Monday, January 18, 2010

GREEN TROUBADOUR

GREEN TROUDABOUR
Offerings: Free Previews of Five Books, plus Classes & Workshops
with poet-playwright, actor, director & author David Sparenberg
...

To begin, you are cordially invited to a free preview of one or all of my published titles listed, with URL links, below. Please read and enjoy! I look forward to your comments. And if you want to go the distance…purchases are always welcomed! HEALING, TWO PLAYS and THESE ARE THE WORDS are also available through Amazon.com

HEALING, A Book of Poetry: A North American Book of Psalms for the 21st Century and beyond: http://www.lulu.com/content/1096722

THE GREEN TROUDABOUR SOURCE BOOK, Original Shamanic Writing for Actor Training & Performance: http://www.lulu.com/content/6413699

PLAYS for an American Activist Theatre - New and revised plays (political, ritual, pluralistic, ecological) for the Global Village Theatres of the 21st Century of the Green Millennium: http://www.lulu.com/content/3223786

SOUL IN WORDS, Soulful Writing in the Judeo-Christian Tradition - A revolutionary approach to non-violent religion, interfaith dialogue and Earth healing: http://www.lulu.com/content/8201324

DREAMSPHERES, A Book of Stories: Tales & retellings, archetypal stories of dreams and visions: http://www.lulu.com/content/6509408

CLASSES and WORKSHOPS


NEW SUMMER ACTING CLASSES in SEATTLE, at Seattle Central Community College and through the University of Washington Experimental College begin soon: SCCC start June 28, Exco start July 13, 14. Check respective catalogues!


PLAYING SHAKESPEARE UNPLUGGED

This class is currently being offered through the University of Washington Experimental College, Seattle, and will begin again on Wednesday evenings in Jan. Check ASUW ExCo catalogue for registration or register online at www.exco.com; course #27.05

Emphasis on developing individual skills to perform language rich, emotionally, intellectually charged texts without reliance on high-tech support. Rehearsals of monologues, dialogues, soliloquies, scenes, from major plays. Power step toward acting success! Open to all experience levels. Course guiding premise: If you understand Shakespeare, you can act Shakespeare, if you can act Shakespeare, you can act anything.

Class will center on learning to speak and understand Shakespeare’s language and match his linguistic wealth with appropriate physical acting—gestures and movement. Depending on class composition, student age and gender mix—rehearsal and in-class performance materials will be selected from major plays, which include Richard 3rd, Richard 2nd, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest. We even bring in a speech, dialogue and scene or two from Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus.

Although the main characters in Shakespeare are typically royalty or members of the nobility, it is instructor’s working conviction that Shakespeare is a great enabling force for the furtherance of global democracy, inasmuch as his work realizes and brings others into what Harold Bloom calls Shakespeare’s “invention of the human" (as a recognized mode of individual and public consciousness). The class is structured with gender equity in mind; strong female roles are included.


MASKED POETRY – ACTING EAST AND WEST

This class is scheduled to be offered at Seattle Central Community College on Saturdays, starting Spring Quarter, 2010.

This is an acting class open to all levels. We will examine styles, techniques, theater and dramatic structures, storylines and back-stories of plays from Greek Tragedy, Japanese Noh, the Celtic, Plays for Dancers by WB Yeats and even a bit of a drama by the Spanish poet-playwright, Garcia Lorca.

Weeks 1-3 will work with passages from Prometheus by Aeschylus, choral odes from the Theban, or Oedipus Cycle by Sophocles and selections from two plays by Euripides—Medea and The Trojan Women. Students will engage in reading and dramatizing chosen passages, combing aural acting with choreographed movement. Weeks 4-5 will focus on two plays from Classical Japanese Noh theater, one of which is the most popular in the entire repertory, The Feathered Mantel, and the second of which is widely considered the most poetically resonate and poignant, Wind In The Pines. For weeks 6-7, similar work will be done with two masked plays by WB Yeats, derived from Celtic mythology and originally written and performed for the Celtic revival theater which contributed to Irish national identity and the attainment of Irish independence. During weeks 8-9 we will work through a single passage from the Spanish play Yerma by Federico Garcia Lorca, while introducing two plays of my own. Both of these plays, Eloise and Century Chorus, have been performed at the Seattle Asian Art Museum and both integrate stylistic devices from the poetic theater traditions introduced during the previous weeks. Century Chorus is also a masked play.

Throughout the nine weeks we will discuss how poetic dramas retain beauty and power and can best be played to 21st century audiences in an emerging Global Village culture.

There is also a Shakespeare acting class beginning at SCCC in April, Saturday mornings for 3 hours. This new offering is similar to PLAYING SHAKESPEARE UNPLUGGED, but with a focused difference: SAMPLING SHAKESPEARE: Four Plays – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Othello. And... a slight variation of MASKED POETRY, under the title MASKED DRAMAS - CLASSICAL ACTING EAST AND WEST, will be offered through the ASUW Experimental College, on Tuesday nights, beginning with Summer Quarter 2010.


ECO-SHAMANIC PERFORMANCE TRAINING for ACTORS, DANCERS, EDUCATORS, ACTIVISTS and GLOBAL HEALERS

This is a unique, creative training method based on my volume THE GREEN TROUDABOUR SOURCE BOOK, Original Shamanic Writing for Actor Training & Performance.

A dynamic training and exploratory technique for actors, actresses, dancers, educators, healers and activists, dedicated to creative planetary change through cultural Greening, honoring diversity, furthering biotic and interfaith dialogue, finding personal balance, working toward inner and international peace, and helping to restore the Earth and contribute to a renewal of value invested Earth-relationships.

"To create beauty in depth is to return to sanity; to return to sanity is to restore power to the dreamcatcher of Earth; to restore power is to mend the web of creation with reverence for life. This is the shaman’s way. This is how I give it out and in this way it has always gone around the sacred circles of creation and life and comes home to those who will look and listen, and walk in balance, as wisdom."

ECO-SHAMANIC PERFORMANCE TRAINING incorporates components of the Council of All Beings created by John Seed and Joanne Macy and includes, as well, the Land Speech of Chief Seattle as a poignant example of Eco-Tragedy. Also utilized are several original eco-visualizations and meditation exercises. Location of this class offering will be posted at a later date. Pre-registration inquiries are invited.

I am currently involved in creating a performance series under the title NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, which will be offered at a number of retirement residences, senior centers and medical facilities throughout Seattle, beginning in the Summer of 2010. Performance dates and details will be set as they are scheduled. Initial performances will take place at Mirabella and University House.

For further inquiry, registration, or to discuss hosting and organizing one or more of these Offerings in your community, email:

EarthArtsTurtleIsland@yahoo.com Subject: Green Troubadour Offerings.