Location: Zoom Room C / Salle Zoom C

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/2520107866?pwd=Z7R43MTNhjgQvzQPTQjuzkaQYq7H91.1

• Kara Flanagan and Joe McCoy, “Acting Curriculum to Travel Across Interior and Exterior Realities and Liminal States of Being”

The practice of acting moves between interior and exterior realities and engages liminal states of being. However, working across such large terrain requires the actor to have a tremendous capacity for applying curriculum with refined introspection and extrospection skills. Here’s the problem: acting education is predominantly an oral tradition, which largely neglects the opportunity for students to engage in documenting their approach and challenges students in recalling vast amounts of instruction from memory every time they create a new character. This workshop focuses on new curriculum and pedagogy for training actors; excerpts from a forthcoming acing book will be shared and workshopped. New acting terms will be presented and put into context for teaching. The primary audience of this book are first year acting students in post-secondary programs and this book also serves as a reference for instructors. With the diversity in learning needs and with the authors’ experiences working with students with a range of abilities and disabilities, visual templates are often very useful to facilitate students’ learning, improve their work habits, and provide a sense of agency in their work, which is extremely important, especially after they graduate and begin working as a professional. Many of these worksheets were created over a 10-year period and have been effective as a practical approach for acting and scene study. Acting—as a technique, an art form, and an experience—can be transformative. It is our belief that this transformation can only take place when an actor’s creative process is focused.

Biographies

Kara Flanagan

Kara Flanagan is a PhD candidate (Education Studies Program) in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Faculty of Education, University of Victoria with a research focus on acting and music education. Kara is a co-founder of an acting conservatory, the Victoria Academy of Dramatic Arts, regulated by British Columbia’s Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills.