropriate materials.

Instructor Bio:
Christopher Powers is the long-time radio host of "Mud Acres," a weekly acoustic music program on Madison's WORT-FM. He has worked in a dozen different string bands, toured six years with UW-Extension's Heritage Ensemble, and teaches both group and individual instrument and ensemble music lessons in the Madison area.

Music Appreciation: American Roots Music (E7)

with Christopher Powers
Skill Level: All

This class explores the roots of popular American music. In the days before our mass media was able to spread diverse music all around the world, Americans in isolated areas developed their own distinct styles. Appalachian, Blues, Cajun, Western Swing, Folk and Bluegrass were some of the best-known and most influential. In this listening course, we explore the different artists and instruments that define these styles, what messages they wanted to convey, and the impact of their influence on American music.

Playwriting Lab for Actors (C6)

with Bob Curry
Skill Level: All

Working with the Playwriting Lab writers, students will act out the scenes as they are written. Actors have been helping playwrights realize their vision since the Greeks. A play is never written. It is written and heard by the author and rewritten and rewritten, and every step requires actors who love experimentation and improvisation and providing feedback to the playwright. Join us in this collaborative lab to help breathe life into these new works. No experience required.

Instructor Bio:
Bob Curry writes fiction, plays and screenplays, including the script for The Last Great Ride, starring Ernest Borgnine and Eileen Brennan. He teaches fiction and drama for UW-Madison Division of Continuing Studies and writing classes at Madison Area Technical College where he also works in the writing center. He also edits fiction and drama on a professional freelance basis. He has MFA degrees in fiction and acting and has been a professional actor for 25 years.

Playwriting Lab for Writers (A9)

with Liz Fentress
Skill Level: Int/Adv

This workshop, for both beginning playwrights and those with plays-in-progress, offers a review of playwriting basics as well as an opportunity to develop a play. Participants will discuss theme, creating characters, structuring the plot, and writing and revising dialogue. If you have a script in progress, bring it along, or consider sending your script to the instructor prior to SOA. Be prepared to read and discuss one another's work as well as to work with actors during the Playwriting Lab for Actors held in conjunction with this class.

Playwrights should bring completed scripts or plays-in-progress. Playwrights are encouraged to read and consider the work of others in the workshop, and to continue to write and revise their own plays.

Materials fee: $5.00 for making actors' copies of scripts.

Instructor Bio:
Liz Fentress, a director, playwright, and actor, has worked in professional, community, and educational theatre for over thirty years. In 2008, her play, The Honey Harvest, won the North American Actors Association annual Playwriting Competition and was staged in London's West End. Kentucky Educational Television's production of Liz's one-actor, autobiographical play, Liz’s Circus Story, which she wrote and performs, won the 2005 National Educational Television Association award for Best Dramatic Narrative.

Poetry and Performance Making your poetry come alive on the page and in your readings (C8

with Fabu
Skill Level: Beg/Int

Poetry is powerful both on the page and in performance. Students will explore ways to create poetry that comes alive on the written page and when shared in readings. This is for poets who want practical tools to write poetry that is vivid and oral as well as to read/perform their poetry in ways that are exciting and memorable to audiences.

Instructor Bio:
Fabu Carter Brisco is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison with one Masters of Arts in African Languages and Literature and another in Afro-American Studies. She serves the Madison community as a literary artist (poet and storyteller) and as an educator. Her poetry has appeared in Callaloo, Black Books Bulletin, The Wisconsin Academy Review, UMOJA magazine, Rosebud Magazine, The Madison Times, and The Capital City Hues. She has a published chapbook, In Our Own Tongues.

Screenwriting: Revolutionize your Storytelling (E9)

with Bob Curry
Skill Level: Beg/Int

Good screenplays demand the precision and economy of poetry; dynamic characters; gripping story; bright, fresh dialog; intriguing subtext. This is also true of modern fiction. If you write stories, screenwriting will transform your process and sharpen your game, period. We’ll cover everything mentioned above and more. And, last I checked, Hollywood is still looking for good stories. We will do in-class writing and overnight exercises designed to explore the tools we are discussing in class.

Theatre Appreciation (F7)

with Liz Fentress
Skill Level: All

Everyone will leave this class with better knowledge of what they see at their local theatre! In this course, students will learn to appreciate the many facets of theatrical production: how and why a producer chooses a play, the steps involved in production, how an actor approaches a role, job responsibilities of the many theatre practitioners who work behind the scenes, the economics of theatrical production, and how to be a good audience member. In terms of out of class assignments, students will be asked to read a play and consider a variety of aspects of production.

Materials fee: $5.00 for a play script

Theatre: Voices from Your Community (B5)

with Rogers Keene
Skill Level: Beg/Int

Learn how grassroots theatre creates original theatre scripts, performed as play readings in your community. They can entertain, educate and fundraise for local groups and social agencies, supporting their mission. Students will learn the interaction with the community, pitfalls and successes and then understand how playwriting skills and theatre devices are utilized to powerfully reflect specific social concerns.

Instructor Bio:
Rogers Keene runs Voices Theater, a grassroots theater based in Medford, Wisconsin. He collaborates with community groups and organizations, supporting their missions, by creating original theater, which entertains, educates and fundraises. He has worked for many years in social-concern theater and believes that issues should be on the front burner, giving a voice to everyone, providing a different perspective, which promotes discussion.