Thursday, March 26, 2020

Pioneer Valley Theatre News March 26, 2020

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Pioneer Valley Theatre Newsletter
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March 26 - April 15, 2020


Hope you are staying home! Lots more resources in this week's newsletter, in addition to some virtual performances, workshops, and submissions for an online open mic! If you are able, please consider a donation to support low income artists and freelancers in Western Mass

I'll continue posting a weekly newsletter and will share up to the minute information on the Facebook page. Please feel free to add that page as a host for any online events you may be hosting. 


The next issue will include events through April 22. Submit upcoming events via the link below or by emailing me before Tuesday at midnight. Any questions, comments or feedback? Email me at pioneervalleytheatre@gmail.com

Submit Your Theatre Event
YOUR EVENT HERE
$5 per week for your poster and ticket link in top billing!
Email me to reserve your dates.
THIS WEEK IN THEATRE NEWS:
from Howlround

Teaching Performing Arts During the Pandemic
by Tracy C. Davis

From the article: 

As colleges and universities send students home in the wake of COVID-19, instructors all over the world are scrambling to learn how to use online tools such as Zoom and to become more adept with all the features of course management systems, such as Canvas and Blackboard, in order to answer the mandate to teach remote synchronous courses. The timeline for doing this is short but the need is exigent. For teachers of the performing arts, seemingly insuperable challenges complicate the task: how does one teach dance and acting—quintessentially embodied forms dependent on human-to-human observation and whole-body involvement—when no one is in a room together? It is not just that teaching online means time lags, broadband fuzz, and tinny sound. How do teachers assess the aptness of a gesture when it wanders out of a laptop camera’s limited angle range? Can the proficiency of a hip roll be ascertained any way other than with a webcam’s focus on the mid-body, and does this cross a line of a student’s consent to intimacy?

Have you read an interesting article about theatre recently? Send it to me! pioneervalleytheatre@gmail.com
Click to Access: Pioneer Valley Theatre Google Calendar
Click to Access: Pioneer Valley Theatre Personnel Spreadsheet
COVID-19 RESOURCES
Join the LAVA Center's first ONLINE OPEN MIC! Tomorrow - 3/25 - at 2 pm.
A full hour of 'live' entertainment by 17 local artists including
Paul Richmond, Nina Gross, The John Lentz Trio, Lindy Whiton, Michael Nix, Trenda Loftin, Samantha Wood, ItsAllForMeGrog, Jan Maher, Jessica Beck, Zoe Lemos Music, Philip Ragland, Vanessa Query, s. g. collins

HOW?
Go to www.localaccess.org 
Click on the link when it goes live tomorrow and enjoy! Or go to the Silverthorne or LAVA Center Facebook pages for the link.

AND... 
Get in touch with LAVA to reserve your spot for the next
ONLINE OPEN MICs -- Tuesday nights: April 14 and April 28

or for information about our 
ONLINE MONDAY NIGHT LITERARY SERIES scheduled for 
April 6 and April 20 (details to be announced)
Happier Valley Comedy Virtual Mini Shows!
At your local improv comedy nonprofit, we've been getting creative about ways to bring the laughter, joy, and ease directly into your homes. Check out our Virtual Mini Shows! Over the next few weeks, we'll be getting each of our casts to create online shows to keep you entertained during this challenging time. Our shows run between 2 and 25 minutes and feature games, scenes, stories, and standup comedy, all from local performers looking to connect with each other and keep you entertained. See it all at www.HappierValley.com!
Western-Mass Low Income Freelancer Relief

CLICK HERE TO DONATE

CLICK HERE TO APPLY FOR WESTERN-MASS LOW-INCOME ARTIST/FREELANCER RELIEF FUND APPLICATION LINK
Join the New Performing Artists Network, created by Seth Lepore

Eggtooth Production Art Commission

In these uncertain times we offer opportunities for artists in the form of 8 mini-grants for new work.

