The Instructor

ANGELINA CACCIATO, B.Ed, Hons B.A.

Producer, Writer, Director, Drama Specialist, Community Activist, Teacher

Angelina Cacciato is the founder and President of ACT Productions Inc. She has been writing, directing, producing, teaching, and publishing for over thirty years. Starting as a producer/writer for community programs in the early 1970s, she has gone on to write and produce highly successful plays – Il Rispetto, The Fall and Rise of Planet Eggo and TV shows – For Kids and Other People, Relationships - Public Not Private. With ACT Productions she has written and produced the TV series GAINING A VOICE (1997) which has been shown across Canada on channels such as Vision TV, the Knowledge Network and TV Ontario and the pilot MUSIC MONDO featuring the (1990) seen on CBC TV, Ottawa. Since 2000 she has been developing a screenplay on Mother Teresa, with whom she identifies because of their mutual teaching experiences. Ms Cacciato shares with Mother Teresa the doubts and frustrations, and the need to do more but being locked within an institutional framework. Ms Cacciato wants to uncover what was the driving force that led Mother Teresa out of the classroom and into the streets of Calcutta. ACT Productions also produced and issued two CDs of Christmas music: Christmas Mosaic & Christmas Mosaic 2.

Ms Cacciato has been an instructor of Dramatic Arts at Canterbury High School in Canada's capital since 1990 where she was responsible for instruction of all grade levels in the specialized Drama Program. She helped to develop all aspects of the drama program from specific classroom activities in units such as Scene Study and Theatre History to devising methods of assessing and evaluating the various units taught in this specialized program. In 2004, she adapted and directed The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekov with one of the senior Drama classes. (See review under Articles link).

As a community activist she founded the Media Resource Advisory Group to examine and create projects to improve the portrayal of minority ethnic groups in mainstream media. To this end, she developed workshops, and researched and published Gaining A Voice a book on marketing to the media. She produced and co-wrote with Edmond du Rogoff the video series Gaining A Voice.

Ms Cacciato has long experience with many aspects of the dramatic arts in casting, writing, producing and fundraising as well as directing several plays for performance in Ottawa (the Sunday Company) and Toronto (Recycled Players and the Troubalore Players). These plays were targeted to children and seniors and involved developing and training these companies. (See newspaper articles)

Ms Cacciato has also worked with children in facilitating various drama activities at summer camps and parks in Ottawa for children 4 to 12. She has also engaged in projects with mental health professionals. One project involved working with paraplegics to assist them to eventually stage a performance of the Cremation of Dan McGee. Another project in 1979 encouraged an individual from Sunny Brook hospital in Toronto who had been in a catatonic state for two years to leave the hospital to visit his parents.

Ms Cacciato has additionally acted as a Liturgy Co-ordinator wherein she co-ordinated dramatic presentations and choreographed dances, as well as booking musicians and readers for weekly services. She was able to use her understanding of theatre techniques to inspire spiritual expression in a religious worship.

Ms Cacciato has studied in various under various teachers in different parts of North America. She has studied different types of dance (ballet, East Indian, Jazz and Liturgical Dance) in Toronto, Ottawa and New York. She has studied clowning at the Del’Arte School in Blue Lake California and with Laurie Stevens in Ottawa, Acting for the camera with Sears and Switzer, Method Acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse, New York, New York and the Growtowski Method of Acting in Hamilton, Canada.