Last semester Visiting Professor of Theatre Season Ellison saw a need in the acting program at Wooster, and jumped to fill it. The Actor’s Lab, which meets Wednesdays at noon in the James Wise Acting Studio, is a venue where students from all majors can go to work on monologues and scenes, get help with presentations, or even learn about different acting techniques.
“I always feel like as theatre majors at a small liberal arts college we’re missing out on something,” said Nina Takacs ’11. “We focus a lot on theory and scholarship and don’t get a lot of practical experience. So it’s nice to have something like this.”
Rather than establishing a set curriculum, Ellison asks the actors who participate in the Actor’s Lab what they want to work on, then forms a schedule based on that. Last semester, students wanted help preparing to audition for the spring production of “Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off,” so the Actor’s Lab held a four week audition workshop. Ellison helped students learn how to choose appropriate monologues for their own acting types, and then helped them to polish those monologues for the audition.
“This semester there’s been a request to work on scene work,” said Ellison, “So we’re going to do some partner stuff. We’ve also had a request to do some song work as well.”
Ellison hopes people from the music department will consider coming to the actor’s lab in order to work on some of the acting aspects of their singing. In general, she would like to extent participation to students in other disciplines. “I would love to see it expand so that we can hit more of the student body and offer the great work that we’ve been doing to a larger group,” she said.
The Actor’s Lab will also be bringing in several presenters this semester to do workshops on different acting techniques. Visiting Professor Penny Cole will be leading two workshops on the Viewpoints method and Katherine Burke, who is currently serving as the dialect coach for “Mary Queen of Scots,” will be leading a workshop on Linkwater.
“I’m really hoping that people will come in next week when Katherine is here,” said Ellison. “This is something that we would have to pay hundreds of dollars for if she weren’t already coming in to do things for us.”
Bronwyn Schlaefer ’12, a regular attendee, appreciates the chance to work on her skills.
“It lets you stay in shape,” she says. “With so few auditions every year, it can be hard to get back into it.”
“It’s nice because it’s sort of run by us,” said Allison Wadleigh ’10. “We have power to say let’s do this, let’s do that. Which is sort of what liberal arts is.”
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