(L–R) Shradda Vachhani ’14, Alex Shammas ’14, Caroline Bisi and Jaden Baum ’17
In Playwrighting, award-winning playwright and Tony-nominated actor John Cariani, author of Almost, Maine, a play I’m looking to showcase at NA, led an energetic workshop that covered the fundamentals of playwrighting. He introduced exercises to help cultivate the inner playwright in our students—suitable for writers at all levels of experience—and armed us with central doctrines for creating new works. I have long wanted to include a section of playwrighting within our Drama curriculum, and he not only answered my questions, but provided the building blocks for lesson planning. I am excited to introduce this section to my classes this spring. I was really looking forward to Working With Young Actors: ‘Matilda.’ This workshop was led by Deborah Abramson, the children’s musical director for Matilda, and Tim Federle, a writer, dancer and Broadway choreographer who’s worked on Billy Elliot and Little House on the Prairie. We were treated to a visit from two 11-year-old Matilda lead cast members—a young actor named
Sawyer Nunes and a young actress named Madilyn Jaz Morrow, who plays one of the four Matilda’s in the cast. They performed a few pieces from the show, and were given direction throughout by Ms. Abramson, who further shared her process of working with younger children. Mr. Federle demonstrated how he teaches new choreography to his young cast, and finally, the children shared with us some of their own experiences. It was a delightful and insightful workshop which reaffirmed our approach here at Norfolk Academy—giving students permission to fail and encouraging them to take risks at each rehearsal. Day Three was jam-packed with lessons in stage management, the college-audition landscape, Gershwin and Shakespeare. Stage Management presented the organizational skills and methods used on Broadway for application to school productions. It was very helpful for me to explore the newest tricks of the trade, skills and secrets that make the job simpler and more accessible to our students—especially in our tech savvy world!
Norfolk Academy magazine
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spring 2014
27