Times

An online course in which the very basics of performing, recording, and editing for voice acting were covered.

Students were trained in multiple types of stage theater, and over the duration of the course they scripted, rehearsed, staged, and finally performed a multi-part sketch comedy performance titled the Sketch Comedy and Improv Cabaret. Lessons included learning enunciation and projection practices, learning how to interact with a director and one's fellow actors, and methods of dealing with unexpected changes in a performance. A three-day professional clowning workshop was also included.

An intensive month-long workshop wherein students wrote, cast, and produced for scripts intended to run for approximately ten minutes. Students were expected to produce material for both stage and screen, and which scripts got produced was decided by vote among the class. Of the seven scripts chosen for production in a six-student class, three of them were mine.

A course focusing on the steps, challenges, and methods of production for both stage and screen. Students in this course worked with the scripts previously mentioned in the Writing for Stage and Screen course, but that course was not obligatory for this one. I chose to be involved in the production of my scripts and the others, which resulted in the 10-Minute Play Festival. Students were expected to source props and materials, filming locations, and work with directors to realize the scripts as closely as possible. Taking part in both courses had the advantage of being able to inform on the performance as both writer and producer.

Stagecraft II was a course which focused on the creation of props, backgrounds, and costumery for use on a live theater stage. For me, it was paired with Theater Workshop II, which was the university's best method of crediting me for my work as Props Master on the production of Spongebob: The Musical. Unlike other students in Stagecraft II my main roll was managerial, delegating who among the prop-focused students would be working on which task. For this I had to understand their prior knowledge of 3D Arts and their level of creativity. The more complex props were my responsibility, and I was expected to draft, design, and implement them within a certain budget and using tools on hand. 

In this course I studied under a master stagecrafter in order to help design and create a system for tracking projection targets on a stage. We used the Processing programming language and a series of Arduino microcontrollers to convert horizontal movement into a 3D simulated environment. After this, our work was used in an official production of Zorro at the Opera Santa Barbara.

A four month course in which students learned the International Phonetic Alphabet in order to study and ascribe signature sounds to various dialects and accents of the English language. Each student was expected to fully understand the sounds of a dialect and be able to create a performance in that dialect. The text for the course focused on Paul Meier's 'Dialects and Accents for Stage and Screen', and I found it extremely informative. I continue to study dialects and accents and would consider them something of a specialty.