Saturday, March 9, 2019 
9:30am - 12:30 pm - Fee: $50

Have a talk that you're preparing for an upcoming event? Have you got to give a toast at an upcoming wedding? Come and work on it here. If not, no worries, all are welcome and encouraged!This workshop will introduce various tips and techniques for writing comedic speeches for a variety of settings.  Then using techniques in diction, tone and timing, participants will rehearse and perform their speeches.  Co-Instructors Catherine Stewart and Stephanie Lazenby are writing partners, currently producing their television pilot, Domesticated. As both writers, directors and performers they have honed their skills in the tricky art of comedy performance both in the US and in the UK. 

REGISTER NOW

This four week session will be taught by one of our newest teaching artists, Stephanie S. Lazenby, a writer and performer based in Portsmouth, NH. Stephanie began her comedy journey by memorizing the entire movie Airplane! as a teenager and has put those skills to work ever since. She was a member of Emerson Comedy Workshop at Emerson College and continued writing and performing original shows and short films in her hometown of New York City.  She moved to the Seacoast in 2003 where her writing has been published locally, including a monthly column in The Portsmouth Herald, Mom’s in the City as well as nationally, in publications such as Redbook and stage productions, Listen To Your Mother. From 2016 to 2018 she was the host of Pecha Kucha, which is held seasonally at 3S Artspace.

REGISTER NOW

CHEKHOV ACTING TECNIQUE

Saturday, April 6, 2019
9:30 am to 12:30 pm - Group Workshop - Fee: $50
1:30-5:30 pm - Private Coaching Opportunities - Fee: $100/hour

Michael Chekhov, the nephew of the writer Anton Chekhov, was one of the most renowned actors of Stanislavky’s Moscow Art Theatre. As a young man Chekhov began teaching acting classes in his apartment, and eventually moved to England and then the United States where he taught for a quarter century. He developed an approach to healthy acting that emphasizes the integration of psychological and physical action, and that trains and elevates the actor’s imagination and intuition through movement and gesture. His teaching has influenced actors and directors from Ingrid Bergman and Elia Kazan to James Spader and Anne Bogart.

• GROUP WORKSHOP:  We will begin with foundational work in movement and ease, and progress to work with bits of text (if actors have some they want to use that’s great, but no memorization is required) and Chekhov’s “psychological gesture” – movement that expresses character and gesture in the most dynamic way.
• PRIVATE COACHING: Students for private coaching sessions should bring in a bit of speech – between four lines and a monologue. We’ll begin by using the Chekhov technique to open up the possibilities in the text, and then apply those explorations to make decisions about character and objective and what Chekhov called “the how” of acting.

Peter Josephson is an accomplished actor and director. He has been a finalist for eleven Seacoast Spotlight and New Hampshire Theatre Awards, and was named Best Actor by the NHTA in 2014. Josephson lived half his life in Alaska, where he earned his membership in the Actors’ Equity Association and mushed dogs recreationally. He has performed with the New Hampshire Theatre Project, the Winnipesaukee Playhouse, and the Seven Stages Shakespeare Company, and has appeared in numerous productions with theatreKapow, including Agamemnon, A Dream Play, Macbeth, Buried Child, and last year’s devised work Raining Aluminum. He trains regularly with the International Michael Chekhov Association and theatreKapow, and teaches acting workshops on the Seacoast and in the Manchester area.

REGISTER NOW

Since 1998, New Hampshire Theatre Project has been providing nurturing professional environments for youth, artists and community members to be inspired and transformed through the art of theatre.