Are you or the kids feeling pent up? The best prescription might just be for some instruction in the ways of theatrical release. Such teachings can now be had from Acorn Productions, in the first session of acting classes held at their new space in Westbrook’s beautiful Dana Warp Mill. Acorn offers eight-week courses for your five-year-olds, your teenagers, and all the siblings in between, and they will also provide a series of adult workshop opportunities to cultivate the thespian in you.
Theater education joins the variety of professional performers already regularly visiting Acorn's space. Because Acorn’s projects include the Naked Shakespeare Ensemble, Phyzgig, the Cassandra Festival, and the Maine Short Play Festival, as well as affiliations with area dancers, jugglers, and physical comedians, students can tap into a rich network of practicing artists. Producing director and instructor Michael Levine sees this development as a step in Acorn’s wider goal of bringing together all levels, genres, and ages of the theater community. “Starting to realize the potential of this space, and the synergy of having so many people using it, is very exciting,” he says.
During this first of what will become regularly-offered class sessions, kids can be introduced to theater and character study in two courses with Keith Anctil, or can learn the basics of improv from Celeste Bridgford. Bridgford’s class, for students eight to ten years old, will build character depth through play, games, and general fun. In Anctil’s "Intro to Children’s Theater" course, for kids aged five to eight, everyone will choose an animal and explore the finer points of talking and moving as that animal. The created creatures will then engage at a tea party, a football game, and a snowball fight. In Anctil’s course on "Character Study," for kids aged ten through thirteen, students will begin by creating big, bold character types, learn how these characters are motivated, and explore how they interact with each other. Later, they’ll take a look at scripted characters, and apply their earlier learning to texts.
“My approach to kids’ acting is to use their natural uninhibited energy levels, free imaginations and busy bodies to enhance their work,” says Anctil, who has been teaching K-12 theater for more than eight years with the Theater Project, at Wescott Junior High School in Westbrook, and in a pilot Acorn class last fall. “They learn valuable skills for life,” he says. “But it’s fun for them, because it’s free license to be as silly as they want.”
Teenagers can train in Shakespearean acting with Levine and Michael Howard, in an introductory version of the professional Naked Shakespeare Ensemble. Exposing students to the teachings of rotating Naked company members, Levine and Howard will introduce teens to the guiding methodology of Naked’s Shakespeare training. This includes two overriding goals, says Levine. “One is to make acting Shakespeare more of a visceral experience. Because the language is so complex, actors tends to approach it in an intellectual way,” he explains. “Our goal is to help actors not just understand the language, but to feel it.” Secondly, Acorn’s Shakespeare training emphasizes the communication, rather than the presentation, of the Bard’s language, removing the stagier trappings of set and costume. The Shakespeare class, like all other youth classes, will present a showcase performance sometime in mid-March.
