Dramaworks 2007 Instructors
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MARTY CHAN
Teaches A Playwright’s Confession: How to Keep Your Lies Straight
Playwright Marty Chan is best known for his play Mom, Dad, I’m Living with a White Girl, which ran off-Broadway in 2004. The play has been produced across Canada, won a Sterling Award for Best New Work, and received the ACTS Award from Harvard University. He wrote the Fringe hits The Bone House, Polaroids of Don, and Maggie’s Last Dance. Marty wrote and performed weekly humour commentaries on CBC Radio. He was story editor for the hit TV series Incredible Story Studio. His kids’ book The Mystery of the Frozen Brains won the 2005 City of Edmonton Book Prize. The sequel, The Mystery of the Graffiti Ghoul, was nominated for the Golden Eagle Children’s Choice Award. He is s a regular contributor to the Edmonton Journal. Currently he’s working on a new play for the 2007 Edmonton Fringe Festival. www.martychan.com
BRETTA GERECKE
Teaches Lighten Up! Theatrical Lighting Design
Bretta Gerecke grew up in Winnipeg and has resided in Edmonton for the past 13 years. She holds a Bachelor of Interior Design from the University of Manitoba and a Master of Fine Arts in Theatre Design from the University of Alberta. Bretta is the resident designer at Catalyst Theatre where she has designed world premieres that have toured internationally. Bretta also works regularly at the Citadel Theatre, CanStage, Workshop West Theatre, Edmonton Opera, the River City Shakespeare Festival, Theatre Calgary and the Globe Theatre. She is the recipient of ten Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Set and Lighting Design and the Enbridge Award for Best Emerging Artist, and was short-listed in 2006 for the prestigious Siminovitch Prize. Bretta also designed a summer home on Devil’s Lake, Alberta, and works as an archaeological illustrator.
HEATHER INGLIS
Teaches Is There a Director in the House?
Heather Inglis is a director, dramaturge and theatre instructor with credits across the country. Recent directorial credits include The Enchantment, Get Away and The Mercy Seat, all with her own company Theatre Yes. Over the years Heather’s work has included contracts at the Shaw Festival, the Citadel Theatre, Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre, Northern Light Theatre, Alberta Theatre Projects, Azimuth Theatre, Stage Polaris, Theatre Junction, the Unconscious Collective, Alberta Playwright’s Network, and NUOVA. Heather is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada.
JAMES MacDONALD
Teaches From the Page to the Stage
James is an award-winning actor and director based in Edmonton. He is the Associate Artistic Director at Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre, where he has directed Equus, I Am My Own Wife and Stones in his Pockets. Elsewhere, his directing credits include Much Ado about Nothing (CanStage), The Myth of Summer (Alberta Theatre Projects), and The Old Ladies (Shaw Festival). He is the founding Artistic Director of the River City Shakespeare Festival, where he has directed seven productions including The Taming of the Shrew, The Merry Wives of Windsor and King Lear. James regularly teaches acting at the University of Alberta, and was previously a Dramaworks instructor in 2005. James has worked as an actor for theatres across the country. He is a two-time Sterling Award recipient for performances in Einstein’s Gift and Of Mice and Men.
SUE MORRISON
Teaches Discover Your Clown
Sue Morrison is a director, teacher, clown, and creator of some of the hottest new clown theatre productions. Since 1993 Sue has been the Artistic Director of the Theatre Resource Centre in Toronto, where she began as Richard Pochinko’s apprentice in 1980. She has also performed and taught with The Second City since 1987. Sue is increasingly sought-after as a teacher both internationally and in Canada. She has recently given workshops in Argentina, Brazil, UK and Sweden, and was a guest speaker and teacher at the New York Clown Theatre Festival. As a director and creator her work draws together the diverse elements of Native American and European clowning to create unique and groundbreaking performance spectacles which have been produced in theatres around the world for the past 20 years. Her students are currently featured in Cirque du Soleil, Slava’s Snow Show, Blue Man Group, Second City and on other international stages.
