NATIONAL TOUR WORKSHOPS


Now in its twenty-fifth year, our program offers experience, creativity, and flexibility to audiences across the country. Every year, our actors and production crew hold workshops and give backstage tours for audiences on our tour. These inspired professionals teach various aspects of the theatre. Special topics are added each year depending on the themes inherent in the current play and on the talents of our staff.

The educational outreach program acquaints audiences with live theatre and the work of playwrights, making the process of play production fascinating and accessible. In doing so, the program educates audiences, developing their appetite for plays and literature. The Montana Repertory Theatre is strongly committed to nurturing and developing new audiences for the theatre and supporting the classroom experience with theatre arts. With that in mind, we offer a variety of educational programs to you on the day that we perform in your community. You may stipulate in our contract which educational outreach activities you prefer and we will arrange for them, schedule permitting, since scheduling depends upon our travel time to your city.

Educational activities available:
• Pre- or post-performance discussions with audiences
• Professional touring
• Comedy and drama workshops*
   Cost: per contract agreement

*2010 Workshops:
The following workshops are available for the 2010 Montana Repertory Theatre national tour. Workshops are generally 60 minutes in length, but can be tailored to meet your needs. (45- to 90-minute versions are available.) We prefer that no more than 40 people are in attendance, but can accommodate larger groups with advance notice. Workshops are designed for a general audience of high school to college-age students and their instructors.

Acting Workshop: Comedy
Some actors are just blessed with an innate sense of how to make people laugh, but to be an employable actor you need to be able to deliver laughs consistently and reliably--so what do the rest of us do? You need to understand the mechanics and structure of comedy. It's one thing to be funny by accident or in rehearsals, but how do you manage to be funny night after night, show after show? Comically gifted? This class will help insulate you from the rare nights when the comedy gods aren't smiling on you. (You know they happen.) Comically challenged? This will introduce you to habits that you can apply to your work right away. We'll set you on the path to becoming one of those actors who is known to be able to deliver the goods every single time.

Acting Workshop: Drama
"The map is not the territory." It's easy, when working on contemporary material, to assume that you have it solved after the first read. After all, you're a smart person, right? Of course you are. But so is the author--and although you know all the words, that doesn't necessarily mean you know what's being said. In this workshop you will learn to take nothing for granted. By employing subtext and creating relationships, you'll learn to avoid some common traps of working on contemporary dramatic literature. The concepts in the workshop are simple and effective, and the exercises are easy to learn and all-inclusive. You'll walk away with tools to encourage your self-sufficiency and keep your work clear and dynamic.

Life on the Road: Professional Tour Actors Speak
Goal: To inform students of the real-life, day-to-day requirements of being both a professional touring actor or a working actor in a large metropolitan area, and, possibly, to inspire students to pursue acting as a career.

Actors will give firsthand, personal accounts of what it's like to make a living as an actor and how one gets to that point in one's career. Topics will include auditioning, becoming an Equity actor, keeping a performance fresh, stamina, working with other actors in close quarters, and travel issues.

Let's start early! The most successful experiences are those which are arranged ahead of time. You may wish to consult with the local drama or language arts teachers in your town so they can make plans to include their students. If you would like to schedule a workshop, either at your school or at the theatre, please contact Salina Chatlain, Assistant to the Artistic Director, by phone at (406) 243-6809 or by email.

Montana Rep is funded in part by a grant from the Montana Arts Council (an agency of state government), with support from the Montana State Legislature, The University of Montana, the Montana Cultural Trust, and Dr. Cathy Capps.