Shakesperiments Monthly Rep(ertoire) Workshops

 Posted on August 16, 2014

​

To keep up to date on this series from month to month, join our "Shakesperiments" Facebook group page: www.facebook.com/groups/728276260546745/

Our first workshop is October 25, 4-6pm at Camarata Music Studio!   (Note that the date has changed since the original announcement.)  The Facebook event page for October 25 is here: www.facebook.com/events/287190308131602/ 

For non-Facebook users, we'll keep you up to date with announcements regarding the workshop series on this blog.

If you want to perform, email Lauren Ash-Morgan at info@seoulshakespeare.com to let her know what you are performing. Anyone is welcome to come watch. Attendees (including performers), please consider making an optional small donation (anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 won) to help cover the cost of the venue.

We hope to see you there!

General Description:

“Shakesperiments” Monthly Rep(ertoire) Workshops

Seoul Shakespeare Company is pleased to announce a new monthly workshop. Each month, we will gather in an informal setting and people (who have signed up prior to the workshop) will present scenes or monologues from Shakespeare that they have been working on. These can be in various stages of readiness; they can be thoroughly rehearsed and performance ready, but they don’t need to be. If you need to hold a script or have someone on-book to prompt you, that is fine. It is up to the performers to rehearse on their own before the workshop. Actors can collaborate on a scene (either with or without a director), and aspiring directors can also initiate a project they are interested in, gathering the actors that they need.

This is a chance to try out new things, either as an actor or as a director, and (if you want) to ask the rest of the group for feedback. (If you want someone to record your scene on your smartphone or camera, we can have someone in the group do that too.) Each scene or monologue can also serve as a springboard for open discussion, in which we can share ideas and techniques that we use when performing Shakespeare. (All feedback and discussion will be moderated by Lauren Ash-Morgan.) Attendees who are not performing will also have the opportunity to learn by observing and participating in discussion.

At the end of each workshop, we can spend some time hanging out, perhaps going out for dinner together, to socialize amongst ourselves as a theatre community and possibly discuss future collaborations for upcoming months’ workshops. Actors and directors can suggest scenes they are interested in exploring and look for people to collaborate with at these events, or can do so on their own time as well.

To performers, I encourage you to try new things. You are welcome to do material from roles that you are well-suited to, but I also encourage you to try roles that are non-traditional for your type, or to attempt a style that is a stretch for you. This is a chance for you to carve out new territory in your personal repertoire of material and roles, and to demonstrate things you haven’t had a chance to do yet. Try a variety of things. This workshop series is for your benefit, so do what you want with it.

These workshops will be open to anyone (as performers or observers), but informal in nature--not an actual performance. People who want to perform something can email info@seoulshakespeare.com to tell me what they want to perform (either to reserve a spot for that month or for a later month’s workshop). (If there is a very high level of interest and a lot of people want to perform in a given month, it will be first-come, first-serve. I’ll always keep the group up-to-date on how many performers have signed up. We’ll aim for about 5 scenes per month, to allow time for discussion between performances.)

Material will be Shakespeare-only. However, from time to time we may designate a month for material outside of Shakespeare. Anyone who strongly wants a non-Shakespeare month can let me know.

This is a chance for us to grow together as artists, and I hope that through these workshops we can develop our company members’ expertise in performing Shakespeare’s text. I’m also hoping that as a company we can develop through these workshops a repertoire of scenes, monologues, and characters that we can showcase more formally in the future.

Join the group to stay up to date on what’s happening from month to month! I’ll create event pages for each month’s workshop, but this group page will remain constant, so you can check back here whenever you want.

Some reasons to get involved:

-You are preparing a monologue for future auditions and want to try it out

-You are tired of being cast in a particular type of role and want to demonstrate that you can be different

-You are a director and want to try some new material

-You’ve never directed before but want to try directing

-You are an experienced actor, but uncomfortable with Shakespeare, and want to try it in a risk-free environment, and maybe seek help from others

-You are an inexperienced actor (or have never acted before) and want some guidance in a risk-free setting

-You just want to watch the workshop and learn something new through observation and/or discussion

-You want to scope out potential scene partners for later months

-You want feedback on your performance

-You don’t want feedback, and just want to do the scene for us

-You want to try something completely ridiculous and experimental and see if it works

-You want to get some kind of specific experience (e.g. stage combat--collaborating with a fight choreographer, learning a new accent and trying it out)

-You are a fight choreographer and want to get some actors together to do a fight sequence

-You are a voice coach or have expertise in a specific accent and want to practice teaching it to actors

-You plan to audition for our next mainstage show and want to show us what you can do

-etc. (use your imagination!)

Directions to Camarata: Exit 2 from Noksapyeong Station (line 6). Walk straight for approximately 100 meters and bear left at the wall of kimchi pots to enter Haebangchon. Continue straight for approximately 400 meters (about 5 minutes). Camarata Music Company Studio will be on your left (look for the white sign), in the same building as CU Mart. (Jacoby Burger is directly across the street.)

Attendees (including performers), please consider making an optional small donation (anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 won) to help cover the cost of the venue.

I hope to see you at our workshops!

Sincerely,

Lauren Ash-Morgan

Artistic Director, Seoul Shakespeare Company

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________