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"People didn’t believe me when I told them I practiced harder than I played, but it’s true. That’s where my comfort zone was created. By the time the game came, all I had to do was react to what my body was already accustomed to doing."
—Michael Jordan |
"You wanna fly, you got to give up that shit that weighs you down." —Toni Morrison |
Studio Highlights
Acting II: Scene Study
Acting II is an intermediate acting course for Theater majors and minors, designed to introduce the ideas and practices of in-depth scene study. Text analysis, scoring a scene, problem solving, and playing action/objectives are some of the tools offered to help students understand the complicated interactions of the human condition. Combining the teachings of Stanislavski, Uta Hagen, and Michael Chekhov, students will experience different applications of scene work in socially relevant performing arts. Students will learn to enrich their scene work through concentrated and collaborative work with other students as well as with instructor. Most importantly, each student will learn to risk something of their own humanity while bringing their acting choices to life.
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Character: Inside and Out
This is an upper division acting course for Theater majors and minors, focused on different approaches for creating a character. Each student will create 3-5 characters over the course of the semester. Various methods will be introduced to the student actor including both Internal and External approaches such as modeling, realism, cross-gender, extreme, and Personal Clowns. This is a physical acting class combining the teachings of Grotowski, LeCoq, Michael Chekhov, and Laban. Theatre games, hats, improvisation, observation, animal imagery, masks, mime, and Personal Clown Technique will be utilized in order to free up the actor, allowing him or her to play, and return to a “child-like desire of make believe.” Most importantly, students will understand and experience the development of bold characters and how they can be used in acting.
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Character Workshops on Dario Fo
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USF Performing Arts and Social Justice program presents its fall MainStage production of We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay! by Dario Fo (Nov. 7-10). Directed by new full-time theater faculty member, Xiomara Cornejo, this production is sure to be a raucous romp! We Won't Pay! is regarded as Dario Fo's best-known play internationally after The Accidental Death of an Anarchist. It had been performed in over 35 countries. Considered a political farce, it is a comedy about consumer backlash against high prices.
In her first production at USF, Dr. Cornejo enlisted fellow faculty member and theater maker, Ken Sonkin to help with the character development and comedy "lazzi." Sonkin brought in commedia dell'arte expert, author, and circus performer, Jeff Raz to bring his own creativity to the students' process. Raz's workshop included stock characters, fabulous stories of working with Dario Fo and Franca Rame, and teaching character through the use of his wonderful commedia masks! |
Dr. Xiomara Cornejo (she/her/ella) is a Salvadoran American theatre director, and award-winning designer, playwright, and dramaturg, as well as award-winning educator and scholar from Compton, California. Her professional work includes theatre directing, dramaturgy, design, after-school arts programming, applied theatre, and community organizing. Her scholarship centers on street and protest theatre, radical theatre history of the Americas, political puppetry, and circus.
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For the last 40 years, Alameda’s Jeff Raz has performed nationally and internationally with circuses and theaters including The Pickle Family Circus, Lincoln Center Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Marin and SF Shakespeare festivals, Vaudeville Nouveau, Make*A*Circus, TheatreWorks, Marin Theater Company, and more! He performed on Broadway in Comedy of Errors and toured all over the world playing the lead clown in Cirque du Solei's production of Corteo.
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Besides also having written 15 plays and directed multiple musical, theatrical, and circus performances, he also founded the Clown Conservatory in the Bay Area as well as the Medical Clown Project. Raz has taught at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College and the San Francisco School of Circus Arts. He has written four books The Secret Life of Clowns, The Snow Clown, and Love Death Circus. His latest book, ‘An International Circus Affair: How a Nanjing Acrobat in San Francisco Changed American Circus Forever’ is out now. Click here!
Jeff Raz works with Cast of We Won't Pay! at USF.
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Cast of We Won't Pay! is introduced to character masks.
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Cast member of We Won't Pay! at USF.
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Audition Class 2024
This fall, the Performing Arts and Social Justice program at USF had eight acting students enrolled in the Auditioning Class. They presented their final monologues in a “mock professional audition” setting in front of a panel of local professional theater experts (directors, casting directors, actors). Each student had 4:00 minutes to present two contrasting monologues.
