Summer Seminar

Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Ashland, OR

My Role:

Instructor/Director

About the Work: 

This two-week, in-residence program (founded by Paul Barnes and now led by OSF Education Director Joan Langley) offers sixty-five students from all over the country the opportunity to come to Ashland and experience all aspects of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's operation. The goal of the program is to develop students who will return to their final year of high school as leaders in their chosen field.

Developed and taught the following courses:

• Great Expectations: an exploration of how expectation influences our encounters with art (both process and product) and with each other.

• Creative Criticism: a course for developing an awareness of criticism as instinct as well as essential ingredient for artistic growth.

Co-taught the following workshops:

• Objectives: using physical exercises and text exploration of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to deepen an understanding of the value of objectives as a building block of acting.

• R&J: a three-hour intensive workshop using the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet to foster a physical understanding of the necessity of commitment and specificity in speaking a dramatic text.

• Ensemble: developing an ensemble of artists through physical and textual exploration of various Greek dramatic works.