July 16-21

CREATING SOLO PERFORMANCE

with Sara Felder

Come explore your own creativity in this workshop that will generate material for solo performance.  In a safe setting, we will develop performance material from our own lives using objects, character work, monologues and humor.  We will do writing exercises, try on different performance styles, create images, play with objects, investigate characters, consider different narrative voices, find the humor in the pain (and vice versa,) experiment, fail, laugh, juggle and surprise ourselves.  This workshop will emphasize the use of performance to say something important, and, if we’re lucky, will amuse (or shmooze,  – or cruise) the Muse.

This workshop is for all explorers, from first-timers to seasoned performers.

People who have taken this workshop at Ko before are encouraged to c’mon back!

SARA FELDER

is a solo theater artist, playwright, humorist and juggler. While the themes of her plays and performances are serious, her form is comic, engaging, vaudevillian. She strives to integrate personal experiences with the urgency of this moment in history. Out of that mix she creates funny and provocative theater. June Bride, performed at Ko in 2010 was about Jewish same-sex marriage. In its hundreds of performances over the last 15 years, June Bride has become part of the grass-roots effort to keep same-sex marriage on the national agenda and has given audiences a way to talk about this controversial issue. Other themes have included the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Out of Sight, at Ko in 2009), mental illness (Melancholy, A Comedy) and grief (A Queer Divine – being performed at Ko this summer) – all comedies.

Felder ran away with San Francisco’s Pickle Family Circus, was a featured act in Joel Grey’s Borscht Capades, toured Cuba with Jugglers for Peace, opened for Joan Rivers, taught juggling and performance in California prisons and continues to perform and teach all over the world. Through juggling, she has been able to find her theatrical voice, create compelling performance, teach alternative populations and pursue social justice. Sara has received fellowships in performance from the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts and the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative. She has been an artist-in-residence at Intersection for the Arts, the Headlands Center for the Arts and the California Arts Council, the latter for teaching juggling and performance in California’s prisons. She has been commissioned by the San Francisco Art Commission, the National Performance Network and the Irvine Foundation for New Plays. Her work has received nominations from the Bay Area Critics Circle (The Lady Upstairs, best play) and the Cable Car Awards (best performer.)

Sara has taught performance and comedy at San Francisco State University, Drexel University, New College of California, the Trillium Arts Collective, and at sold-out workshops at the Ko Festival of Performance (twice). Sara will come to Ko this summer just after teaching at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

“Sara is amazing. She had 14 students, including me, with a wide range of age (20s to 60s), skills and experiences, and everyone created new pieces that were personally meaningful and theatrically engaging. . . . What we learned went beyond performance skills. We learned about humanity.” – Student from Sara’s Ko Festival workshop, 2010.

For more information visit www.sarafelder.com

WORKSHOP LOGISTICS & REGISTRATION

Workshops are geared for participants of all levels of experience, whose ages have run from 18-85.

Workshops will meet from 10 am – 4 pm, Monday through Saturday, in Studio II of Webster Hall on the Amherst College campus in Amherst, MA.

Driving Instructions to Amherst College

Amherst College campus map.

Workshops cost $399. There is a $50 discount for registration by May 1.

NOTE: Contact us to apply for limited pool of financial aid, or for discounts for ATHE, NET (Network of Ensemble Theaters) members or staff/artists from TCG member theatres.

Optional room and board are available on the Amherst College campus for an additional fee.
Workshop housing is $210, for a single with a shared bath in an Amherst College dorm.
A meal ticket for the Dining Commons (healthy food, much of it local) is $182.
Email us, if you are interested in alternative housing. There are a number of hotels, motels and bed & breakfasts in the area.

Studios, theatre, dining commons and dorms are all within walking distance.