Eggtooth Productions offers a Request for Proposals to local artists from Franklin and Hampshire Counties. Eight grants of $250 curated by the board of directors of Eggtooth Productions will be offered. Works chosen will be presented online via Facebook, Instagram and eggtooth.org with the possibility of wider distribution. We anticipate this being the first commission in a series. All proposals are due on Monday, April 6th by 5 pm. Choices will be made the following week.

 We seek new artwork that may be shared online and that responds to the pandemic in which we find ourselves.  This includes theater, dance, visual art, audio art, multimedia, animation, video, or any other forms you may imagine.  In this unprecedented time, we encourage experimentation and innovation. Priority will be given to work that might be shared with a wider audience. 

Formats accepted:

Visual art: jpgs of 300 dpi or greater

Video art: maximum length of ten minutes presented via Vimeo or Youtube

Spoken word, literary arts: poetry and short stories, no longer than 1,000 words

Questions, contact Linda McInerney at lmciner@gmail.com

Completely Ridiculous Classes for Completely Ridiculous Times

The Fun of Failure

This one's just about having fun, getting our bodies moving and taking a big ol' laugh bath. Because we need to remind ourselves that it's OK TO LAUGH UPROARIOUSLY IN SUCH CHAOTIC TIMES. That's why.
(Also, the super serious people say that this work keeps us healthy and strengthens the immune system, so there's that too.)

If you want the more academic sounding pre-corona description, here it is: Through games, original song writing, improvisation and a couple of fundamental clown exercises, Completely Ridiculous students will strengthen their ability to listen; to play without shame; to be generous with others and themselves; to be courageous and vulnerable enough to fail, fail again and then fail better. We're also going to have fun, like a lot of fun, maybe too much and then a little more. And laughter, lots and lots of laughter - all in pursuit of unfettered joy, radical acceptance and Empathic Vulnerability*.

Acting as Play

A Clown-based Scene Study class?? You got that right bucko!!
Harness your little idiot's relentless pursuit of fun in order to take big risks before feeling “ready”; put logic aside to make way for a highly imaginative physical appetite/objective; embrace the precarious pleasure of not needing to know what’s coming next; find fun in whatever given circumstances the character has no choice but to endure; and always lead with hope, regardless of the inevitable disasters laid out in the text. 

While working via Zoom the focus of this class will shift to fit the needs and interests of the group. However, as a way to begin, we will focus on group games, scenes and solo material - prewritten monologues and/or original work - all while continuing to explore and strengthen each individuals capacity for Empathic Vulnerability*. 

Each of these ongoing drop-in classes are open to anyone 16 and up. No experience necessary. 

Drop-in Class Schedule

The Fun of Failure: Tuesdays from 2-4pm EST.
Acting as Play: Thursdays 2-4pm EST. 

Class times and frequency are subject to change based on participants availability and interest.

Class Details

​At the moment, each class is happening online using Zoom, and are both pay what you can.

The Fun of Failure ​is limited to 6 people per session. More days/times will be added as needed. For now, sign up will restart every Wednesday and is first come first served. Login information for the Zoom meeting will be shared after signing up.
​To sign up email gabe.levey@gmail.com

Acting as Play is limited to 12 people a session. 4 people will have the opportunity to work each session. Priority will be given to people who have not worked before and once the group is more or less established an order will be put in place. More days/times will be added as needed. For now, sign up will restart every Friday and is first come first served. Login information for the Zoom meeting will be shared after signing up.
To sign up email gabe.levey@gmail.com

If you are interested in more information, questions or concerns please email gabe.levey@gmail.com.
Stay At Home Fest: Online Entertainment Calendar

List of Arts Resources During the COVID-19 Outbreak

Here's a list compiled by 33 Hawley St Arts Trust...

As we go along I will try to make this more visual, but here are the links. Many of today's links are dance-related, but we will expand into other art forms and better organize this as we go.

