NACL Announces Teen Workshop this Summer

The North American Cultural Laboratory (NACL) is very happy to announce a new education program.

This August, NACL will offer a week-long theatre workshop for area teens to culminate in a public presentation. Teens (ages 12-18 years old) will work with NACL to create an original, contemporary version of Romeo and Juliet. The students will study NACL-style physical theatre skills, creative play-making, writing, music, song composition, stage fighting, and the vocal execution of Shakespearean text. The students will not be working on a traditional Shakespearean play, rather, they will write and develop their own scenes to create their own original, contemporary performance based on Shakespeare’s famous tragedy Romeo and Juliet. Led by NACL teachers Tannis Kowalchuk and Glenn Hall, the workshop will culminate in a public performance on Friday, August 10th at 8 PM at NACL Theatre.

Students will have an opportunity to experience professional theatre work in a positive atmosphere that encourages communication, creativity, and team work.

Workshop schedule is as follows:
August 6-10, 2007
Monday-Friday, 10 AM to 5 PM
Lunch will be provided by NACL (healthy and organic)
$325
Registration is now open. There will be 15 students maximum.
Call 845-557-0694 to register.
Contact Tannis Kowalchuk for more information or questions
www.nacl.org

About The North American Cultural Laboratory

North American Cultural Laboratory (NACL) is an experimental theatre company founded by artistic director, Brad Krumholz, and actor, Tannis Kowalchuk. NACL Theatre works New York City, and at our summer theatre and artists’ residence in the Catskills. The backbone of NACL exists in our actor training. The company engages in a practical research meant to investigate the impulse, craft and imagination of the actor. Physical and vocal exercises not only develop and autonomize the actor’s creative and performative life, but it also develops a unified group, with shared work experience and a common vocabulary. This training has evolved from our teachers and past collaborators. Tannis Kowalchuk worked for eight years with a Canadian troupe led by Richard Fowler, an Odin Teatret actor and translator of Eugenio Barba’s books. Brad Krumholz was a founding member of Cleveland’s Theatre Labyrinth, which worked with Jerzy Grotowski during his work at Irvine.

NACL feels part of a diverse, multi-layered community. At the center is our artistic core, which also shares all administrative and decision-making tasks. The next layer includes our collaborators, apprentices, and interns who have worked with NACL on performances and training. On a third level, is the connection we share with other North American and international theatre artists who operate as creator based entities. There is a deep and shared desire to exchange work and ideas with one another– part of the reason why acquiring NACL Catskills is so timely.

NACL is a beautiful theatre and artists’ retreat, donated to NACL in 1999. The theatre is the only not-for-profit theatre in Sullivan county. Not only does NACL create performances there, but NACL Catskills is a place for the local Sullivan County community, and an international theatre community to converge to engage in a new world of performance. Each summer, we host and produce The NACL Catskill Festival of New Theatre. Original theatre creators and ensembles from across Canada and the United States gather to perform, teach, exchange training, and hold seminars. Over the coming years, between the Catskills and New York City, we wish to create a company model that serves NACL’s artistic core, its collaborators, students, colleagues, and our present and future audiences, neighbors, and friends.