BRADLEY MOSS
Teaches The Business of Directing
Bradley Moss is the Artistic Director of Theatre Network and the founder and producer of Nextfest — a multi-disciplinary emerging artist festival. Bradley has worked as an actor and director across Canada. His training includes an MFA in Directing from the University of Alberta and a BA in Drama & Business from Bishop’s University. Bradley’s most recent directing credits include the Sterling Award-winning new play Summer of My Amazing Luck, Never Swim Alone, True West, Girl in the Goldfish Bowl, The Leisure Society, Hosanna, A Skull in Connemara, and the Sterling Award-winning musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
DAVID OWEN
Teaches A Word is a Word is a Word: Experimental Writing for Theatre
David Owen is a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at the University of Calgary and a playwright, director, actor and sound designer. He is an associate member of the Playwrights' Guild of Canada (PGC) and a member of Alberta Playwrights' Network (APN). He is best known for his plays Excess Unwanted Growth and Hang Gliding Over The Abyss and his contributions to the Nextfest shorts. Some of the shows he has directed are Doctor Faustus for the University of Lethbridge, The Importance of Being Ernest and Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) at Red Deer College, The Birthday Party and Doctor Faustus at Walterdale Playhouse and the Canadian premiere of My Head Was A Sledgehammer for his own company, Manual Transmission Theatre.
JON PRICE
Teaches Behind the Scenes: A Technical Theatre Overview
Jon Price is an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Technical Theatre Production Program at the University of Alberta. He has been head of Set Construction for the Citadel Theatre (Edmonton), Stage West (Edmonton/Calgary and Winnipeg), Sunshine Theatre (Kelowna) and Carousel Theatre (St. Catharines). He has also worked in television and on numerous feature films in Canada, the United States and Europe. He is a member of I.A.T.S.E. and the Woodworkers’ Guild of Canada. Jon is a graduate of Niagara College Technical Theatre Program and apprenticed through the Shaw and Stratford Festivals.
MEREDITH SCOTT
Teaches Speakeasy: Stage Dialects
Meredith Scott is a voice, dialect and acting coach,
and a graduate of the Central School of Speech
and Drama, the University of Toronto, and Sheridan
College. Over the past nine years she has worked
across Canada with companies such as Soulpepper
Theatre Company, the Grand Theatre, and the Atlantic
Theatre Festival. In Edmonton she has taught for the
University of Alberta and Theatre Alberta’s Workshops by Request program,
and has coached dialects for several shows at the Citadel Theatre including
A Christmas Carol, West Side Story and I Am My Own Wife. She is also
Director of the Foote Theatre School at the Citadel, and thrilled to be back at
Dramaworks for a second time.
DAVID STORCH
Teaches Acting Masterclass
David Storch has been working nationally as an actor and director for 20 years. He teaches at the National Theatre School in Montreal and at George Brown College in Toronto. He grew up in Edmonton, where he was drawn out of his shell and into a life in the theatre by Ken Agrell-Smith at Harry Ainlay High School. He studied at the University of Alberta and is a graduate of the National Theatre School. Edmonton audiences may remember his Citadel Theatre productions of The Goat, or Who is Sylvia, Blue/Orange, Einstein’s Gift and The Beauty Queen of Leenane. At the same theatre he has performed in Tartuffe, Wit, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Hamlet, The Servant of Two Masters, Measure for Measure and Democracy. David has worked at almost every major theatre from Victoria to Halifax, and is adamant that nothing is better than Shakespeare.
KATHLEEN WEISS
Tteaches A Show to Call Your Own
Kathleen Weiss is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Drama at the University of Alberta where she teaches Directing, Acting, and Play Creation and coordinates the MFA Directing Program. Kathleen has an extensive background as a director, artistic director, dramaturge and playwright. She is a former Artistic Director of Vancouver’s Women In View Festival and Tamahnous Theatre, where she is remembered for her innovative stagings of Shakespeare, notably The Haunted House Hamlet and Mr. and Mrs. Macbeth. Kathleen has taught acting for the Vancouver Playhouse School, Studio 58, Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia. Kathleen spent this past summer in London, England where she directed a new play Wanted, about women pirates for Theatre Textere.
DONOVAN WORKUN
Teaches Yes, Let’s! An Introduction to Improv
In 1990 Donovan formed The Atomic Improv Co., North America’s first two-man improv show, which quickly gained popularity and was named the Number One Comedy and Variety Act in Canada in 1992 and 1993. Atomic Improv won the prestigious "Just For Laughs" Improv Festival in 1994 and World Improv Championship in Los Angeles in 1996, where they competed for the third time against the likes of Brad Sherwood and Wayne Brady from ABC’s Whose Line Is It Anyway? Donovan has performed hundreds of shows and taught improv workshops for some of Canada’s largest corporations in the past 10 years and has had the honour of performing alongside such Canadian comedy greats as Joe Flaherty, Dave Thomas, Colin Mocherie and Mike Myers. www.atomicimprov.com