The Ann Arbor Film Festival is being offered for free as a six day live stream event. Shorts, animation, documentaries, and feature films. March 24 to March 20.
Find that here: http://Aafilmfest.org
*****************
If you have a Instagram account here is a place to find workshops and classes you can join, usually for a fee:
@freeskewl is an emergent platform/series of workshops offered on a donation basis via instagram live. These classes support embodied living in covid times and connect artists who are adapting their teaching in response.
*******************
March 25 7 to 8pm Movement with Lailye Weidman:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1706622456146733/?notif_t=plan_user_invited&notif_id=1584917804043177
******************
A site to explore a range of movement/dance options:
http://www.dancingalonetogether.org
*****************
This a list of arts resources, especially for working artists who are struggling:
https://creative-capital.org/2020/03/13/list-of-arts-resources-during-the-covid-19-outbreak/
***************
Here is a link to online Flamenco classes, pay-as-you-can, created by a Flamenco artist who grew up here in Northampton, Amalyah Leader:
https://www.flamencoworks.org/corona?mc_cid=ca37b28ba7&mc_eid=9c12843217
******************
Also, the Schumacher Center for New Economics has many good materials, articles.
Here's one:  https://centerforneweconomics.org/apply/the-commons-program/
*****************
One more list of dance-related free and fee based events:
https://gibneydance.org/covid-19-resource-list/
Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts

We understand the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting nonprofits in many ways, including increased demand for their services, lost revenue due to closures and cancellations, as well as other challenges. We are happy to announce the COVID-19 Response Fund for the Pioneer Valley. With local businesses partnering to help raise over $1 million, this fund will provide flexible resources to organizations that are working with communities at the intersection of being most vulnerable to the virus and most impacted by inequity. http://bit.ly/C19RFund

Links from last week:
More excellent resources for freelance artists

This article has links to great free online trainings for theatre technology

More Digital Arts and Culture Resources

AUDITIONS & OPPORTUNITIES
The Play Reading Co-op is currently seeking submissions of full length plays from New England writers for a monthly, ongoing reading series. The mission of the co-op is simply for local theater makers to have a chance to get in a room together to work on high quality material for our own learning, enjoyment, and camaraderie. It's also a great way to learn about new works and writers. The reading is intended to be informal and without an audience other than other co-op “members” and potentially a friend or colleague(s) of the writer. If the writer is looking for a discussion or feedback afterward, we are happy to make space for that as well. We are ideally looking for plays with at least 2 female identifying roles. 

http://www.rachelfhirsch.com/play-reading-co-op
WORKSHOPS & CLASSES
Pioneer Valley Theatre Companies
Is your theatre company missing? Email me!
Academy of Music Theatre

Arena Civic Theatre

Black Cat Theater

Chester Theatre Company

CitySpace

Cold Spring Community Theatre

Completely Ridiculous Productions

Drama Studio

Double Edge Theatre

Eggtooth Productions

Exit 7 Players

Franklin County Youth Theater

Ghost Light Theater

Greenfield Community College's Theater Department

Hampshire Shakespeare Company

Happier Valley Comedy

Ja'Duke Center for the Performing Arts

K and E Theater Group

Ko Theater Works/Ko Festival of Performance

Majestic Theater

New Century Theatre

No Theater
Northampton Community Arts Trust

Northampton Playwrights Lab


PaintBox Theatre

Panopera

Pauline Productions

Real Live Theatre

Red Thread Theater

Royal Frog Ballet

Serious Play Theatre Ensemble

Shakespeare Stage

Shea Theater Arts Center

Silverthorne Theater

Smith College Department of Theatre

St. Michael's Players

Starlight's Youth Theatre, Inc.

Strident Theatre

TheatreTruck

Turbulent Times Theater

UMass Department of Theater

UMass Theatre Guild

Valley Light Opera

Westfield Theatre Group

Wilbraham United Players
Want to know even more about events in the Pioneer Valley and beyond,
including reviews, interviews, and previews?
Pioneer Valley Theatre Google Calendar
In the Spotlight, Inc.

Berkshire on Stage
Stagestruck
ArtsBeat Radio and News Column
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