Residencies and Workshops

This is a semester-long interdisciplinary course for performing arts and public policy students that investigates the potential for performance as a catalyst for social change by pursuing the question, "How can the process of creating a performance clarify community conflict, create dialogue around issues, unite people to oppose oppression, and/or effect change in people's lives?" Working alongside a community group, students harness the power of performing art to create positive change around a social issue. This is a hands-on, participatory course.

This residency leads participants through a collaborative creative process from choosing an initial idea and gathering material about it to performing their finished piece. They follow a structure for making progress on the piece. They practice positive critiques. They learn about group dynamics and healthy group practices such as equitable power-sharing and consensus building. As people progress from a simple idea to a composition in time and space that communicates intellectually, kinesthetically, and emotionally with an audience, they learn the fundamental, liberating truth that they can create their own worlds by using their bodies and releasing their imaginations. People who rely on others to create and perform together learn that they can recreate their lives together. This is the power, and the empowerment, inherent in participation in the performing arts.

"Thank you tremendously for giving so fully of yourself to our students. Your energy and enthusiasm were contagious and we were all inspired by your wisdom, insights and experiential knowledge shared with us all."

Community artists and activists convene for a weekend learning exchange to investigate issues and resources for creating desired change in the community. Developed through Sheila Kerrigan's work as a lead facilitator with Alternate ROOTS' Resources for Social Change, the learning exchange incorporates principles of shared power, open dialogue, an aesthetic that embraces multiple perspectives, and equal partnership to effect personal and community transformation. The learning exchange is experiential and uses arts processes to explore issues and build community.

For drama students and professionals who are working on a play, this residency guides them as they navigate the gap between text on the page and strong, believable, fully-physicalized characters. Students will experience a variety of physical approaches to character development such as image work, energy work, animals, honing kinesthetic awareness, sharpening focus, developing a physical presence, exploring rhythm and dynamics, and studying and practicing body language principles. Sessions begin with a warm-up followed by guided physical approaches to character, improvisations based on scenes in the play that incorporate the discoveries students make, reflections on character discoveries, and end with reflection on learning and growth.

For students of theater and communication, this workshop breaks down and demonstrates the elements of body language and non-verbal communication. Participants observe and qualify movement in others, learn to bring their unconscious reactions to body language into consciousness, change specific aspects of their own movement and observe how their feelings and thoughts change, create a character by making physical choices, and improvise in character.

Artists who work in school classrooms need to adapt to the current standards-based, testing-intense culture. Teachers don't have time to deviate from their curriculum. In this workshop, teaching artists find natural connections that match what they do in their art workshops to goals and objectives teachers must teach in the core curriculum. They become aware of how they already teach to multiple intelligences. They create a residency plan that speaks to teachers in the language they understand. They experience a fully-integrated, arts-based activity, and construct assessment tools so students and teachers know and can demonstrate what they have learned from the residency.

Teachers experience practical methods for using drama and movement to teach Social Studies and English Language Arts curricular content. They choose figures from history or literature and explore them through movement and imagination; they write from the point of view of the characters they choose and create a brief, informal readers' theater presentation. Teachers take home a guide to leading the activities they take part in during the workshop, including a script for leading similar activities in their own classrooms. This workshop was developed through a Kennedy Center training.

Sheila Kerrigan demonstrates how to guide students to move in the classroom safely and with control. She includes techniques that build collaborative learning skills into a classroom norm. Teachers gain an understanding of how to lead movement-based exploration of curricular objectives in their classroom. They take home a guide to leading the activities they take part in during the workshop, including a script. This workshop was developed during a Kennedy Center training.

Learn mime technique (how to create invisible objects, respond to invisible forces, and endow an imaginary world), physical characterization and improvisation. Discover how working kinesthetically frees up the imagination. Explore how to compose original mime pieces for performance.

What a professor at Lees McRae College said about the mime workshops:

"What great work you got from those students in such a short time frame. Some of them looked like they had been doing it for years!"

