What Method?: The Different Ways an Actor can Train

Author and friend of Add Verb Jessie Fahay has written a book enumerating the different methodologies by which actors train.  This short and practical guidebook gives you the nuts and bolts of four pinnacle training methods, sample exercises for each method, examples of actors who have used these methods, the places where you can find these methods being taught, and further in-depth literature on each method.

Jessie has generously donated a portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book to Add Verb!  To all you aspiring actors, grab a copy in support of your career, and of Add Verb.

What Method on Amazon

Thank you Jessie!

Recently Add Verb received a gift in the mail in the amount of $1000 from the Phineas W. Sprague Memorial Fund for the distribution of our performance anthology Out & Allied. This is a message to all of the youth who worked so hard to create this anthology of performance pieces, and it says to them “your work matters” and “your performance is inspiring” and “we support what you are doing.”  The anthology features monologues, short plays and poems written by youth, and the book trailer created by interns is truly inspiring!  http://bit.ly/oatrailer

Thank you, Sprague Memorial Foundation for standing with Add Verb again this year, and thanks to all of you who have also stood with us since 2000.  A charitable gift, no matter what time of year, does matter to us.  A quick click here “Donate Now” will help either send  a book to a youth organization ($15), pay for an intern for a day ($150), cover the costs of a playwriting workshop ($300), send a performance of The Thin Line or You the Man into a school ($1500), or seed the next play ($5000–and it’s in the works!), it will matter and it will help.

Thank you!

The Add Verb Team

Cathy Plourde M.A., Director of Add Verb Productions, and Denise Bisaillon, Ed.D., Associate Professor and Director of the Graduate Programs in Public Health co-present the play which addresses the health care provider’s role in preventing interpersonal violence and sexual assault. The play was performed in full at the MPHA meeting on October 18^th in Portland, ME and will be presented on Friday at the FMEC in Danvers, Massachusetts.  The play will be the subject of a panel presentation at the APHA in Washington, D.C. later in the month.

At both the MPHA and APHA annual meetings, Plourde and Bisaillon will facilitate a discussion on how theatre can be used in pedagogy, to inform policy, and to help practitioners with their own professional responses to issues of interpersonal violence and sexual assault.

MPHA’s mission is to provide Maine public health professionals with an opportunity to promote and assist with public health training, education, and recognition of model programs.  The APHA annual meeting, a national health event, will take place October 29 through November 2. With more than 1,000 scientific sessions, 700 booths of information, and innovative public health products and services, this is an extremely important and notable meeting in the public health field.

At the FMEC conference in Danvers, Add Verb’s actors will be joined by Dr. Eric Brown from Eastern Maine Medical Center, a long time advocate of the physician’s role in preventing and detecting domestic violence.  Both Add Verb and Dr. Brown will present two different theatre-based strategies that can be utilized in medical education. Philip Heywood, Executive Director of the Northeast Osteopathic Medical Education Network and Julie Schirmer, LCSW, Director of Behavioral Health at the Family Medicine Residency Program of Maine Medical Center will lead a discussion on theatre’s role in cultivating empathy, and its value in medical education programs.

FMI: MPHA, FMEC, APHA

Add Verb is funded in part by MUKTI, a small private foundation dedicated to supporting theatre by queer youth and allies that deals with LGBTQ bullying and safety. This funding has made it possible for Add Verb to reach out to faith-based communities. Reception has been positive. Marvin M. Ellison, President of the RCAD Board of Directors recently called the Out & Allied anthology “a highly imaginative and very constructive way to engage the community, especially congregations and their faith leaders, in dialogue about LGBT issues and particularly youth safety.”

According to a recent Center for Disease Control Morbidity and Mortality report, 85% of LGBTQ youth have been verbally assaulted due to their sexual orientation.  A climate like this makes safe and constructive community conversations about LGBTQ issues and tolerance difficult -  Add Verb has successfully used theatre to conduct conversations like these since 2000.  The Out and Allied anthology is their first publication, which seeks to enable youth to do their own community outreach. The anthology contains youth-written monologues, plays, and poems that help communities understand the importance of allies for LGBTQ youth and to celebrate tolerance, as well as an activists handbook for social change. 

Please join us at any of the workshops if you have thoughts or ideas to share, a desire to write, or simply want to show your support. For your safety and others’ you must register to attend the workshop. The location of the workshop will be shared with you at that time.  To register, call Glen Ellen Roth at 207-221-4264 or email groth@une.edu.

In January we were joined by College of the Atlantic senior Emmy Raviv who edited youth-written works from all over the country and helped us published Out & Allied: An Anthology of Performance Pieces written by LGBTQ Youth and Allies. She also developed outreach and publicity tools for promoting the book to a wide audience.  Emmy is preparing to conclude her academic career at College of the Atlantic by spending the next semester in Israel, researching the use of performance as a tool for community awareness and growth.

This summer, Emily Cortright, Johns Hopkins junior majoring in English and Public Health Studies researched and wrote a literature review (UNE faculty Jen Morton, Nursing consulted) in support of a three year longitudinal study that is currently being conducted on our eating disorder awareness play The Thin Line. She also conducted marketing and outreach for The Thin Line and analyzed a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that revealed startling statistics about the high levels of promiscuity, drug abuse and other risky behaviors in LGBTQ identified youth as compared to heterosexual identified youth.

UNE Department of Social Work graduate student Jill- Mary Hayes has been working on a similar literature review in support of the three year longitudinal study that is currently being conducted on our domestic violence and sexual assault intervention and prevention play You the Man.  We are in our second year of the studies for both shows which are being conducted in six Maine high schools under the supervision of UNE assistant professor of Social Work Nancy Shore and the UNE Institutional Review Board.

Another summer intern, recent graduate of the Greely High School International Baccaulaureate program Emily Hill continued to work on outreach for the Anthology and further develop our relationship with the Religious Coalition Against Discrimination, with whom we will be collaborating to provide opportunities for Maine youth to create new performance pieces for the next volume of the Anthology.  Emily also assisted Add Verb founder and playwright Cathy Plourde to conduct playwriting workshops with youth and faculty at the 2011 Positive Youth Development Institute at the University of Maine at Orono in July.

UNE Business and Marketing major, sophomore Piaoyang Wang Also attended the Positive Youth Development Institute.  She worked with Emily Hill to develop a video trailer for the Anthology, as well as conducted marketing research, development and outreach.  She mailed nearly 200 postcards to targeted individuals in support of the Anthology and posted Add Verb internship opportunities with over 100 colleges in the northeast.

Rivier College junior Business major Heather Dadiego spent the summer doing development and outreach in support of our domestic violence and sexual assault play You the Man.  She represented Add Verb at the annual Maine Health Promotion Conference as well as spearheaded our rebranding efforts to bring our promotional materials into compliance with the UNE style guidelines.

This fall the five Add Verb interns and graduate assistants are all from UNE.  English major and Business Marketing minor, junior Kayla Carr came to us through the College of Arts and Sciences Internship Director Cynthia Simon.  Kayla is analyzing and rewriting Add Verb’s audience and client handouts for both You the Man and The Thin Line.  These shows and their associated materials are designed to educate and empower bystanders, and they tour nationwide to high schools and college throughout the school year.  Kayla will also help to lead Out & Allied writing workshops, cultivating new works for Volume II.

Psychology and English major, junior Julia Rich and Sociology and Psychology double major, junior Brett Peterson have been placed with Add Verb in fulfillment of their required internship for the Psychology major.  Julia will be researching, interviewing and compiling materials for a new Add Verb play on young men’s sexuality and attitudes around violence toward women that is designed specifically for college audiences. Brett is hard at work preparing performance pieces from the Anthology for presentation during an upcoming meeting of the Gay Straight Trans Alliance (GSTA) network, and our Biddeford campus book launch on October 17^th.  Brett will also be continuing our community outreach with the Religious Coalition Against Discrimination as well as analyzing our current use of social media, and developing strategies for improvement.

Finally, Masters of Social Work Graduate Students Carin Stromgren and Elisa Orme will lead and transcribe high school group discussions being conducted this year as part of the three year longitudinal study that is under way in Maine on our two primary shows, The Thin Line and You the Man.

We are currently accepting applications from students interested in spring and summer 2012 internships or research opportunities with Add Verb.  A full list of current projects can be found on our website at http://www.addverbproductions.org/donate_now/internship-opportunities/ or through the UNE College of Arts and Sciences Student Research Opportunities page http://www.une.edu/cas/research/projects/opportunities.cfm.  Add Verb internships are also listed with many universities in the northeast, including Bowdoin, Dartmouth, Tufts and Wellesley.

