FROM MIND TO MOVIE: CHARACTER AND SCENE DESIGN FOR ACTORS AND DIRECTORS
Ages 16-29
Summer 2017, Normal's, 425 E 31st St. & the Arellano Theatre, Johns Hopkins Homewood
In this performance workshop, fellows will explore character and scene design from the inside out. They’ll draw on their own experiences and observations to develop fully realized characters with unique physicalities and voices, rich inner lives, and specific points of view. Under the loose direction of the instructor, a professional writer and actor, their invented characters will be introduced to one another in improvised scenes. Characters and scenes will evolve through several meetings and a final group improvisation will be captured on film. Student fellows will learn improv techniques and story structure, and gain an overall understanding of how to make a scene "work." The workshop will be invaluable not only to actors, but to writers and directors, who will refine a critical sense of story and character, and learn to communicate with and listen to the performers who help bring their visions to life. The workshop will also offer fellows an opportunity to share characters and stories they feel are underrepresented in popular film and television, and to share what they feel needs to be shared about the world(s) they live in. Both personal expressiveness and creative collaboration will be encouraged. The film of the group improvisation will be shared at a public screening and on the program website. On July 15 and 22 the workshop will meet in the Arellano Theater under the Glass Pavilion, on the Johns Hopkins Homewood Campus (map). Limited to 10 student fellows.
Marc Unger is a nationally known actor/writer/comedian. His work has been featured on network television and in theaters and film festivals in both New York and Los Angeles. He has shared the stage and screen with artists Stephen Adly Guirgis, John Hawkes, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
Ceci Freed is a junior Film and Media Studies and Spanish double major at Johns Hopkins. She is interested in pursuing a career in the television and film industry.
