Review of TWO NOBLE KINSMEN reading at Clinton Cove Park

http://who-will-kiss-the-pig.blogspot.com/2009/09/saturday-afternoon-in-hudson-river-park.html

From the review....

...The Two Noble Kinsmen is, at least in Elena Araoz’s and Nate Art Productions adaptation that we heard today, actually surprisingly entertaining and resonant...

The cast - James Edward Becton, Donte Bonner, Alexandra Cremer, Joseph Franchini, Jenny Greeman, Carrie Isaacman, Jonathan Periera, and Paul Singleton - were uniformly excellent in playing multiple parts. They employed the bound scripts in a manner that soon we didn't notice them much and instead concentrated on the words, the actor's line readings, and some physical gestures.
Stage directions were read by the actors taking turns, and we never had a problem distinguishing when an actor was playing one part and when another. Given that they were wearing their regular clothes, this was quite an accomplishment.

It couldn't have been easy to turn pages deftly on a cool, breezy early fall afternoon - it started out overcast but then became somewhat brighter - but the cast managed to do this unobtrusively, and the one time an actor read another's lines, it was handled gracefully.

Really, we were impressed with how well Two Noble Kinsmen worked in this format. This reading smartly emphasized the comic aspects of the play - the scenes with the love-mad jailer's daughter and the doctor's plot to disguise her anxious suitor as her beloved Palamon were laugh-out-loud funny and bawdy - and we suspect the cutting in this adaptation was a mercy....it was Becton and Bonner who were the two kinsmen of the title, and they were excellent. But so was everyone else, even when playing such distinct roles as both Hippolyta and the Doctor or both Theseus and the Wooer of the Jailer's Daughter...

Photo #1: (Left to right) Donte Bonner, Alexandra Cremer,Paul Singleton and Jenny Greeman

Photo #2:(Left to right) Donte Bonner, James Edward Becton

Photo #3:(Left to right) Carrie Isaacman, Joseph Franchini, Paul Singleton

Reading of Two Noble Kinsmen at Clinton Cove Park Sept 19 and 26 at 3 pm

Reading of Two Noble Kinsmen at WorkShop Theater Company September 12

This Saturday September 12th we will have our reading of a new adaptation of Shakespeare's Two Noble Kinsmen, adapted and directed by Elena Araoz at WorkShop Theater Company,

312 West 36th Street, 4th Floor in the Jewel Box at 3 pm.

Please come and offer supportive feedback for the adaptation.

Epic Theater's Citizen Artist Conference

I write a monthly blog with regards to Educational Theater on Dennis Baker LLC's blog page.  This is a great way for me to share some of the things that i'm learning and thinking about as I study education.  

This month's post is on Epic Theater's Citizen Artist Conference.  I am posting the link to Dennis Baker's website and the article.

http://www.dennisbaker.net/epic-theater-citizen-artist-conference/

August 27, 2009 by Carrie Edel Isaacman 

I attended an amazing and inspiring workshop few weeks ago at the Citizen Artist Conferencehosted by the Epic Theater Ensemble. I appreciate Epic Theater’s approach to working with kids is their work with community through Augusto Boal’s Exercises. These exercises empower the students to connect to community and to feel responsible for change.

We opened with Boal’s The Great Game of Power. After the game, four students who have been part of Epic’s summer workshop entered and read scenes from their adaptations of Ibsen’s Enemy of the People. It was great to see well-crafted scenes about current topics based on the themes of Enemy of the People of course, but even more inspiring, these were young people in high school who were just crafting their playwriting skill. What I didn’t know at the time was that these were the type of plays that we would be creating over the course of the weekend. Epic has many curriculum. The Enemy of the People curriculum is just one.

On the second day of the Conference, we had the chance to create our own works based on Ibsen’sEnemy of the People, just as we had seen from the students the previous day. As one of the Epic Theater member’s explained, to be able to give this lesson, a person has to really know the play. The class was divided up into four groups. There were five categories that we used in order to create our own idea for a new play. The main idea was that the play had to have a main character that would be an enemy of the people in some way. For example, an owner of a hotel who was covering up health issues like eroding pipes that were of real danger to the guests. The next step was that all four groups had to pitch the ideas to the class. Then we had to vote as to which story was the strongest. The idea that was the strongest was the one that we would write scenes about.

What was important was the reactions from people as the group did not accept their ideas. We talked about this afterwards. This was a lesson for all of us in the room. It is hard to produce artistic projects. Really hard. Things do get… complicated.

The following exercises we created characters and did improvs on the main idea for the story that we chose. In our case it was a school meeting where there was a debate about the use of styrofome plates and the health of students who use those plates. Afterwards, we broke up into groups and wrote individual scenes using a very simple format that the Epic Theater uses. After that we shared our improvs that were based on the checklist each group produced.

How I Hope To Use These Exercises

I would like to have my own classroom one day and I’d like to include the study of various forms of historical drama. I am sure that I will find my own way of teaching, of course, but I admire the use of Boal’s exercises and Critical Thinking exercises of classic plays in the way that Epic teaches. I would like to borrow these ideas and techniques for my future students.

And I know that Epic is happy to pass on their ideas, as at the end of the conference, we received a Curriculum Guide.

Integrating Epic’s Techniques To My Teaching Artist Work

I have taught techniques to kids to play and understand Shakespeare’s words. Epic’s lesson plans teach students to put stories into the present day and empowers them to create their own stories while they are learning a story that is very removed from them. Using these techniques would ultimately help me, to help students understand and gain a world of knowledge about the story that they are working on. It would also help me ,to help students create their own stories and learn more about their own world.

I hope that you will all get to experience the workshop the next time around.

Also, be sure to check out Epic Theater Ensembles upcoming production: Mahilda’s Extra Key To Heavenby Russell Davis and directed by Will Pomerantz, September 16-October 11.

Carrie Edel Isaacman is a regular guest blogger, look for her monthly posts to come out on the 27th of the month. She is currently working as an Adjunct Lecturer through CUNY and substitute teaching in the NYC Public Schools while she pursues her MS in Educational Theater at City College. She is also involved in TA 101 with New York State Alliance for Arts in Education.

Reviews for FROM RUSSIA WITH ANGST

"Sutton Crawford, who portrays the young Ginger, is appropriately shameless and charming in her description of the video’s contents. Joseph Franchini and Carrie Edel Isaacman could remind any viewer of his/her father and mother, alternately supportive and embarrassed, depending on the moment."

Kelly Aliano, Off Off Online

FROM RUSSIA WITH ANGST at WorkShop Theater Company

Congratulations to WorkShop Theater Company on our production of FROM RUSSIA WITH ANGST.  We close tomorrow, what a blast it has been!

It has been so much fun to be a part of the process of seeing plays developed from the readings to our MainStage Show.  It has been quite an education to be associate co-producer as well as be a part of the cast of JOY by Bob Strozier.

Here pictured: Sutton Crawford, Joseph Franchini and myself.

This is my updated reel. If you are not able to view the reel please select the link below or copy and paste the link into your web browser.
http://www.imagineedit.com/clients/carrie/carrie.html