Workshops
Workshops for students
1. Workshops on current productions:
“Good People” A play by David Lindsay-Abaire
Lindsay-Abaire explores the struggle of his main character Margaret Walsh to remain true to herself and to keep up her hopes while she has to cope with having next to nothing in America. Set in Bostons´s Southie neighborhood, where a night on the town means o few rounds of bingo, where this month`s paycheck covers last month`s bill, Margaret discovers that a former friend has moved back to Boston now being a successful doctor. She crashes into his safe “laced-curtains”- life hoping he may be the ticket to turning her misery to happiness.
New York Times May 10, 2011: Deliberative Theater Critics Honor ‘Good People’
New York theater critics had an awfully hard time selecting the best play of the year for their annual award. Four rounds of balloting by the New York Drama Critics’ Circle revealed strong preferences for three Broadway plays that have also been nominated for this year’s Tony Award for best play — “Good People,” “Jerusalem,” and “The Motherfucker with the Hat.”“Good People,” by David Lindsay-Abaire, and “Jerusalem,” by Jez Butterworth, were neck-and-neck at one point in the voting. By the final round, “Good People” emerged as the winner.
Meet Margaret Walsh and her friends Jean, Dottie and Stevie in a workshop:
“I had never anyone watching from a window for me. You got lucky. One hiccup, and it could`ve been you looking for work instead of me. Or you dying up on that sidewalk instead of Cookie. That could just as easily have been you Mikey.”
→ Sample from the play
→ Listen to a “Theater Talk” with the author and actor Tate Donovan (playing the role of Mike in the N.Y. Manhattan Theater Club-Production 2011)
Workshop Topics
(with opportunities for Training “mündliche Kommunikationsprüfung – presenting and discussing a statement /monologische und dialogische Formen):
The “options” in Margaret Walsh`s life and Mike as the “significant other” (Poverty; searching for a job; discrimination, equality, moral issues)
Relationship in Boston`s Southie neighborhood ( Social inequality – prejudice and intolerance)
“Yeah, you have to be a selfish prick to get anywhere.” (Them and Us – American Dream and rugged invidualism)
Drama structures
→ Press and photos from American productions
2. Workshops for language practice:
2.1 A Fashion Show on Stage
Working with Props and Costumes – Creating brief dialogues and scenes, Practicing Tenses. (from class 5)
2.2 Speak up and have fun! A project –day at the English Theatre
Scenic improvisation based on pictures and brief texts on stage (from class 7)
2.3 Words and Phrases in Action
Exploration of the location: Guided linguistic Backstage –Tour +Role play and dialogues (from class 9)
3. Understanding by acting – Theatrical approaches to Drama
(English and American Theatre texts from William Shakespeare to Arthur Miller)
You choose the drama text – we provide the workshop for your students!
The ultimate goal of the workshop is to provide students with practical tools to better access, understand, and appreciate plays by approaching them from the inside, with the eye of a theatre practitioner and the question how we can relate to them today. (for: Gymnasiale Oberstufe)
4. Let’s get physical!
‘Actions speak louder than words’….and this workshop takes the text and thoughts from out of your mind and into your body.
This workshop is ideal for working with text that is complex or in a foreign language, making you think less academically and more artistically, breaking down the intellectual barrier and allowing a completely visceral experience.
- Workshop activities will include:
- Physical warm up for all ages and abilities through games and exercises.
- Discovering the power of communication
- Engaging the body for expression and communication
- Mask work
- Incorporating music and sound effects
- In groups, devise a small presentation around a chosen theme.
Inquiries and Booking:
michael.gonszar@english-theatre.de
Tel (069) 242 316 33
Workshops for teachers
(akkreditierte Lehrerfortbildung)
1. Tackling the text! How to teach reading literary texts
5th December 2012 from 2.00pm – 5.00pm
20th March 2013 from 2.00pm – 5.00pm
at James the Bar at The English Theatre
Fee: € 25 per Person
Teamer: Lea Dunbar
How to use the conventions of drama as a means of exploring and discovering what lies beneath the surface of the texts they engage within the English classroom.
