theater classes || business classes || summer teen intensives || education home page

Class List for Winter 2010
Theater and Business classes at Portland Center Stage offer unique theater training and related studies for people at all degrees of involvement with the living stage. Our courses are taught by exceptional teachers drawn from Portland’s diverse community of talented professionals, many of whom are familiar to you from PCS’s productions and programs. Improve your presentation and communication skills by enrolling in our Art of Business sequence, or unleash your inner dramatist by joining a Playwriting course. Take the stage in one of our Acting classes, or delve into dance with a Dance Styles course. Whether you’re honing skills you already have or nurturing new ones, PCS has a class for you.

(click on any title for detailed description and instructor bio)

The Meisner Technique/Beginning Stages for the Actor
Instructor: Devon Allen
Course dates: Mondays Jan. 4—Feb. 22, from 7pm to 9pm
Tuition: $200

Voice Acting in Theory and Practice
Instructor: Mary McDonald-Lewis
Course dates: Mondays Feb. 1—Mar. 22, from 7pm to 9pm
Tuition: $225

Playwriting: Play Sculpture
Instructor: Matthew B. Zrebski
Course dates: Saturdays, Jan. 30 – Mar. 20, from 10:00am to 12:00pm
Tuition: $200

Mastering Musicals
Instructor: Mark Acito
Course dates: Mondays, Jan. 25 – Mar. 15, from 7pm to 9pm
Tuition: $200

The Art of Business
Register for an Art of Business course, designed for the business professional. Learn how to use tried-and-true theater techniques to enhance your performance in the workplace.

Social Media Marketing: Tweeting, Friending and You
Instructors: Cynthia Fuhrman & the PCS Marketing Team
Course date: Friday, Nov. 13, from 1pm to 5pm
Tuition: $50

For enrollment, or any other questions, please call Kelsey Tyler
at 503.445.3793 or email him at kelseyt@pcs.org.

Coming In Spring! (Apr. – Jun.)
Acting: Beginning Shakespeare
Instructor: Christopher David Murray

Directing: Beginning Directing
Instructor: Devon Allen

Playwriting: Play Tuning
Instructor: Matthew B. Zrebski

Art of Business: The Art of Communication
Instructor: Barb Klansnic

Art of Business: The Art of the Interview
Instructor: Laura Faye Smith

And more!

The Meisner Technique/Beginning Stages for the Actor
An introduction to the Sanford Meisner approach to acting technique. In this class the actor works to learn and apply beginning Meisner acting principles through a step-by-step progression of exercises that develop her/his ability to work organically, and to create truthful and expressive behavior in acting.

Instructor: Devon Allen
For Portland, Ms. Allen has directed for Miracle Theatre Group, Portland Center for the Performing Arts, Profile Theatre, Performance Works Northwest, and for her company OUR SHOES ARE RED/THE PERFORMANCE LAB. She directs and acts nationally, in England, and Europe. Recently Ms. Allen was honored to be one of five American directors chosen to work with The Director’s Project at Theatre for a New Audience in New York City. Her lab’s Sept./Oct. 2009 production of Howard Barker’s play Ursula, in which she is acting the leading role of ‘Placida’, has been chosen as a participant in the International Barker Festival 21 for 21 and opens the IFCC season.

Playwriting: Play Sculpture
This course is for the playwrite who wishes to put his/her existing draft through the grinder. Both instructor and peer review will be combined with extensive exercises on how to re-draft a play. Radical rewrites and restructuring may take place. The goal: to walk out with the best possible version of the play – fine tuned and ready for submission. The course also includes one individual session between student and instructor outside of actual class time. Pre-requisite: Play Sculpture, The Dramatist’s Toolbox, OR instructor approval. Students must be ready on day one with a complete first/rough draft of a one-act or full-length play.

Instructor: Matthew B. Zrebski Matthew B. Zrebski has had eight original plays produced in Portland, and/or Dallas, TX. His work has been featured at JAW: A Playwrights Festival and at Portland Theatre Works. He is a two-time recipient of the Rosenfield Playwriting award and has been a guest instructor of playwriting for Portland Actors Conservatory, Literary Arts’ Writers in the Schools program, and Portland Center Stage’s Visions & Voices program. In 2009, he received back to back commissions from Oregon Children’s Theatre and both plays will tour throughout 2010 and 2011. Matt holds a BFA in Acting, Directing, and Playwriting from Southern Methodist University.

Voice Acting in Theory and Practice
Benefit from Mary McDonald-Lewis’ 25 years of experience as a VO pro as she shares techniques for commercial copy analysis and interpretation, character creation, and recording booth skills, which you will apply in an ongoing workshop setting.

Instructor: Mary McDonald-Lewis Mary has worked as a professional voice actor since 1979. She was Lois Lane and Wonder Woman on Superfriends, Lady Jaye on GI Joe, Princess Goleeta on Galtar and the Golden Lance and had roles on myriad other cartoons, including Batman, The Mask, Where’s Waldo and more. Her voice has been heard on hundreds of commercials and she now tells millions of people where to go as the voice of OnStar, General Motors’ global navigation system. MaryMac is co-artistic director of Readers Theatre Repertory, was seen most recently onstage in Metamorphoses for ART, and just finished directing A Doll’s House for Theatre Vertigo. MaryMac is Oregon’s national board member for SAG, and is vice president of Portland’s AFTRA council. She holds her MFA in Theatre Arts from the University of Portland.

Mastering Musicals
Sure, Broadway musicals are fun, but there’s more to them than you think. This class focuses on the basic structural components that go into crafting a musical. Through thoughtful analysis and discussion of extensive video footage, both fans and practitioners will gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of this indigenous American art form.
Instructor: Marc Acito When it comes to musical theater, Marc Acito literally wrote the book. His comic novel How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship and Musical Theater won the Oregon Book Award, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and has been optioned for film by Columbia Pictures. Prior to becoming a writer, Acito studied musical theater at Carnegie-Mellon University before embarking on a career as an opera singer.

Social Media Marketing: Tweeting, Friending and You
You have a Facebook page. You read a lot of blogs. You invested in a great website. You may have even sent a tweet or two. But you want to integrate these and other online tools into your communications efforts to build your audience, deepen your relationships, and even strengthen your brand. The marketing team at Portland Center Stage shares with you some of the techniques and strategies that have made PCS a leader in the use of social media networking, as cited by Oregon Business Magazine. The half day workshop is designed to present the basics and share success stories, as well as harness the power of “crowd sourcing” to benefit all participants with new ideas, regardless of how much experience you have with online marketing.
Instructors: Cynthia Fuhrman, Director of Marketing and Communications; Trisha Mead, Public Relations Manager; Natalie Gilmore, Promotions Manager; Michael Buchino, Graphic Designer; Patrick Weishampel, Multi-Media Designer.

For enrollment, or any other questions, please call Kelsey Tyler
at 503.445.3793 or email him at kelseyt@pcs.org.

*Please note: GreenHouse students may cancel their enrollment and receive a partial refund if PCS is notified prior to any courses second class. There will be no refunds given after the second class of any GreenHouse course.