A visit by The Acting Company

The Acting Company's Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

This week, we are pleased to welcome The Acting Company back to Springfield for a series of events.  The centerpieces of the week will be the performances of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court on Wednesday, March 4 at 7:30 p.m. and the Class Acts performance of Macbeth on Thursday, March 5 at 9:45 a.m.  In addition to the performances, however, the following will also be happening:

Teaching Artist at Springfield Southeast High School week of March 2-5

The Acting Company’s Learning Through Theater residency program is a week-long, intensive exploration of one play. Teaching Artists specially trained by The Acting Company spend up to five days working in a school, teaching a hands-on curriculum related to a play in The Acting Company's repertoire. At the end of the week, students attend the play, and have an opportunity to meet and share ideas with the actors in the company.

This residency program is a cross-curricular drama-based exploration of language, literature, visual art, music, design, and acting. The Teaching Artists use a variety of teaching techniques, modeling new teaching techniques for the classroom teacher and leading the students through experiential learning at its best. In their work with students and teachers, Teaching Artists stress the multidisciplinary and collaborative nature of the theater. Students read, write, improvise, play with language, and explore the play in a variety of ways. Each residency is designed with the classroom teacher to meet the specific curriculum needs of the students.

Teaching artist Leslie Geraci will visit multiple class periods of Southeast High School literature classes Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, March 2, 3, and 5.  On Thursday, March 4, she and the students from the classes will attend the 9:45 AM performance of Macbeth on Sangamon Auditorium’s Class Acts series.

Workshop for UIS Theatre students

UIS Theatre students will participate in a workshop on stage combat led by Devin Brain of The Acting Company on Wednesday, March 4 at 2 p.m. in the UIS Studio Theatre.

This workshop will serve as an introduction to stage combat. A fully interactive workshop, the goal is to demonstrate how combat can take place on stage while looking realistic and maintaining safety. This workshop will demonstrate the basic principles of hand-to-hand combat, while simultaneously training the participants to tell a story though the fight and to maintain a character while engaging in combat. This workshop can be altered to fit the ability of the participants.

Public workshop by members of the touring company staff

Sangamon Auditorium is pleased to offer a theater workshop from 5:15-6:30 PM Wednesday, March 4 in the Public Affairs Center in conference room G.  The workshop, “Acting Clues in Shakespeare” will be led by Devin Brain, staff repertory director for The Acting Company.  The workshop is open to the public, though advance registration is required.  There is no fee to attend.

The workshop will use interactive textual analysis to give participants many of the tools they need to research and examine a piece of Shakespearean text so that they might better appreciate and understand that text and be prepared to begin rehearsing it. Most of the class will be spent examining several passages from Macbeth, discussing Shakespeare's use of Iambic Pentameter, Irregularities in Verse, Prose, Antithesis and other literary devices as they relate to the actions, intentions, and emotional life of the character.  There is no advance preparation required to attend the workshop.

Devin Brain is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama and a member of The Hypocrites.  Devin has returned to the Acting Company after having served as Artistic Director of both the Yale Cabaret and Yale Summer Cabaret Shakespeare Festival.  Credits include Rose Mark’d (an adaptation of Henry V, Henry VI parts 1-3, and Richard III), The 4th Graders Present an Unnamed Love Suicide and The Phoenix.

The workshop is open to all individuals ages 15 and older with an interest in theatre, especially actors and directors.  There is no fee to attend the workshop, but space is limited and registration is required.  Please register by filling out the online form.  Please contact Carly Shank at carmi1@uis.edu or 217.206.8286 if you have questions.

The engagement by The Acting Company is supported by the Arts Midwest Touring Fund, a program of Arts Midwest, which is generously supported by the National Endowment for the Arts with additional contributions from The Illinois Arts Council.