In a very concrete and physical way, students can, through their drama-making, ask questions about: Who is telling the story? (voice, gender, culture etc.); For whom?; What form does the story take?; What is emphasized/ made invisible?; How else could the story be told? (from other perspectives); What is the real story being told? (what are we being persuaded to think/feel?).
Students can:
• explore the issues within the story before meeting the text;
• enact scenes in the original text;
• take the roles of characters or ‘voices’ from the text and be questioned about motives and intentions;
• use space and objects (including costume) in a variety of realist and symbolist ways to represent meanings in the text; to physically represent the psychic or cultural distance between characters, for instance;
• create ‘missing’ scenes or moments that are suggested but not fleshed out in the original text;
• explore how to use gesture to convey ‘sub-text’; how inner speech can be visibly played for instance;
• script, or improvise, alternative scenes or endings;
• extend the story back in time or forward into an imagined future;
• add or expand minor characters and their lives and involvement;
• demonstrate to each other that there can be a variety of ‘possibles’ when it comes to the interpretation and representation of meanings (different groups will respond to the same task in different ways).
2. Turning Your Life into Theatre
How to use Biographical Theatre in English lessons and drama projects
21st February 2013 from from 2.00pm – 5.00pm
15th May 2013 from from 2.00pm – 5.00pm
at James the Bar at The English Theatre
Fee: € 25 per Person
Teamer: Dr. Karl Guttzeit
Working with biographical material and finding powerful ways of presenting it on stage can be very exciting and effective in a language-learning program. This workshop for teachers of English offers a hands-on introduction to some special features of biographical theatre and its use in a classroom setting.
Biographical theatre has a great advantage, there is no need to be trained in acting to get meaningful results and explore some of its major forms which are characteristic of contemporary theatre. And for language learners it offers lots of opportunity for generating and using language in context.
Activities include special warm-ups, raising awareness for the personal as opposed to the private sphere, individual and interactive ways of collecting and generating biographical material, transforming and selecting useful material, using biographical narratives, experimenting with various representational forms such as choric performance and the use of different media (e.g., microphone, camera, projector).
By means of a live broadcast, the performances are projected onto a big screen on stage and viewed by the audience. Finally, participants discuss the audience-oriented effects and generate further ideas as to what place the work-in-progress could have in a real show.
Participants are requested to bring comfortable clothing and a few memorable items from their lives.
3. The Power of Pictures
Games, Drama and Film – Creativity in Modern Language Training
18th April 2013 from from 2.00pm – 5.00pm
28th May 2013 from from 2.00pm – 5.00pm
at James the Bar at The English Theatre
Fee: € 25 per Person
Teamer: Michael Gonszar
The first step in helping students to learn a foreign language in a better and faster way is to understand how they learn best. If your pupils cannot concentrate for a long period and if they have not yet learned how to study independently, how do we teach them a new skill? We have to present it in a manner they learn best.
So how is that? The answer is – in many ways! This is not a kind of avoiding a clear answer. It is the recognition that pupils are always open to many different stimuli and that they are receptive to learn through many different channels.
As we trust very much in the fascination of pictures, in acting and moving while speaking, our channels are:
- Games, Drama and Film.
- Types of Games: Introductory, Trustbuilding, Concentration, Cooperation.
- Drama in this specific context means: role play, working with props, acting and speaking in situations.
- Working with Short Films: watch and speak! How to combine visual information with creating dialogues!
4. Shakespeare made easy
Saturday, 20th April 2013 from 2.00pm – 5.00pm
at James the Bar at The English Theatre
Fee: € 25 per Person
Teamer: Rebecca Reaney
This workshop is designed to break down the mystery of Shakespeare and allow participants to explore, discover and enjoy a variety of techniques and approaches that bring Shakespeare’s works and words to life for today’s students and audiences.
Shakespeare can often be intimidating and confusing which is exactly what the famous playwright did not want and therefore this workshop is created to enable participants an understanding that is personally satisfying and encouraging to them.
Workshop activities will include:
- Engaging participants in theatre games and exercises relevant to the class
- Unlocking the clues from Shakespeare’s words
- Getting Shakespeare on it’s feet
- Scene work and analysis from plays such as ‘Macbeth’. ‘Othello’, ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ plus more
- Incorporating physicality into the words
- Making the scenes relevant in order to show an effective real performance which completely engages everybody from actor to audience.