It's About Time Theater
Inspiring, Showcasing, Educating and Supporting Women through Theater
We can do it!
CROSS-GENDER SHAKESPEARE WORKSHOP
An exercise in transformation and understanding
for women interested in walking a mile in a man's shoes.
Heather works on her monologue.
Lisa works with Janice.
WHEN: Friday, July 22- Sunday July 24
Friday 7-10pm Crossing Gender
Saturday 11-2 Structure of verse, 3-7 Individual monologues.
Sunday 11-5 Geography of thought and process, discussion, closure.
WHERE: Rochester Public Utilities (RPU) Conference Room, 4000 East River Road NE, Rochester, MN Map
WHO: Women over age 16 who, regardless of past Shakespearean experience, bring a passionate committment to acting and Shakepeare's work. Workshop is limited to 20 participants.
COST: $150. A limited number of work study options are available for $50 plus 10 hours of volunteer work, subject to IAT approval.
TO RESERVE YOUR SPOT IN OUR WORKSHOP:
Send an email
to verify availability and then mail a check for $150 to:
It's About Time Theater
618 23rd street NE
Rochester, MN 55906
WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION:
Workshop led by Lisa Wolpe, Artistic Director Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company
This workshop is designed primarily for actresses.
Lisa Wolpe, Artistic Director of the all-female "Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company", will lead a workshop in "Crossing Gender" for women curious about an experience in walking in one another's shoes. We will take a closer look at ourselves, physically, politically, psychologically and spiritually by opening up new questions about the performative nature of gender, and how these assumptions empower or shape choices about taking up space in the world.
This will be an adventure in imagination and embodiment, wherein we will explore what might shift in our thoughts and feelings if were to take on the postures, gestures, and roles of growing up in a gender other than our own. The workshop will include intensive work on performing Shakesepeare, an orientation to the cross-gender aesthetic, guided visualization and creative play, journaling and a group discussion of our discoveries and questions resulting from the work.
This course will include intensive exploration of the personal connection to and performance of a Shakespearean monologue. Each participant will receive personal coaching in a Master Class situation, and will learn a variety of techniques that they can utilize to deepen their thought/feeling connection and the actor/audience relationship. Each student will work on a scene with a partner, as well as on a monologue that they have brought in for exploration.
Actors should prepare a monologue from an "opposite gender" role from a Shakespeare play in preparation for this weekend of exploration. Please memorize at least ten lines of text from any piece (prose or poetry) that the character speaks, and read the play that the character appears in several times prior to the workshop.
The work will center on Kristin Linklater's approach to freeing the natural voice, and on the essential organic connection of breath to text.
Please wear warm or layered clothes that you can move in; bring a journal and colored pencils, markers or crayons.
Lisa Wolpe, Producing Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company.
Lisa Wolpe, actress, director, and producer, founded the Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company in 1993. She has directed twenty productions of Shakespeare's plays (eight of them all-female) and performed leading roles in seventeen Shakespearean productions, including more of the Bard's male leading roles than any woman in history.
Her directing and performing credits include Berkeley Repertory Theater, Shakespeare & Company, Revels, Boston Center for the Arts, the Arizona Theater Company, San Diego Repertory Company, People's Light and Theater Company, Company of Women, New Women's Repertory Company, Boston Theater Works, California Shakespeare Festival, and the Sedona Shakespeare Festival. In August 2001, she was invited on full scholarship to work and study at the Globe Theater in London as part of their first International Fellows Program.
Ms. Wolpe has taught and directed Shakespeare at universities including the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, the University of Southern California, Emerson College, Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Syracuse University, Union College, and Cal Poly Pomona. She is a Master Teacher with Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA, and has taught in many other professional training programs across the country, including four years as Director of Text and Performance with the Sedona Shakespeare Institute, and three years as a Master Teacher with Southwick Studios and Arlington Center for the Arts in Boston. She has presented numerous lecture/demonstrations and hands-on workshops in cross-gender Shakespeare as an invited guest speaker at organizations across the country.
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