Empowering Students Through Theatre
Creative workshops that inspire collaboration, creativity, and student-led performance
Overview
My workshops are designed to empower learners through creativity, collaboration, and performance. These experiences are tailored to support school goals, curriculum needs, and student development, whether through single-day intensives, multi-session residencies, or ongoing co-curricular collaborations. My goal is to develop and lead Theatre workshops that inspire students through creative, collaborative learning—bringing energy, purpose, and connection to their educational experience.
WHAT I OFFER
Below are a range of workshop themes and formats available for your students.
*Note- I customize my workshops based on the goals and aspirations that we (you and I) set as a team via consultations. Consults are free.
WORKSHOP OFFERINGS
WORKSHOP OFFERINGS
Devised Theatre is a collaborative form of performance that begins without a script. Instead, an ensemble, actors, directors, technicians, designers, even musicians and dancers, gather together to create an original performance piece from scratch. The process unfolds through improvisation, experimentation, and shared creative input. Artists (our students) brainstorm a topic to work with or ‘devise’. Topics can be literally anything; (stress, relationships, school, expectations, or identity), and may arise from anything (a painting, a picture, an idea or living images frozen in time created by students in a brainstorming session).
At its core, devised theatre is:
- Collaborative: Everyone contributes to the story-making.
- Experimental: Devised Theatre blends movement, music, media, and text.
- Flexible: Themes and narratives evolve as the work develops.
Rooted in avant-garde traditions like Grotowski’s Poor Theatre and The Living Theatre, devised Theatre continues to push boundaries and champion inclusive, innovative storytelling. My goal has always been to offer students a powerful means to explore identity, creativity, and connection together.
I’ve designed my play-writing and production workshops to guide students through the full creative process of developing and performing original short plays. Starting with collaborative exploration, often using Image Theatre techniques (amongst others), I guide my students to identify themes, devise a plot and characters; shaping their stories from the ground up.
My one-act play project workshops support everything from play festivals and class showcases to full productions designed for school communities. Each experience encourages student ownership, ensemble collaboration, and the development of original artistic voice.
Key elements of the process include:
- Devising story through improvisation and Image Theatre
- Learning the essentials of play-writing such as:
- Plot and Character development
- Dialogue and musicality (rhythm)
- Theme and conflict
- Drafting, revising, and rehearsing original scripts
- Opportunities to direct, design, produce and perform the final work for a school or community audience
This approach is ideal for Theatre directors looking to produce original student work while supporting creativity, collaboration, performance and production.
Stage combat creates the illusion of fighting through choreographed performance. What is stage-combat? In short, the combatant (performer) aims to strike his/her opponent, while defending from a counterstrike. The actor doesn’t face an opponent. Instead, s/he faces a collaborator who is cooperating with every move to create a physical picture while playing the emotion of a scene.
Key focus areas:
- Safety & Collaboration: Students learn the importance of trust, communication, and control when staging physical interactions.
- Combat Styles & Techniques: Training includes unarmed combat, as well as stylized work with:
- Found Objects: books, backpacks, chairs, sticks
- Broadswords: large, heavy weapons used in historical or fantasy scenes
- Quarter-staffs: long wooden staffs requiring balance, spacing, and partner awareness
- Rapiers & Daggers: precise, classical weapons for period plays or stylized duels
- Hand to hand: an unarmed fighting style (no weapons)
- Story Through Movement: Each sequence is grounded in character motivation, intention, and emotional stakes interpreted from a script (i.e. Hamlet).
- Script Integration: Combat scenes are contextualized within plays or devised work, helping students understand how physical conflict advances plot, personifies theme, and underscores a play’s tone.
I offer stage combat workshops either as independent sessions or embedded within play-writing and performance courses. My goal is to teach combat safety and specific weaponry techniques as powerful tools for storytelling, helping students build confidence while strengthening their understanding of dramatic action through movement and physical expression.
I customize various workshops in multiple areas of the Theatre to support and enhance programs via hands-on, focused learning in core production and performance areas. I’m able to assist schools in revamping, expanding or even re-writing curriculum offerings. I collaborate with teachers and directors to design experiences that align with their goals, be it standalone sessions to multi-week residencies. Each focus area (acting, directing, design, stage-craft, etc…) can be adapted for full classes, individual units and lessons, or co-curricular enrichment.
Performance is the craft of bringing characters and stories to life through voice, movement, and emotional truth. Students explore a range of acting approaches, including Meisner, Stanislavski, Adler and physical theatre, while developing their own expressive tools throughout the journey. The process is grounded in rehearsal, ensemble-building, and reflective practice, allowing performers to build confidence and presence on stage.
