Workshops and Special Events
Columbia Lit Readers Theater
It’s story time for grown-ups! Come to our ‘Theater of the Imagination’ and listen to award-winning short fiction read by faculty and students of Columbia Colleges’ Theater Department. Each spring ‘Columbia Lit Reader’s Theater’ brings the short story to life through featured readings of award winning classic and new short fiction.
Title: Columbia Lit Readers Theater
Date: April 14 – 15, 2009
Time: 1:00
Contact: Catherine Slade
Categories: Performance
Descriptions:
It’s story time for grown-ups! Come to our ‘Theater of the Imagination’ and listen to award-winning short fiction read by faculty and students of Columbia Colleges’ Theater Department. Each spring ‘Columbia Lit Reader’s Theater’ brings the short story to life through featured readings of award winning classic and new short fiction.
Valor by Richard Bausch
Read by Brian Shaw
Richard Bausch writes this little masterpiece about a man whose life is spinning out of control. He is a drunk who saves a bus load of kids only to come home to find out his wife is leaving him.
It’s story time for grown-ups! Come to our ‘Theater of the Imagination’ and listen to award-winning short fiction read by faculty and students of Columbia Colleges’ Theater Department. Each spring ‘Columbia Lit Reader’s Theater’ brings the short story to life through featured readings of award winning classic and new short fiction.
Naked Women Playing Chopin by Louise Erdrich
Read by Kendra Thulin
Agnes DeWitt is passion driven to play Chopin naked, first as a novice named Sister Cecilia, and then as the common-law wife of German immigrant farmer Berndt Vogel. The flooding Red River sweeps the Caramacchione piano, Brendt and Agnes away. Berndt drowns. Agnes teaches piano and tries to manage Berndt’s farm.
Workshops and special events, one-credit classes and guest lectures and q and a's round out the year at the Theater Department. Honored guests to the department have included:
- Carol Burnett
- Alan Arkin
- Harold Prince
- Mark Hollman
- Jim Corti
Special workshops/ one-credit classes have included:
- Hope is Vital workshops in engaging with community issues, led by Michael Rohd;
- Viewpoints, creating theater by using a physical vocabulary for the stage, led by Jennifer Hubbard;
- Physical Comedy, taught by professional clown and mime artists;
- Experimental Sound, taught by sonic artist Eric Leonardson;
- Classic Text, taught by actors expert in the classical repertoire;
- Voice Over, taught by industry professionals;
- Audition Skills, in which students are exposed to a wide variety of audition situations - cold reading, ear-prompting, voice-over, physical theater, improv and on-camera;
- Monologue, in which students are coached in the selection, preparation and performance of audition monologues.
Theater Scholarships
Betty Garrett Musical Theater Scholarship Fund
- Theater Majors with a concentration in Musical Theater Performance
- Full-time student; junior or senior level
- Cumulative grade point average 3.0 or higher
- Amount of the award: $1000 towards tuition and fees
- Deadline: March, 2009
- Applications are available in the Theater Department Office, Room 300, 72 E. 11th Street, Chicago, IL 60605
David Talbot Cox Scholarship Fund
- Theater Majors with a concentration in Directing
-
Demonstration of artistic talent, academic
accomplishment and financial need - Full-time student; junior and senior status
- Cumulative grade point average 3.0 or higher
- Amount of the award: $3000 stipend
- Deadline: March, 2009
- Applications are available in the Theater Department Office, Room 300, 72 E. 11th Street, Chicago, IL 60605
Freshman Achievement Award
- Open to full-time Theater majors actively involved as a designer, performer, or production staff on Theater Department Mainstage or Workshop productions
- Have to have completed 32 or fewer hours of credit at Columbia College
- Cumulative grade point average 3.0 or higher
-
Amount of the award: $1500 awarded; Fall 2005
semester - Deadline: March, 2009
- Applications are available in the Theater Department Office, Room 300, 72 E. 11th Street, Chicago, IL 60605
John Murbach Scholarship of the Michael Merritt Awards
- Open to full-time Theater majors seeking experience in the area of stage design
- Have to have completed 60 hours of credit or more at Columbia College.
- Cumulative grade point average 3.0 or higher
- Amount of the award: $1000 stipend
- Deadline: March, 2009
- Recipient of award chosen by faculty
The Saints Scholarship for Performing Arts Students
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Open to full-time Theater, Dance, or Music majors who
have a desire to pursue a career in the
performing arts including technical careers such as
sound, lighting, set or costume design -
Applicant must be entering their senior year at
Columbia College in the fall 2009 - Amount of the award: $2000 awarded for the academic year
- Deadline: March, 2009
- Applications are available in the Theater Department Office, Room 300, 72 E. 11th Street, Chicago, IL 60605
Steven M. Hoenig Memorial Actors Fund
- Open to Theater majors
- Junior status
-
Amount of the award: $1000 stipend awarded; Fall
semester of the Senior year -
Deadline: varies
- Applications are available in the Theater Department Office, Room 300, 72 E. 11th Street, Chicago, IL 60605
Liberace Scholarship
- Open to Theater majors
- Junior or Senior status
- Amount of the award: $1000 grant each semester of the 2009-2010 academic year
- Deadline: varies
- Further information regarding the audition/interview process and applications are available in the Theater Department Office, Room 300, 72 E. 11th Steet, Chicago, IL 60605
- Contact person: Caroline Latta, (312) 344-6138
Contest
The Annual Theodore Ward Prize for African-American Playwriting:
An annual playwriting contest sponsored by Columbia College Chicago Theater Center, the Theodore Ward Prize for African-American Playwriting is nationally acclaimed for recognizing the outstanding individual accomplishments of African-American playwrights; along with their growing importance to the shape and direction of American drama in our time. Former contest winners have held a mirror up to a myriad of subject matters; the post-American Civil War Reconstruction experience, Negro League baseball in the 1940's, the 1930's Tuskegee syphilis experiments, along with the most recent winner, Ten Square, by Shepsu Aakhu, spring 2009. The goals of the contest are as follows:
- To uncover and identify new African-American plays addressing the African-American experience that are promising and producible.
- To encourage and aid playwrights in the development of promising scripts.
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To offer an opportunity for emerging and
established playwrights of African-American descent to be exposed to Chicago's professional theater community through staged readings and/or fully mounted productions.
For more information on the submission process, prizes, and deadlines please contact contest facilitator, Andrea Dymond at (312)344-6340.