Workshops

**This workshop can be modified to fit: a high school classroom, a college course, a rehearsal process, or an English department looking for a new way to teach Shakespeare. Using a series of games, exercises, and on-your-feet discussion, I will guide a group towards a deeper, kinesthetic understanding of the Bard's poetry and prose.**

      Maybe your drama program's upcoming season includes Romeo and Juliet. Or you've reached the  unit when the entire ninth grade reads A Midsummer Night's Dream. At some point, students will likely encounter Shakespeare at least once before finishing high school. 

      My approach to teaching Shakespeare gets students on their feet and exploring the text from a body-first approach. We act out operative words and phrases, apply musical analysis to punctuation, and develop a set of gestures specific to each character, gaining a deeper understanding of the language word by word. The experience can be silly or serious depending on the text in question, but it is always engaging!

"Anna Basile brings Shakespeare back to life for students. Her understanding of and passion for the language is contagious, and when paired with getting up on their feet, you can see the meaning of the words finally click. Anna makes dense material crystal clear without losing track of the fun."

-Jordan Butterfield, Director of Education at Trinity Repertory Company

"Anna is an exciting theatre practitioner and educator, engaging immediately with students and creating an energized studio space that welcomes curiosity and exploration while encouraging collaboration and support... Offering guidance in specific, accessible terms, she shifted easily from an exploration suitable for newer theatre artists, to a workshop that considered advanced performance concepts. My students responded immediately to Anna's generosity, imagination, and expertise; they remained inspired, referring back to her visit as they continued their work through the term."

-Casey Seymour Kim, Professor of Theatre at Rhode Island College

"I’ve taught Hamlet for nearly every one of the fifteen years I’ve been a high school English teacher, but I’ve never quite gotten the play on its feet and in students’ ears the way that Anna helped me to do. Her approach to the text made for deeper analysis and greater appreciation; where I’ve more than once fallen into the “mousetrap” of overexplaining a joke or deconstructing wordplay, she invited students to see and hear that for themselves. She showed students how to say, play, and embody the work, such that they could learn layers of character, conflict, and meaning in a single monologue. Working so closely with the text itself allowed us to “cut to the quick” of the play, as Claudius bids Laertes to do. There are whole worlds contained in Shakespeare’s words, and Anna’s pedagogy made those available to even the most theatre-reluctant of my students. I highly recommend inviting her to your class, camp, or school!"

- Emma Stenberg, English Teacher/Department Chair

                                        Recipient of Dorothy Gifford Award for Excellence in Teaching

                                        Lincoln School

Taking an outside-in approach to character creation, this workshop starts with a focus on observation of the world around you, and how to incorporate elements of your observation of the natural world into a character with depth and breath. 

An introduction to Lecoq's Physical Theatre practice. This workshop could focus on one specific improvisational structure or provide exposure to multiple methods of creation. Depending on the age and experience level of the students, we could focus on various stages of the devising process (how to start, how to further develop an existing idea, or how to polish a work in progress). 

Often we consider "writing" to be something that happens alone, sitting down at a computer. What if writing could be more than the brain-bound attempt to pin language to a piece of paper? Improvisation is a form of writing, one that employs the creativity and innate wisdom of the body before our brains get in the way. In this workshop I will introduce scenarios for students to play inside of, and propose to them to the concept that writing can be a dynamic, fully embodied experience.

Forget what you thought you knew about stage performance. Perfection is the enemy, failure is the goal! In this workshop, we aim to (re)discover our inner child's sense of play, curiosity, and vulnerability, bringing depth, honesty, and a heightened level of presence back into our work. Prepare to get sweaty, snotty, and maybe even a little teary-eyed.