In this eight-week course, students learned how to select monologues that are appropriate for a variety of theater, t.v., and film auditions. Choosing pieces that show range by contrasting one another in genre, character, and time-period. They learned about the audition process: etiquette: introducing oneself, what to wear, handling acting adjustments from directors and casting directors, callbacks, cold readings, etc. Audition Prep, Acting Resumes, Headshots, and Graduate school auditions. This class offers techniques that help maximize students' creativity while having fun at auditions. Most importantly, students will gain confidence in auditioning for multi-disciplined performing arts. |
Workshop in Play Production
Workshop in Play Production will have a new direction in the Fall 2021, with the emphasis on “workshop.” After a prolonged disconnect of distance, time, and space, this course gives theater students a unique opportunity of learning how to be together again, while asking important questions about theater, art, and social justice. By removing the stress of producing a main stage theater project, our “sandbox” will be an incubator for new and exciting work featuring student’s artistic growth and humanity.
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We will:
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Kevin Sarmiento, Deanna Kennedy in StoryCorps scene. USF Fall 21.
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Chloe Hu, Carly Bradley in StoryCorps scene. USF Fall 21.
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Movement Master Class with Roger Dillahunty. Workshop: Play Production. USF Fall 21.
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Improv/ Physical Comedy Master Class with Edna |
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Careers in Theater
Do you dream of acting professionally in regional theater? Do you see yourself starting your own theater company or maybe you want to be a writer, designer, technician, or teacher? Are you interested in drama therapy or arts administration? Do you want to continue your journey as an artist dedicated to social change? “Careers in Theater” is an upper division course designed to address possible career paths for graduating Performing Arts and Social Justice majors and minors. Students will learn about job searching and internships, creating resumes, developing their own web site, interviews/auditions, unions, contracts, agents, and generating their own work, as they consider “life after college.” Graduate school applications/auditions will be covered for those students interested in continuing their artistic education. Skills in handling money, time management, and artistic well-being will be offered for students to, not only survive, but to flourish in their craft. Through concentrated and collaborative work with other students, the instructor, and guest artists, students will learn how to bring their dreams into focus, address their fears, find possible solutions, and leave USF better equipped to “change the world from here” or from wherever they make their artistic home.
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PASJ 20th Anniversary Open Mic
Fri. April 30,2021 at 7pm (PST) Featuring Past & Present PASJ Students Featuring work from Conni McKenzie, Valerie Zarate Diaz, Isa Crescini Williams, Julianna King, Justin Jairam, Bex Brzostoski, Chris Francis, Lexi McNinch, Sarah Medley, Elena Freiwald, Eric Garcia, Mikayla Brown, Dave Pangaro, Audrey Walker, Serena Pickett, Nicole Adelski, Kelli Westad, and Edna Miroslava Raia. Hosted by Paul Flores! Co-produced by Kelli Westad and Ken Sonkin This event is part of the PASJ 20th Anniversary Festival. For more info, go to: https://myusf.usfca.edu/PASJ-20thmyusf.usfca.edu/PASJ-20th |
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Master Acting Teacher at OSAI
Acting Class Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute at Quartz Mountain. June 2018.
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In the summer of 2018, Ken was honored to join the esteemed faculty as the lead acting teacher of the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute. OSAI at Quartz Mountain is an intensive, two-week conservatory offering training in the disciplines of acting, chorus, creative writing, dance, drawing and painting, film and video, orchestra, and photography for Oklahoma’s most talented high school students. OSAI faculty artists include winners of the Pulitzer Prize and the Academy, Grammy, Emmy, and Tony Awards. Students are selected through a competitive statewide audition process, and every accepted student automatically receives a scholarship to attend. The program’s multidisciplinary structure sets the Summer Arts Institute apart from other arts programs in the nation.
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Theatre Bay Area: ATLAS Program
"What is now proved was once only imagined." —William Blake
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Swordplay in Sonoma
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Last year, Ken was delighted to return to Sonoma State University to teach stage combat. Students were trained in both unarmed and armed combat (epee). Designed for Acting Concentration majors, stage combat is an introduction to the design, practice, and performance of theatrical violence. The main goals are to develop the ability to safely portray violence onstage and to create the illusion of danger. As with all theatrical techniques, stage combat skills are designed to facilitate the telling of a story and are to be performed in the context of character, environment, and given circumstances. Acting, voice, and movement are integrated in this course. Students begin to understand how stage combat fits into the practice of theater as a whole.
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Stage Combat Class of 2018. Sonoma State University.
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