Directing the School Play
A Crash Course on How to Work with Your Actors
Voice & Presentation Skills / Storytelling
As a novice director, working with an ensemble of actors can be an extremely daunting task. Nevertheless, this 6-hour hands-on workshop will equip with you tools to improve how you enable actors to interpret text, give a stellar performance and create a successful production.
Areas Covered
- Building an ensemble of actors
- Improving the actors’ physicality, alertness and awareness of space
- The actors’ voice and speech: helping with audibility, clarity and expressiveness
- Getting actors to connect to the text
- Working on character motivation
- Working on pace, use of space, style of performance
- Incorporating the actors’ work with the design elements
Session 1:
- Games to help actors bond and improve their physical awareness and alertness
- Building awareness of pace and space
Session 2:
- Exercises to help actors speak out clearly and expressively
- Exercises to help actors connect to the text and to find character motivation
- Putting it all together: Working towards a final presentation
Pre-Workshop Preparation
For Participants
- This workshop is open to participants who are fluent in English.
- Please come dressed in loose clothing that will allow freedom of movement.
For Organisers
- Please make available a fair-sized room that allows participants to sit at times in a large circle and to use the rest of the space for physical movement and small group work (at the end when participants will be broken up into small groups to direct each other in a short scene).
- Please provide a large whiteboard and pens. Access to a computer/computer projection is welcomed, but not absolutely necessary.
- Please provide pen/pencil & paper for participants to take notes (if necessary).
- Please make copies of hand-outs that will be emailed to prior to the workshop. The hand-outs are to be given to the participants at the end of the workshop.
Provisio
This workshop is a special collaboration with Ureka Education. For booking enquiries, please visit http://www.ureka-sg.com/home.php and/or email Nicholas Yeo (Programme Director) via nicholas@ureka-sg.com.
About the Facilitator
Verena Tay has spent more than 25 years acting, directing and writing for Singaporean English-language theatre. She has published three collections of plays and an anthology of short stories as well as edited two short story collections. In addition, Verena is an active storyteller-cum-storytelling coach and a co-founder of MoonShadow Stories. Possessing an MA in Voice Studies (Central School of Speech and Drama, 2005) and an MA in English Literature (National University of Singapore, 1993), she has been helping people to improve their communication skills since 2001 and currently teaches voice, speech and presentation skills at various local institutions.