- Stylistic approaches such as Stanislavski’s realism and Meisner’s emotional truth
- Ensemble building and scene work for both scripted and devised material
- Character development, objective, obstacles, verbing, script analysis, physical ‘doings’ and much more
I tailor my performance workshops for acting units, audition prep, or rehearsal support for productions, both large and small.
Stagecraft and design bring the world of a play to life via spectacle; ‘visual and technical artistry’. Students explore how the key design elements in scenery, lighting, sound, costumes, makeup, and special effects work together to shape a play’s atmosphere, support the message (and director’s concept), with the goal of immersing the audience in the performance experience. The process combines a ‘design matrix’ with practical application, giving students opportunities to engage with one another creatively and technically.
Key focus areas include:
- Set Design: ground plans, scale models, scenic painting, and environment creation
- Stage-craft: safety, foundational methods in construction and tool usage/operations, procedures, decor & strike
- Lighting Design: color theory, cue sequencing, mood setting, and directional focus
- Sound Design: ambient effects & transitions, audio reinforcement, microphones, acoustics, Theatre technology (audio editing and production software and necessary hardware)
- Costume & Makeup Design: character identity, historical styling, and visual symbolism as well as special f/x (scars, wounds, blood packets, masking, skin/hair coloration, etc…)
- Special F/X: safe integration of fog, rain effects, smoke and fire, strobe lighting, and other dramatic elements
- Technical Operations: backstage roles in console operations, special effects implementation, application, cue execution, safety, and leadership
My workshops and courses provide students with a hands-on understanding of the technical aspects of Theatre production. I work closely with educators and directors to align each experience with student learning-goals, production timelines, and departmental needs. *Note; my workshops can be applied to either a co-curricular situation (plays or musicals or festivals) or course work, from an umbrella scope of syllabi down to specific lessons, scaffold-ed across all grade levels.
Play-writing is a collaborative and expressive form of storytelling. A play-wright’s goal are to create characters, conflict, and theme through dialogue and dramatic structure in support of his/her message. I design my writing workshops to help students develop original work from page to stage. Our goal? To craft plays that are compelling, nuanced, and performance-ready. To identify a message, create a target and write to that. To create material that is written for a live audience, is performance ready for actors, production worthy for technicians.
Key focus areas include:
- Plot & Structure: Students learn to shape a story using traditional and experimental forms—from classic three/five-act structure to both full-length & short one-acts and nonlinear scenes.
- Characterization: Students learn how to layer characters with distinct motivations, goals, and flaws—ensuring each voice feels real and purposeful, inline with a chosen genre.
- Dialogue & Subtext: Students develop dialogue that sounds natural while serving plot and theme. Emphasis is placed on subtext (the unsaid) to deepen emotional tension and authenticity.
- Conflict: Students learn how to create and utilize ‘internal’ and ‘external’ conflict to drive the narrative forward and raise the stakes, making scenes more engaging and impactful.
- Theme & Message: Students reflect on the central questions or ideas in their work, embedding meaning organically into dialogue and action.
- Setting & Stage Directions: Writers learn how to use concise, evocative stage directions and environment design to shape mood, movement, and tone.
- Pacing & Rhythm: I teach students how structure and timing affect audience engagement, using shifts in energy and tone to build drama and maintain momentum. Writers working with actors is key to finding the necessary synergy in dialogue to create plays that flow naturally. To this, I teach student play-wrights the essentials of performance so that their written work is relatable and ‘doable’ for actors on a stage.
- Revision & Collaboration: Through readings and workshops, students learn the importance of rewriting and collaboration—refining their work with input from peers, directors, and of course, actors.
I design my workshops and courses as a springboard for original student-led performances, or guide the development of scripts for one-act play festivals (i.e. director’s looking to create original material from and by their students for play festivals). Each program is tailored to the school’s goals and student level—helping young writers develop voice, structure, and the necessary tools to bring their stories to life on stage.
Workshops designed for your institution
Fully Customized Workshops
Single Day Intensives
📌Great for launching creative units, events, or focused skill-building in movement, design, production or acting.
Multi-day/week residencies
📌Ideal for immersive experiences that culminate in public showcases, play festivals, or student-led productions.
Curriculum Integration
📌Aligns with a school’s existing courses and includes assessments, rubrics, and planning with educators.
Goals, content, materials, and student-face-time are tailored in close collaboration with a school’s faculty to meet your program’s specific needs.
