Viral Spiral Theatre Workshops
Keeping Our Skills Sharp During World War Zoom
Welcome to Viral Spiral Theatre Workshops - a series of sessions designed to help theatre enthusiasts keep their skills up to date, and stay engaged while we are still unable to gather in person.
This series of workshops will be taught by various Seattle area professionals who work around town and around the country as actors, directors and producers. Bookmark this page and keep coming back as we add more sessions to the series.
Dialects and Accents for Stage
Accents and Dialects are one of the most fun parts of playing characters on stage and screen, but truly learning and embodying a new accent requires methods that go beyond mimicry. Learning the basics can give you tools to approach any accent, and even analyze your own speech. We'll use Standard American English as our starting point to break down parts of speech, mouth placement, melody, rhythm, and more.
Next we'll apply these same ideas to a range of British accents, whether you're cast as an MP or a street vendor in Hounslow.
Please have a way to take notes and make markings on the text we use, and get ready to dive right into this jam-packed workshop!
From the Page to the Stage
When building a character, an actor must go beyond saying words naturally. A good script is full of clues about the complex make-up of the characters. These clues might include personal history, point-of-view, physical hardships, relationships, the political climate of the community, and more. It is the job of the actor to take these clues and fold them into a living, breathing character that serves the arc of the play.
In this workshop, we will first spend time doing “table work”: primarily digging into the text for nuggets of information about given circumstances and character development. Part of this work will include a brief review of the concepts of action/objective, obstacles, and tactics. Once we have a basic framework for a scene, we will get on our feet and experiment with those discoveries in performance.
Please make sure to dress comfortably – including shoes! We will spend some of the session on our feet, and it is best if your movement is not restricted by your clothing. You might also want to bring note-taking materials, so you can reference the work as you continue to develop your skills on your own.
This will be a working session via Google Meet. Participants will perform the concepts throughout the workshop from their computers/laptops.
Fundamentals in Acting - Objective, Obstacles and Tactics
Welcome to Fundamentals in Acting. In this session, we will learn how to more convincingly portray the motivations and desires of the characters we play on stage. The focus of this course will be on concepts based on the principles of Stanislavsky and American “method”:
Action/Objective
Obstacles
Tactics
Beats
This will be a working session via Google Meet. Participants will perform the concepts throughout the workshop from their computers/laptops. Although we won't be getting up and moving this session, we will discuss how objectives and tactics lead to physicality for future work.
Please bring something to take notes with that you will reference later on your own.