For adults and children age 9 and up, this two-hour juggling workshop features juggling performance pieces that point up the importance of failure as part of learning something new, the value of setting a positive mental attitude to attain success, and the virtue of persistence in achieving goals. Participants learn a basic juggling pattern and some variations, and they learn how to juggle with a friend. This workshop offers a fun way for families to play together and for anyone to improve coordination.

Especially geared for youth-at-risk and reluctant writers, this residency begins with setting guidelines for behavior together. The group brainstorms and discusses hot topics for a performance. Students write short pieces on topics that are important to them in genres that make sense to them. They collaborate on taking their writings from the page to the stage. If all goes according to plan, the residency culminates in a performance conceived and created by the performers about the issues that keep them awake at night and get them out of bed in the morning.

Tailor-made for each acting class or performance ensemble, this can be a workshop or residency. It can include body language analysis and practice, kinesthetic awareness and control, mime, image work, safe stage combat, breath and energy work, ensemble building, juggling, improvisation, and individual coaching for actors working on characters in plays.

This residency, geared for students in grades 3-8, integrates Theater with Language Arts and Social Studies curricular goals. Students explore dramatically either the impact of periods in history on the lives of historical figures or the motivations of fictional characters in literature. Then they write monologues or letters from the point of view of key figures in history or fiction that explain their motivation, the obstacles they faced, how they overcame or failed to overcome them, and their hopes for and influences on the future. Students work in collaborative groups to create informal performances using the monologues or letters. Finally, students perform their monologues or letters.

This residency leads students through a collaborative creative process from setting group guidelines, choosing an initial idea and gathering material about it to performing their finished piece. They follow a structure for making progress on the piece. They create original performance material by improvising, writing, discussing, researching, and re-writing. They practice positive critiques. They learn about group dynamics and healthy group practices such as equitable power-sharing, trust-building and consensus decision-making. As they progress from a simple idea to a composition in time and space that communicates intellectually, kinesthetically, and emotionally with an audience, they learn the fundamental, liberating truth that they can create their own worlds using their bodies and imaginations. They contact and release the power of their imaginations. People who rely on others to create and perform together learn that they can recreate their lives together.

In this residency, students learn to create invisible objects and imaginary worlds. They work with partners and learn to: focus on a partner, accept a partner's offers, lead and follow. They develop kinesthetic awareness, tune into body language, and non-verbally communicate ideas, characters and feelings. They learn the basics of creative thinking. They explore ideas in groups through improvisation and discussion. They create and perform original mime skits that incorporate their new mime skills.

This residency emphasizes the communication and collaboration skills inherent in mime and drama. Students, through imaginative movement explorations in pairs and small groups, learn basic skills like: focusing attention on a partner, leading and following and switching from leading and following, working with a partner without bossing, listening, rotating group roles and responsibilities, and practicing positive critiques of the work of their peers. They conceive, develop, and perform their own mime pieces as they are guided through a group collaborative process.

How can we bring poetry to life? How do we use inferencing to write and interpret poetry? How do we write a poem? This residency is team-taught; Ms. Kerrigan teaches the drama and the classroom teacher teaches the poetry forms such as diamante, quintain, haiku, and free verse. Students engage in dramatic, imaginative activities that provide sensory-kinesthetic experiences that give the impetus to write poems using sensory details, descriptive language, and figures of speech. They practice performing their poems aloud with expression and movement.

Students explore dramatically the impact of periods in American history on the lives of historical figures. Then they write monologues or letters by key figures in history that explain their points of view on the events they influenced--for example, the Revolutionary War or the Civil War. Students work in collaborative groups to create performances from the monologues.

This residency integrates Theater with Language Arts and Social Studies curricular goals. Students explore dramatically, kinesthetically, and imaginatively the impact of a period in American history on the lives of historical figures. Then they write monologues or letters by key figures that explain their points of view on the events they influenced--for example, the Revolutionary War or the Civil War. They write about the motivation of historical figures, the obstacles they faced, and their hopes for and influences on the future. They work in collaborative groups to create mini-performances from the monologues. Students gain skills and awareness of group dynamics and practice their skills in collaborative creative processes. Finally, students perform their monologues or letters.