We already have our eyes on a piece.

Photo by Ian Johnston.

"Meisner for me was really transformational and not just for the acting but really for the rest of my everyday life.  Meisner really strives for you to live in the moment and to react to things as if it is the first time, being genuine and authentic.  I do some commercial work on the side and I've been told that there is a new quality to my acting and that is 100% related to the work from the class."  - E.J. Gong

"When I was gearing up to take Meisner, everyone kept saying the same thing to me: "It will change your life." I was skeptical. I knew I would learn more about acting technique and would most likely improve my craft, but life changing? Silly me. Not only does it open you up in a way that allows you to act more freely and with more depth, but it opens you up in your "real" life as well." - Jeff Woodbridge


The Meisner Progression is a three quarter progression series beginning in Fall and running through Winter and Spring and taught by Freehold's Artistic Director, Robin Lynn Smith.  Here are the specifics regarding the focus of the classes over the three quarters.

Step I: Intro to Acting with Dan Tierney and Althea Hukari
Step II: Acting with Text with Dan Tierney
Accelerated Intro to Acting with George Lewis
Step III: Basic Scene Study with CT Doescher
Advanced Rehearsal and Performance with Annette Toutonghi
Alexander Technique Intensive* with Cathy Madden
Auditioning with Kate Godman
The Artist's Way Workshop with Gin Hammond and Kate Gavigan
Intro to Viral Video Making with MJ Sieber
Personal Clown with George Lewis
Improvisation with Matt Smith
Basic Light and Sound for Non-Designers with Jake Perrine
Musical Theatre* with Matt Wolfe
Playwriting I with Paul Mullin
Play Reading with Althea Hukari
Shakespeare with Amy Thone
Stage Combat with Geof Alm
Voice with Gin Hammond
Voice Over with Gin Hammond
Meisner Progression with Robin Lynn Smith

Daemond Arrindell. Every Wednesday night at Spitfire Grill in Belltown, The Seattle Poetry Slam hosts a spoken word extravaganza. 8 p.m., $5 cover, 21 & over IC required, go to http://www.seattlepoetryslam.org  Congrats to the 2009 Seattle National Slam Team:  Tara Hardy, Karen Finneyfrock, Maya Hersh and Greg Bee.  Best wishes as you head to Florida for the National Slam Competition August 4 - 8.

Brynna Jourden will be doing fight choreography for the Seattle Children's Theatre for two kids shows this summer: A Midsummer Night's Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet. 

Marya Sea Kaminski is directing Kevin Kerr's play about the pandemic flu titled UNITY (1918) at Cornish and an orginal play with Intiman's Rough Eagles in October.

John Longenbaugh will be remounting his play How to be Cool.  The play is running from July 23 through August 8th.  For more information, http://ursamajortheatre.org/




Timothy Piggee and Matt Wolfe will be appearing in Catch me if You Can at the Fifth Avenue Theatre running July 23 - August 14 (for more information:  http://www.5thavenue.org/)









Hal Ryder is in Sana'a Yemen doing a radio drama project for youth until early September.  The project has youth writing and performing radio dramas that help better their society and adddress issues pertinent to youth. There will be a live broadcast on August 20th and then a teacher training workshop for two weeks.


Annette Toutonghi will be performing in the 14/48 Festival taking place at On the Boards for two weekends on July 30th-Aug 7th.  For more information, http://www.ontheboards.org/



Billie Wildrick is performing in Das Barbequ at ACT from July 31 to September 6 (see picture above).  For more info, http://www.acttheatre.org/

Kate Wisniewski will be performing at INTIMAN in September in Abe Lincoln in Illinois playing Elizabeth Edwards.  The play runs Oct. 2-Nov. 19.  For more information, http://intiman.org/2009Season

Brian Yorkey's play Next to Normal is on Broadway!  For more information, http://www.nytix.com/Blog/2009/02/next-to-normal-to-play-broadway.html 
BIG congratulations goes out to Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt for their Broadway Tony Award Winning play NEXT TO NORMAL which won 3 Tony Awards including Best Score and Best Leading Actress in a Musical!!!

What I've Learned About Transgressive Theatre
By Scot Augustson

So, Penguins was written with excess and transgression in mind. (While, at the same time, mocking excess and transgression. How's that for meta?)
As the person known for bringing dirty shadow puppets to Seattle audiences (while hiding, coward-like behind the pseudonym Sgt. Rigsby) I've learned a little something about the nature and mechanics of transgressive theater.
 
First, let's ask ourselves why you'd want to do it at all. (And when you ask this, imagine a lemon-sucking killjoy scold putting this question to you.) Here's why: done well, it startles the audience, makes them think in a whole new way. Get's the juices flowing. If you've turned the world on its head you are making your views see everything from a new perspective. Juxtaposing the medieval world of the cloister with the modern sensibilities of "The Sopranos" causes some delightful cognitive dissonance. A whole new peri-social paradigm is constructed. They may have come for the laughs, but they leave thinking about global power structures in a fresh, beguiling way.  Hee-hee. Can you believe I just slipped in the phrases "Cognitive Dissonance" and "Peri-social Paradigm"?

Look, the big reason is that it's fun to get a rise out of grown-ups. And fun should never be dismissed. Theater that divorces itself from the idea of a good time out is theater in danger of becoming post-audience theater. I say (in a rousing tone, beer mug hoisted in the air): any activity that drags people away from their computers to share something in the same room with their fellow citizens is a good thing, a delightfully civic event.
 
