PEP | Performers Exchange Project

Our Trip to Hollins for the MFA Workshop

[album id=9 template=extend]Yesterday, Sian, Jennifer and I headed to Roanoke for an afternoon of experimentation with Hollins U’s MFA Playwright candidates.  They were very game – took their shoes off, threw themselves (unrehearsed) into some Chairman Mao exercises and basically did whatever we told them.  Suckas.

Seriously, it was fantabulous to see so many playwrights with experience as actors, directors, theatre technicians – and all interested in the collaborative process of building performance to boot!  They created short individual performance etudes, wrote short bits of text (natch) and used these elements, in groups of three, to create super short performances.  Of course, they had some random inspiration to contend with: tarot cards and other source material around Gypsy history, folklore and fortune telling.  This source material just happened along, and since we PEPsters are in love with the value of randomness, well we just took the ball and ran with it.

Anyhooters, it was gangs of fun and the playwrights concocted some impressive stuff, so here’s a shout-out to all our willing and very able MFA students for participating in our experiment.  And many thanks to Todd Ristau, our host.

Just as an FYI, we’ll be in Roanoke on Monday evening, July 5, at the Taubman Art Museum for a “talk” about our performance history, how we got started, how we work and other unbelievably earth-shattering information.  Don’t worry peeps!  Even though it’s a “talk,” we promise it will be lots more fun than the usual variety (think disgruntled parents, principals, significant others).

If you’re curious about our lovely mistress Process, and wonder when you too might meet her, just jingle us up or email us, (or whatever you 21st century peeps do) we’d love to work with you…

Martha

1 Response to “Our Trip to Hollins for the MFA Workshop”

  1. This workshop with our playwrights was one of the highlights of the summer! It was incredibly useful to the MFA students to get practical guidance in the disciplines of performance, to engage in the collaborative act of group script creation, and to engage one-on-one with a theatre comany that has put their ideas into action by creating, rehearsing, and touring their own plays.

    Very inspiring!

    We were doubly thrilled to have the entire company return two weeks later to give a formal presentation on the history of the company and discuss the process in more depth.

    I would strongly recommend booking a workshop with these talented women to any theatre program in the country, gradauate or undergraduate. They were delightful and easy to work with in every particular.

    Thank you for your energy, passion, and talent…and for sharing all of it with us so generously!

    Todd Ristau, Program Director
    Graduate Program in Playwriting at Hollins University

Leave a Reply