October 2009 Archives

Sheila Kerrigan is the mime who can't find a box she fits inside. Everybody knows mimes are silent, but she talks! Everybody knows jugglers throw up and catch, but she drops! She performs for adults and children on stage, in schools, at festivals and in parades.  

Her performance, Mime Explains String Theory, is for adults. She starts before birth, ends after death, and toddles unsteadily across the terrain between. Along the way, she accidentally uncovers the meaning of life and struggles valiantly to communicate it. She leaves audiences with that rising feeling. (What could be better?!)

Her performance for children, The Mime Who Talks! The Juggler Who Drops!, uses mime and juggling to communicate lessons about the importance of failure in learning and growing, and about setting a positive mental attitude to achieve goals. After the performance, she can teach juggling or mime to fifty audience members. (What fun!)

 Her appearances at festivals, special events and parades add sparkle and joy. She draws people into her world, interacts with them and engages them in silliness. She loves to teach people to juggle! She will do so at the drop of a hat.

Photo by Steve Clarke

Sheila teaches workshops and conducts residencies for students from grade 3 to graduate school and for professionals.

"Overall, this has been one of the best classes that I have taken at Duke! Sheila Kerrigan has created a class that holistically builds up each student and combines the arts, social issues/analysis, leadership, and personal/group development."

• Collaborative Creative Process for Performers
• Community-Based Performance; Where Art and Activism Intersect
• Community-Based Art for Social Change

For High School & College Students &Professionals:

For Adolescents

• Creating Original Performance

• Integrating Theatre Arts, English & Social Studies in Grades 4-8
• Creating a Cooperative Classroom Through Drama in Grades 4-8

"This was one of the most passion-filled, personable (or personally honoring) & pragmatic workshops/conferences I have attended."

For Teaching Artists:

• Integrating Your Art with the Curriculum

• Mime
• Juggling

• Collaborative Creative Process
• Mime

• Communicate! Cooperate! Mime!
• Mime & Poetry Writing
• Mime & Narrative Writing
• Exploring Figures from Local, State, or NationalHistory Through Drama

In November, 2009, Sheila team-taught a mime-and-writing residency for fourth graders at Winget Park Elementary in Charlotte, NC, through the ArtStart program. One teacher she worked with wrote:

"My students are adding more details to their written work. They are reading with more expression....My students were highly engaged in the activities..., I did not have any misbehaving in the class...I had 100% attendance during my artstart residency for the majority of the time."

If you work in a group to devise original performance, you need this book! Across the country, dance and theatre professors and teachers of community-based performance require it for their classes. It describes multiple approaches to the creative process, from how to come up with an idea for a performance, to how to create material, to how to organize and structure the material, and how to cut it. It also treats the collaborative process--paying attention to group process, creating group guidelines, communicating peacefully, managing conflict, and giving effective, rigorous peer critical response to work-in-progress.

"i am a free lance Mime and Actor, and want to tell you how much i LOVE your book. i have been creating devised work in recent years, and have gotten such great inspiration and concrete information from your writing."--Bill Bowers

Photo by Steve Clarke