Through the generosity of the Ruth Easton Endowment, the Theatre and Dance Department is able to sponsor workshops and production residencies with guest artists. These Twin Cities artists contribute to the high production quality of THDA theater productions, while modeling for students the talents, research skills and production savvy necessary for professional collaborations.

During Fall 2011, the following events and residencies are being supported by the Ruth Easton endowment:

LAMDA invites you to attend a Shakespeare’s First Folio Master Class

Rodney Cottier LAMDA’s Head of Drama School
sponsored by the Theatre and Dance Department
2-5 p.m., Sun, October 23

Take part in this unique interactive workshop and change your view of the play script forever. Please bring a copy of Shakespeare’s complete works, any edition. For more information about LAMDA, please visit lamda.org.uk or follow us on Twitter @LAMDAdrama.

Highly Physical Weekend Theatre Intensive

Robert Rosen and Shawn McConneloug
sponsored by the Theatre and Dance Department
1-5 p.m., Sat.-Sun, October 8-9

In one fast-paced, creative weekend, you will be introduced to some basic skills essential to the physical performer. Energetic exercises and collaborative games are designed to build awareness and imagination and cultivate articulation and flexibility for performing artists. The art of dramatic acrobatics will be introduced as well…balance work, juggling and tightrope. Build physical confidence…try something new. Come ready to move, work and have fun.

Robert Rosen, received his training at the École Jacques Lecoq in Paris and at the Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre in Blue Lake, California. He co-founded the internationally acclaimed Theatre de la Jeune Lune theatre company in Mineapolis in 1979, and served as co-Artistic Director from 1985 through 2005. Bob is a multi-dimensional theatre artist, credited with acting, writing, directing and/or designing 75 productions, with Jeune Lune and other companies. In 2008 he established Studio 206 in the Ivy Building for the Arts in Minneapolis, with inter-disciplinary artist Shawn McConneloug. Studio 206 is dedicated to the creation of new work and the ongoing training of performing artists.

Shawn McConneloug has been making art since 1993. As director of Orchestra*, a nationally recognized movement/theatre company, she has created and produced original, multidisciplinary works presented throughout the United States, in Central America and Japan. She has received awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bush Foundation, several McKnight Choreographic and Interdisciplinary Fellowships and a Sage Award for Outstanding Design. As a teaching artist, she has conducted residencies and workshops in movement/theatre practices and interdisciplinary collaboration locally, nationally and internationally since 1994. She is co-artistic director/producer of Studio 206 with Robert Rosen. McConneloug’s current passion is RAW Mechanics: embodied research into the physical languages of space and time that openly investigates the intersection of movement art and brain science.

Production Residency: Lucinda Holshue, Dialect Coach, The Inland Sea

Lucinda is coaching the cast of The Inland Sea in the variegated spoken sounds of Naomi Wallace’s text set in 1760s England: the “Received Prononciation” of the English upper classes; London working class, or “cockney;” north country/Yorkshire; and West Indies/Jamaica.

Ms. Holshue is a professional dialect coach, and has coached over fifty professional productions at the Guthrie Theatre. She is also a member of the Theatre Arts Faculty at the University of Minnesota. Ms. Holshue previously coached the dialects for THDA’s Cheryl Moore Brinkley’s production of Shelagh Stephenson’s An Experiment with an Air Pump.

Read her professional bio

Production Residency: Mike Croswell, Composer/Sound Designer, The Inland Sea

Mike has composed simple a cappella working songs for Naomi Wallace’s lyrics in The Inland Sea, and will be composing a soundscape that unifies the supernatural and earth/sea natural realms of the play.

Mike composed twelve original songs for the Macalester production of Caridad Svich’s 12 Ophelias: a play with broken songs in Spring 2011. Mike’s Macalester 12 Ophelias score and compositions are being used in the Fall 2011 production of Svich’s play at University of Nebraska-Omaha. Mike has collaborated with faculty director Beth Cleary many times; he works regularly with Frank Theatre, the Jungle Theatre and other theatres in Minneapolis, and with his own band, Metaphor.

More about Mike Croswell
Mike Croswell Discography

Production Residency: Annie Enneking, Fight Choreographer and Movement Coach, The Inland Sea

The Inland Sea is full of physical actions: fights, provocations, dances, stand-offs, games. Annie will be shaping the work of the actors in movement scenes, starting from their own interpretations and lending her choreographic expertise for the movement languages of the play. Her certification as a fight choreographer will extend to several scenes in the play where there are fights. The footwork of boxing is also a motif in the play.

Annie has acted with Workhaus Collective, Theatre de La Jeune Lune, the Guthrie, Frank Theatre, The Children’s Theatre and many others. She danced professionally with Danny Buraczeski’s Jazzdance, Paula Mann Dance, and Shawn McConneloug and her Orchestra. Annie is a singer-songwriter and musician, currently recording her third album. She is a fight choreographer and an Associate Fight Instructor with Dueling Arts International.

Read about the adaptation of Macbeth she choreographed

Production Residency: Maria McNamara, Properties Designer, The Inland Sea

The Inland Sea features obscure hand tools of 18th century farming life, earth-moving implements and machines, and every prop designer’s deepest love, the “body double.”

Professional properties designer Maria McNamara brings her expertise as a muppet designer and properties wizard to the Wallace production. She will be in residence as a Ruth Easton Guest Artist during the entire 2011-12 production season.

Read her professional bio

Above: Bob Rosen and Shawn McConneloug, master teachers, professional artists, and co-curators of Studio 206 in the Ivy Building in Minneapolis, have brought a "HIghly-PHYsical" workshop to Macalester. "Hi-Phy" develops performers skills in balance, focus, courage, proprioception and flexibility, all while building ensemble and readying the students for making new work together. Jon Dahl '13, a Theatre & Dance and German Studies double major from Roseau, Minnesota, says, ""It's been a great opportunity to realize what your body is able to do, whether it's juggling and tight-rope walking or creating whole scenes without a word." Bob Rosen has been teaching a "Physical Approaches" class in THDA this Fall, and the workshop allows students access to Bob's expertise if they were not able to fit the course into their schedule.