Saturday Workshops

Live Bait: The Class—For people.  Phil Goldman, February 27, 3-6 PM

Got a story to tell?  Learn to take interesting, true incidents from your life and shape them into stories that entertain and enlighten others. You might even learn something about yourself as well.

Using a variety of writing, storytelling, and theatre games, you will learn:

      ·   What makes a story effective.

      ·   How to process, understand, and share an experience.

      ·   How to listen to, and gain insight from, one another’s stories.

Students will develop their stories in an atmosphere of trust and mutual support.   You might even decide to share your new skill at Perishable Theatre’s monthly storytelling event, Live Bait: True Stories from Real People.   

Phil Goldman, host of Perishable Theatre's Live Bait: True Stories from Real People and former member of ImprovBoston, has been, among other things: a jungle guide, nude model, bank spy, and martial arts instructor. He just missed becoming a male stripper in Tokyo (too hairy). This has left him with no real prospects outside of telling his stories and teaching others how to tell theirs. 

I’ve Written a Play, Now What?  For playwrights.  David Eliet, March 6, 1-4 PM

Get that script out of the desk drawer and onto the stage!  This workshop prepares you to submit your work to festivals, agents, theatres, and publishers.  Learn how to write query letters and synopses as well as how to use resources like the Dramatist’s Guild and Theatre Communications Group.  Get inside knowledge of professional procedures that save time and assure that your work gets taken seriously. 

Playwright and director David Eliet founded of The Perishable Theatre in 1983 and served as the director of The Cleveland Play House Lab Company and the Circle In The Square Acting Ensemble.  He was a founder of The Trinity Rep Conservatory (now the Brown/Trinity Consortium) and the All Children’s Theatre Ensemble.  He has been an Edward F. Albee Playwriting Fellow, a Rhode Island State Council on The Arts Playwriting Fellow, a Fulbright Scholar and a recipient of an Alden B. Dow Creativity Fellowship.  His two most recent plays, produced at Perishable Theatre, were supported by grants from the RI State Council on the Arts.  His plays have been published and produced in this country and abroad in both English and in translation. 

What Do I Do with My Hands?  For Actors.  Vanessa Gilbert, March 13, 1-4 PM

Actors can always use a new answer to this age old quandary.  Discover fresh techniques to enhance your onstage presence through working with objects.  As you playfully explore the possibilities of space, learn to choose and use props to enhance the meaning of a scene.  Can an umbrella be used as a cup?  Can a pipe be something other than a pipe?     

Vanessa Gilbert is the Executive Artistic Director of Perishable Theatre, where she directs new plays and incubates puppet performances.  A lifelong interest in the animation of inanimate objects led her to create Blood from a Turnip, RI’s oldest late night puppet salon, entering its fifteenth year.  She has trained with Dah Teatar (Serbia,) Odin Teatret (Denmark,) and Anne Bogart (USA.)   

Producing Your Play.  For playwrights.  David Eliet & Vanessa Gilbert, March 20, 1-4 PM

The ultimate Do It Yourself workshop for making your theatrical dreams a reality!  Get a solid overview of what it means to take a script from page to stage from assembling your team to finding rehearsal space to setting up the box office.  Leave the workshop ready to make your play part of Rhode Island’s vibrant theatre scene.

Acting with Your Inner Clown.  For Actors.  Marvin Novogrodski, March 27, 1-4 PM

Join Marvelous Marvin in an afternoon developing your “inner clown”.  Specifically geared toward the actor, this workshop will explore how to make choices.  Choices that are funny, awkward, interesting, goofy and dynamic.  By exploring the inherent clown in all of us, we can unmask a part of ourselves that turns the ordinary, extraordinary.  Once these abilities are unmasked, then the actor can utilize this way of thinking into unique choices in future productions.  Let’s be funny, awkward, interesting, goofy and dynamic together.  Clown noses provided! 

Marvin Novogrodski, also known as Marvelous Marvin, has over 25 years of performance experience.  He has toured throughout the USA with Everett Dance Theatre and received several grants and residencies through RI State Council on the Arts.   Highlights include Dance Theatre Workshop (NY), Jacob's Pillow, Lincoln Center, and the Skirball Center in Los Angeles.  He also creates and performs original works using circus arts, magic tricks, and rhyming text to motivate children to learn about science.  Currently, Marvin is a Resident Artist at Perishable Theatre (RAPTor) working on a contemporary medicine show blending vaudeville with the stark reality of prescription drugs.