To present Add Verb’s new Anthology of performance pieces to the GSTA representatives, founder and playwright Cathy Plourde will be joined by University of New England Psychology and Sociology major Brett Peterson, a junior, and an intern with Add Verb this semester.  Cathy and Brett will present strategies for using the Anthology in schools.  Usually when a playwright creates a play, they receive a royalty fee whenever their work is performed. In the case of the Anthology, all of the authors gave up royalties to make it easier for students to produce the works.  What makes O&A perfect for Ally week is that the book is all about cultivating allies among queer and questioning youth.  These powerful, funny, poignant pieces can be staged or done as dramatic readings to help audiences develop understanding and empathy.  The book also includes a youth activism handbook with production guidance and resources, which is GREAT MATERIAL for Gay Straight Trans Alliances!

We at Add Verb are hoping that:

1. Gay Straight Trans Alliances nationwide will use the book in schools

2. Gay Straight Trans Alliances will create new pieces and send them to Add Verb to be included in Volume II of the Anthology

3. Everyone has a good time making their schools and communities safer places to be

Check out the book trailer for OUT & ALLIED ANTHOLOGY, created by UNE Business Administration major, sophomore, Piaoyang Wang and recent graduate of the Greely High School International Baccaulaureate program, Emily Hill.  Get your copy of OUT & ALLIED at local bookstores or online at Amazon.

The workshop, titled “Theatre and Student Activism: A look at Add Verb’s Out & Allied Project” will draw from Add Verb’s recent publication Out & Allied Anthology which includes 34 youth-written monologues, short plays and poems, as well as a handbook for theatre for social change.  Add Verb founder and playwright Cathy Plourde, and two of Add Verb’s summer interns Emily Hill, a recent Greeley graduate, and Piaoyang Wang, a business major at UNE, will perform selections from the book and guide participants as they generate short performance pieces that can be used for raising awareness and inspiring dialogue.  These newly developed works will also be performed during this session by participants, and will be the focal point for conducting a conversation.  Performance material generated through this collaboration will be eligible for inclusion in the second edition of the Out & Allied Anthology.

Plourde has years of experience generating youth writing, using prompts and questions that cultivate material.  These techniques, which are featured in the Out & Allied Anthology and handbook, focus on the LGBTQ experience but are adaptable for nearly any type of topic, action or issue.  Other presenters at the conference include keynote Tony Wagner, author of The Global Achievement Gap, Karen Williams, an expert on adolescent brain development, and Nate Eklands, author of How Was Your Day at School?

Performance pieces will be developed on the theme of constructive community response to social conditions that allow bullying and harassment to persist. In her letter of support, Beth Schultz, BEHS principal said “Dealing with harassment and violence prevention is an ongoing concern to us at Bonny Eagle. It is so beneficial when we can take a positive, rather than a punitive, approach to preventing violence and remind our students that Bonny Eagle High School is a safe and caring place.” A performance of these dramatized stories at BEHS is planned for February 2012.

In addition to offering workshops such as these, Add Verb Productions has recently published the Out & Allied Anthology, featuring youth-written monologues, short plays and poems. The thirty-four performance pieces were selected from well over 100 submissions from youth in Maine and across the country.  The material focuses on the experiences of LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning) youth and the importance of allies. Included is a guide for directing, producing, and writing original pieces and other resources developed from Add Verb’s expertise in developing theatre for social change.  Performance material generated through this collaboration will be eligible for inclusion in the second edition of the Out & Allied Anthology.

The Maine Arts Commission is a dynamic state agency that supports Maine’s arts and culture through a variety of grants and state wide services. This is the third grant that Add Verb has received from the Maine Arts Commission since 2009.

Students from Bonny Eagle High School in Standish, Freeport High School in Freeport, George Stevens Academy in Blue Hill, Searsport District High School in Searsport, Thornton Academy in Saco, Waynflete School in Portland, and Waterville High School in Waterville among others attended the workshops, which were followed by an awards ceremony for participating student writers.

In addition to offering workshops, Add Verb Productions has recently published the Out & Allied Anthology, featuring youth-written monologues, short plays and poems. The thirty-four performance pieces were selected from well over 100 submissions from youth in Maine and across the country.  The material focuses on the experiences of LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning) youth and the importance of allies. Included is a guide for directing, producing, and writing original pieces and other resources developed from Add Verb’s experiences giving workshops on these topics over the years.

The Maine Educational Theatre Association, which organizes the Young Playwrights Festival, is a chapter of the nationwide Educational Theatre Association (EdTA). Founded in 1929, the EdTA is a professional association for teachers and sponsor of the International Thespian Society, an honorary society for students that works to promote and strengthen theatre in education by recognizing and rewarding excellence.