Quarterly Classes
2009

Mondays

INTRO TO ACTING—MARK PECKHAM
Mondays, January 25-March 22.  6:30-9:30.  Week off TBA.
6:30-9:30 PM.   8 Weeks.  $210
This is a fundamental course for anyone interested in acting on stage or screen.  It focuses on basic skills using exercises, improvisation, monologue work, and scene study.  Some work outside class is required, but no prior experience is necessary.  You’ll finish the class prepared for more in depth training and your first auditions—and you’ll have a great time along the way.

Most recently, Mark Peckham directed To Kill a Mockingbird and Orpheus Descending at2nd Story Theatre in Warren, RI.  Other recent credits include performing in Buried Child at Boston’s Nora Theatre Company and Trinity Rep’s A Christmas Caro.  Other directing credits include Line for Perishable’s Women’s Playwriting Festival, On the Verge, Full Hook-up, Talking With…, Anything Goes and The Unnamed. He has worked extensively as an acting teacher and theatre instructor with Providence College, RISD, 2nd Story Theatre, All Children’s’ Theatre, Mr. Peckham was co-founder and co-artistic director of Wickenden Gate Theatre in Providence.

 

PLAYWRITING—RICK MASSIMO
Mondays, January 25-March 22.  6:30-9:30.  Week off TBA.
6:30-9:30 PM.   8 Weeks.  $210
Ready to turn your interesting ideas into compelling pieces of theatre?  This open level class teaches the identification and construction of effective theatrical moments as well as the rules of dramatic writing—and when to break them.  Students will learn to navigate the shoals on which many an idea founder with the goal of completing a short play by the end of the quarter.
Rick Massimo has been writing plays in, around and about Providence for over15 years. He holds a master's degree in playwriting from Brandeis University.  He was the producer of the Blink Festival of 10-Minute Plays By Local Writers, held in the '90s at Perishable Theatre, and his work has also been seen at NewGate Theatre, The Gamm, Brandeis University, AS220 and Northeastern University.  He works as the pop music writer for the Providence Journal. He is a Resident Artist at Perishable Theatre working on a new play with music, Madame Bovary.

TUESDAYS

ACTING 2: ON CAMERA—GLORIA CRIST
Tuesdays, January 19-March 16.  6:30-9:30. Week off TBA.
6:30-9:30 PM.   8 Weeks.  $210

Gloria Crist has been working as a professional actor, singer and director for the past 20 years.  She has a solid working knowledge of theater, film and television and has performed in everything from daytime dramas (All My Children) to feature films to stage plays.  She can be seen as Vicky in the series Brotherhood, "mom" to Amber Tamblyn in the film Normal Adolescent Behavior and June in Red Sneakers, which premiered at the 2008 RI Film Festival. Her theatre credits include off Broadway, Radio City Music Hall and Perishable Theatre's own Sweet Disaster and 14th Women’s Playwriting Festival.  Many of her students go on to perform in television, film and theater productions of their own.

FROM BUMPS TO BOAS: BUILDING BURLESQUE—LADY MISS IRIS
Tuesdays, January 19-March 16.  6:30-9:30. Week off TBA.
6:30-9:30 PM.   8 Weeks.  $210
You’ve seen this old-fashioned theatrical form of striptease on the stage or screen and you’re secretly dying to try it yourself, aren’t you?  Don’t be shy!  You don’t have to go it alone.  In this WOMEN ONLY class, Lady Miss Iris will train you in the arts of burlesque goddesses of yore, from dance steps to costume crafts.  She’ll coach and support you as you develop your stage persona and very first routine.  This course is perfect for women of any shape, age, size, or shade who have some performing experience.

Lady Miss Iris performs in rock clubs, theaters, galleries and ballrooms from AS220 to Worcester, the Magdalena International Festival and the Great Boston Burlesque Expo.  Providence Monthly, The Boston Herald, and FOX News Boston have all featured her clever & charming work.  She also coordinates talent for Jingle Belles & A Few Balls every year.  The Lady’s mild-mannered alter-ego, Amy, wrote and performed in The Thing that Ate My Brain...Almost as a Resident Artist at Perishable Theatre (RAPTor).
 

WEDNESDAYS

IMPROVISATION FOR THE ACTOR—CONNIE CRAWFORD
Wednesdays, January 27-March 24.  6:30-9:30. Week off TBA.
6:30-9:30 PM.   8 Weeks.  $210

Without the safety net of a script, actors' strenths and weaknesses are starkly defined.  Improv training helps performers activate intuition, tune into scene partners, focus on intention and obstacle, and have fun!  Exercises, games, improvised scenes and an improvisational approach to scripted scenes combine to challenge the actor every week.  Some work outside class is required.
Connie Crawford has done theatre everywhere from Broadway to Texas bars.  She graduated from the Julliard School and has studied with Bobby Lewis, Uta Hagen and The Groundlings.  She currently teaches acting at Brown Unversity.  Last year, she directed The Thing That Ate My Brain...Almost at Perishable Theatre.