To enroll, please contact: Sandy Hawkins (925) 788-9124 or sandrahawkins131@gmail.com or place check payable to DAOR in DAOR mailbox in Gateway. Please mark envelope to Sandy's attention and include your name, phone/email, and class title.
Classes take place at Hillside Performing Arts Studio (Las Trampas), unless otherwise noted.
Acting Our Lives: Performance Memoir Instructor: Bobby Ausubel Begins Monday, September 16, 10 AM - Noon (8 weeks) $60.00 + $7.00 materials fee
Participants join a group process and write a story from life experience with help from opening exercises. One need not have a story idea in advance, nor previous writing or acting experience. Students get support in rewriting for drama rather than literature and can present their stories at a showcase at the end of the session.
Those interested are invited to visit the first class free and try it out. For more information, contact: Bobbi Ausubel, bobbi.gloria.ausubel@gmail.com
History of Theater Instructor: Don Kaplan Begins Wednesday, September 18, 1 PM to 3 PM (8 weeks) Multipurpose Room 1 $50.00 + $7.00 materials fee
Kaplan will be dealing with the period from the Wall Street Crash of 1929 to the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
Participants will read aloud and discuss excerpts from the dramas of Pulitzer Prize winner Maxwell Anderson: Both Your Houses, Wintersetand Elizabeth the Queen. Also included is the Pulitzer Prize winning play, You Can't Take It with You by Moss Hart and George Kaufman.
The very personal impact of the Great Depression is seen in two plays by Clifford Odets, considered the leading dramatist of the theater of social protest: Waiting for Lefty and Golden Boy. Adding his unique view of the poverty of the period is William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life. This play was awarded both the Pulitzer Price for Drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle for the best play of 1941; never before had a work won both awards.
All scripts and introductory material will be distributed in class. Don Kaplan, the course facilitator has been a theater buff since his high school drama class was taken to see the Orson Welles Mercury Theater production of Julius Caesar in 1937. He not only remembers the play, but the girl who sat next to him. For questions, contact Don at 925 287 8252 or dsk8252@gmail.com
Body Tales Workshop - 2 Saturdays Instructor: Bobby Ausubel September 28 and October 5, 10 AM - Noon Fee: $30
Body Tales is an improvisational expressive storytelling movement and sound form for actors and non-actors, dancers and everyone else.
Olivia Corson, a dancer from Oakland, invented Body Tales as a way to connect to your body and unearth stories your mind wants to tell with voice and emotion, sound and movement. This is a playful way to come home to your body and bring your stories to life.
Workshop: Word for Word Performing Arts Company A page to stage experience Tuesdays, October 8 and 15, 10 AM - Noon Fee: $30
In the first session, members of Word for Word will read and perform a short selection, discuss how they choose stories they perform and the process of creating a performance. Word for Word takes every word the author has written from the page to the stage without editing or adapting. In the second session, participants develop and perform a short piece with guidance from Word for Word presenters. This is a page to stage experience for all participants.
In July, Word for Word came to Rossmoor with Complainers, a short story by Jeffery Eugenides which they brought to life before an appreciative audience. Word for Word has been doing this for over 25 years. Co-Artistic Directors JoAnne Winter and Susan Harloe founded Word for Word Performing Arts Company in 1993 as part of the Artist in Residence program at the Z Space Studio.
Adult Education Coordinator, Jeri Lynn Cohen, described the company process as "a Charter Group of nine women who have met monthly reading stories out loud, looking for interesting plots, characters and, of course, language."
The Bay Area Critics Circle presented Word for Word with a special award for its unique concept in 1997 and has since awarded the company numerous honors, including acting nominations and Best Ensemble Award. The Performing Arts Company's critically acclaimed productions include stories by Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Munro, Dorothy Parker, George Saunders, Amy Tan, Tobias Wolfe, Edith Wharton and many more.