Ensemble Theatre visits The Barn
Review of Ensemble Theatre Workshops
On a cold January morning, strange events were happening in the Tack Room at the Barn in Mariemont. (Also known as the Woman’s Art Club Cultural Center, this Ohio Cultural Center is located within a former dairy barn built in 1925 as a model farm for the Village of Mariemont.) A woman, clad in goggles, leather gloves and a lab coat, moved among young children enticing them to stick out their tongues and taste the vapor from the bubbling cauldron (okay, it was a glass mixing bowl) of green liquid. A scene from MacBeth? No – it was Amy King Ruggaber from Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati, holding her wildly successful “Science of Theatre” workshop for kids in grades 3 through 6. Amy and her assistant Lara Rhyner managed to inject a lot of science into the hour and a half workshop, relating their experiments to science concepts the kids may have learned in school (for example, “states of matter” and “sublimation”).
Amy started off by introducing herself and her background as a stage actor. One boy asked, “If you’re an actor, can you fake cry?”, causing Amy’s eyes to well up as she sobbed and wailed very convincingly. She then moved on to show how visual effects are used to accentuate the mood of a stage play. She explained how “vertical smoke” is created to simulate smoke from a fire, by using a haze machine, which uses certain non-toxic chemicals to create smoke that can float, lighter than the surrounding air. Next Amy whipped up some “low smoke”, as used in countless graveyard scenes, with dry ice and hot water. Then she moved on to sound effects, and the session was capped off by the children forming groups and performing mini-plays that used the visual and sound effects they had reviewed in class (one of which included an energetic scene of the boys dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”). In addition to crying on command, Amy also does an excellent impression of a fire truck siren! To view a video of Amy in action during “Science of Theatre” (which includes a cameo appearance by our Saturday morning art teacher Dave Laug ) please visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOVlf38SwBU.
The next workshop, “Theater in Real Life” was attended by middle school students. They let out their “inner monkeys” – the inner person that usually doesn’t show. They wrote down traits of their hero – brothers, aunts, moms, famous people, friends – then circled traits they shared and set goals of how to acquire those traits. Next they had to come up with traits of a successful actors and performers – confidence, talent, approachability, imagination – and set goals for themselves to emulate those traits. The message of this session was “fake it till you make it” – definitely good advice for navigating through life when it hands you a challenge! The following Saturday, the Barn hosted workshops entitled “Stage Fright” and “It’s not WHAT you say, it’s HOW you say it.” These well-attended workshops presented by Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati were a great draw to the Woman’s Art Club Cultural center for children and teens interested in the art of theater. After watching Amy at work, I am convinced that actors may make the best teachers, able to keep students engaged simply through voice and body language, just as they captivate an audience while performing on stage.
Submitted by Lynn Long, Woman’s Art Club Cultural Center
