Collaborate with one of America’s best-known political theatre writers to create an original play with basic introductory training in commedia dell’arte, melodrama, and musical theatre.

 

In this particular workshop, Joan Holden will explore the use of Chinese Opera with Commedia dell’arte in developing a strong physical style of acting to help in writing powerful theatre works for the outdoors.

 

Participants should have some experience in directing or playwriting, and/or are movement-based theatre practitioners.

 

To register, please email your name, CV and contact information to: blancspace@dramabox.org or call: 6324 5434 before 17 July 2009. Do hurry as places are limited!

 

Date: 26 July to 9 August 2009

Time: Weekdays – 7pm to 11pm;

            Sat 1 & 8 Aug – 2pm to 10pm;

            Sun 26 Jul – 2pm to 10pm;

            Sun 9 Aug – 2pm to 4pm.

Venue: The Hall @ The Arts House

Course Fees: $250 - per person

                          $200 - per person (special rate for SDEA members only)

 

*Masterclass conducted in English

  

Joan Holden was the principal playwright for the Tony Award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe from 1970 to 2000. Joan’s first of some 30 plays for the Troupe was The Independent Female, or a Man Has His Pride, an ironic feminist melodrama and her 1973 The Dragon Lady’s Revenge, won the troupe’s second Village Voice OBIE Award, which honors off-Broadway theatre. Many of the plays Joan has written or co-written stand as landmarks of political theatre. Joan has enjoyed a parallel career as a translator and adaptor of comedies and has created shows in collaboration with artists in Israel, the Philippines, Nepal, and Hong Kong. She was been awarded the San Francisco Working Women’s Festival Working Woman of the Year Award and, with the Mime Troupe, the San Francisco Media Alliance Golden Gadfly Award.