But how to do it well? Because so much "naughty boundary crossing" is crap. So often folks bank on the shock value, which is good for about a minute. The truth is acts of cannibalism, casual incest, bestiality and the mistreatment of the Christ child are not enough to sustain you through an evening. You gotta back all that up with the basics: good story, compelling characters, crisp dialogue, precise acting. Without that, all the rest just becomes a silly mess. (And if that was the point, I wouldn't bother to write, I would just lead tours of my kitchen.)
 
You've also got to know exactly where to draw the line. The secret is: people like to be taken precisely to the threshold of discomfort. It makes them feel bold and sophisticated. Everyone likes to imagine that the couple sitting next to them is shocked beyond belief. Scarred! Scandalized! Keep in mind: there are folks for whom Teatro Zinzani is a titillating, decadent Weimar cabaret.
 
But let's return to Penguins. Why have I chosen to have swearing, blood feuding, drug taking nuns and priests? Because it's a late night show and by eleven o'clock, most kindergarteners are asleep.

Scot Auguston's play Penguins will be playing at Annex Theatre running from August 14 - August 28th.  For more information, www.annextheatre.org

Back to top ...

Teaching as Deep Play by Cathy Madden (continued)

Why is play so important to me as a teacher?    I know from an academic perspective that one of the principles of adult continuing education is that adults like to have fun when they learn.  I got some insight on my orientation to play when I was teaching at a training school and one of the directors of  the school suddenly turned to me and said, "No one ever told you that the Alexander Technique was hard, did they?"  And he was right.
 
When I first moved to Lincoln, Nebraska to study the Alexander Technique, the flyer for Marjorie Barstow's summer workshop said something like "An invitation to pleasurable experiences with the work of F.M. Alexander." The Alexander Technique was always presented to me as something that was easy, fun, useful, practical....and, of course, I would be able to do it.  I realize that even as I encountered rough moments in learning, I was confident that I could figure it out and that when I did, I'd be delighted. 
 
Diane Ackerman's book Deep Play synthesizes research on the characteristics of play-play is how we, and many animals, learn to perform our daily tasks.  It is how we learn to survive, to socialize, to improve skills.   In her book, she quotes the Dutch Historian Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) who was interested in the play element in culture:
         
Play..."is an activity which proceeds within certain limits of time and space, in a visible order, according to rules freely accepted, and outside the sphere of necessity or material utility.  The play mood is one of rapture and enthusiasm, and is sacred or festive in accordance with the occasion.  A feeling of exultation and tension accompanies the action" (Ackerman 1999, 3)
 
When I apply that definition to Alexander Technique classes, workshops, and lessons, I find parallel characteristics:
 
*Classes and lessons occur in a particular place with a predetermined time limit.
 
*The visible order in a class or lesson varies by teacher and circumstance, but there is a beginning, middle, and end. The teacher is responsible for establishing the structure, and the student gradually learns the structure as part of learning the Technique.
 
*Teacher and students play by the rules of the process of the Technique. 
 
*While I am glad to use the technique every day, the truth is that an Alexander Technique class, workshop, and lesson -as helpful as it might be, as much as it might help us accomplish things better, as much as we might enjoy it-is not necessary or of material utility to our survival. 
 
*And the mood of lessons varies according to the teacher(s), student(s)  and circumstances.  The process of change contains the tension of the choice between old habitual pattern and a journey to the unknown, and joy is a frequent response to the discoveries of new choices. The joy may appear immediately or over time as the learning process deepens.
 
If we use the definition of play offered by Huizinga, then every Alexander Technique class, workshop and every Alexander Technique lesson is play.  In my learning of the work, experiencing it as play was vital.  The spirit of fun present as I learned Alexander's discoveries freed me of concerns of right and wrong, good and bad.  I understood that mistakes were part of the journey, something to be valued, rather than to avoid or be embarrassed by.  Play gave me courage and a willingness to explore precisely because it had no real world consequence.  The playfulness in which I  was taught allowed me to rigorously explore my choices with confidence in receiving constructive feedback.
 
(body of article on teaching techniques that incorporate play deleted)
 
......Do we need lightness in our world?
 
On a larger level, we are currently in a world that has a lot of difficult challenges in it.  When we consider what is happening politically, ecologically, socially, we are faced with situations that are not "light" and playful.  My mission as a teacher of the Alexander Technique includes pointing the way to what is light and playful, not in a frivolous way, but in a constructive way.   One of my deepest impressions from the first Congress of teachers of the Alexander Technique when I watched the senior teachers together on the same stage was their own sense of humor about the situation they were in, and I wondered about the relationship of humor to the Alexander Technique.  I think that humor is part of the benefit of Alexander's work.  When we are in coordination, our natural humor has more of a chance to emerge.  Teaching the work with humor and playfulness is congruent with one aspect of my desire to teach F.M. Alexander's work.
 
cAckerman, Diane.  Deep Play.  (1999) New York:  Vintage Books.

Cathy Madden will be teaching an Alexander Technique Intensive at Freehold on September 20, Sunday - 9:30 am to 5:00 pm.  To register or for more information, (206) 323-7499 or www.freeholdtheatre.org