Theatre and Media Workshops
Theatre and Media Workshops
The Workshops
The instructor for these workshops is Angelina Cacciato
who makes these workshops interactive.
Students participate in all aspects of the learning process from choosing
issues, styles of working to planning assessments. The choices depend on the topics taught. This style of teaching empowers students by
making them responsible for their own learning.
The Media Relations Workshop
The workshops on media relations will start with a basic overview of the western media. Students will identify their own dealings with the media and then be given some techniques to clarify the message they want to put across.
The Workshops will deal with some
of the following topics:
How to speak with one voice;
How to condense your message into a
sound bite;
How to deal with different
interviewers (friendly, hostile, or neutral);
How to present your message as an
interesting story;
How
to handle hostile, sympathetic, or uninformed interviewers;
How
to create a media campaign;
How
to create or locate a target audience; and
The
business of the media.
In
an age of big media mergers, it is more important than ever for the voices of
individuals, minorities and community groups with little influence, to be
heard. Media literacy is an essential
skill.
Students will be view segments of
the video series GAINING A VOICE. The series is taken from the book Gaining
a Voice: Media Relations for Canadian Ethnic Minorities, written in 1991
by Edmond Marc du Rogoff and published by Angelina Cacciato for the Media
Resources Advisory Group. Much of the material in the eight-episode, half-hour
Gaining A Voice shows is aimed at teaching community groups how to
contact reporters and editors and what approaches work or fail. The series explains simply how the media
operate. The film crew recorded story meetings from media outlets in Ottawa,
Canada - the Citizen, CBC and
CJOH. Gaining A Voice programs explain the nuts and bolts of daily
journalism: how lists of potential
stories are drawn up; how reporters hunt other publications for ideas; why a TV
station may pass on reporting a community event simply because a cameraman is
not available; how newspaper stories are edited and TV stories spliced
together. Much of the series would be
an eye-opener for journalism students.
The Shakespeare Workshop
The Shakespeare workshops looks
at Shakespeare's rhythms, images and pacing, and explores the sound of the
language in the body. The students are
on their feet experimenting with the prosody (i.e., the sound and metre)
of the language and how the sound resonates within them. By the end, the students will perform either
a scene or a monologue from Shakespeare.
This workshop combines voice work
with Shakespearean text to connect them emotionally with the body. Students
will work with selected scenes from the works of Shakespeare to illustrate the
connection between the word and the emotions.
At the end of the workshop, the students are expected to perform these
scenes for their fellow classmates or possibly in a public performance. Voice work training has been combined with
techniques developed by Kristin Linklater, the author of several books on
"freeing the natural voice".
The Improvisation Workshop
The improvisation workshop starts
with basic concepts and exercises coming from the Stanislavsky Method, Sanford
Meisner of New York's Neighborhood Playhouse and Angelina Cacciato. Students
are expected to be able to present 15 to 20-minute improvisations.
This workshop develops the
student’s understanding of improvisation.
Students start with simple activities such as word association, creating
location, responding to relationships to build
10 to 15-minute scenes. The
principle behind improvisation is to respond “truthfully in the moment” and
“act” not “think”. These workshops work
for actors at different stages in their careers.
This workshop is suitable for the
novice actor through to the experienced performer.