The Summer Playwriting and Acting Intensive

Sponsored by the Ayers Foundation

DATES: July 26 - August 6, 2010

TIME: 10 am - 3 pm

GRADES: Middle School and High School

FEE: $250

LOCATION: Trust Arts Education Center

805 - 807 Liberty Avenue

REGISTER ONLINE now or call 412-471-6079 to register by phone.

Week One

Learn how to create a 10-minute plays. Daily playwriting classes will consist of in-class exercises in dialogue, character development, dramatic action, structure, and theatricality. Acting classes will introduce styles (presentational vs. representational) including farce, period (Shakespeare) and contemporary (August Wilson).

Week Two

Focus on the individual writer’s process, with emphasis on how to give and take feedback, while developing a common language in order to discuss new play development. Directing and acting tracks will focus specifically on directing and rehearsing of the student plays.

Teaching Artists

TAMMY RYAN’s plays have been produced and developed across the country. A graduate of CMU’s M.F.A. Dramatic Writing program, Ryan has received the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s Creative Achievement Award, the Heinz Endowment’s Creative Heights Collaborative Residency Grant and fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts and the Sewanee Writers Conference. Her writing for young audiences has twice won the National Playwriting for Youth Bonderman Award for The Gift of the Pirate Queen and The Music Lesson, which also received the American Alliance of Theater in Education’s Distinguished Play Award. Currently, Tammy is working on a commission for International Culture Lab’s project: SHE, exploring gender identity. Ryan represents the Pittsburgh region for the Dramatists Guild.

LAURA MITCHELL earned her MFA from Temple University and has directed many musicals and plays at Moon Area High School including Footloose, Anything Goes and Pinocchio. She was the choral director for Kiss Me Kate and the Tech Director for The Princess and the Pea and Cinderella. Ms. Mitchell directed Witness for the Prosecution for the University of Indianapolis, sang in the chorus with the Indianapolis Opera, and traveled around the U.S. appearing in many different shows ranging from Anything Goes in Charlotte, NC, Run for your Wife and The Power of Love in San Francisco, The Heidi Chronicles in Indianapolis, and Blithe Spirit and The Earth in Philadelphia. In addition, Ms. Mitchell has both her SAG and AFTRA card and has been cast in over 100 commercials