Educator Extravaganza

FREE professional development day for teachers

Saturday, August 19
9:00 am – 1:00 pm

Take part in workshops and enjoy a free lunch, prizes, networking opportunities, and a free ticket to an upcoming performance of The Bluest Eye.

Event will be held in-person at A Noise Within
3352 East Foothill Blvd, Pasadena CA 91107

See below for 2022 details. Keep an eye out for 2023’s exciting offerings to be announced soon.

Schedule:

8:30 am – 9:00 am: Sign in and refreshments
9:00 am: Welcome and introduction to who we are and what we do
9:15 am: Preview of 2022-23 season featuring A Noise Within Resident Artists and guest actors
9:30 am: Workshops – first session
10:30 am: Workshops – second session
11:30 am: Lunch, prize wheel, surveys, mask making, networking opportunities, and more
12:00 pm: Workshops – third session
1:00 pm: Wrap up and end of day

Workshop Sessions:

Participants will rotate through the following workshops over the course of the day.

Text Workshop with Dr. Miranda Johnson-Haddad

Miranda Johnson-Haddad holds a B.A. from Princeton in Comparative Literature and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies from Yale. She has taught Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at Yale, Vassar, Howard, and UCLA. She has been a Scholar in Residence at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.; the Performance Editor of Shakespeare Quarterly; and a Consultant and Teacher for The Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C. Currently she serves as the Resident Dramaturg at A Noise Within Theatre in Pasadena. Dr. Johnson-Haddad is a frequent speaker at many Southern California venues, including: A Noise Within Theatre; Boston Court Theater; The Shakespeare Club of Pomona Valley (founded in 1904); Los Angeles Opera; and several retirement communities. She is the editor, with Lena Cowen Orlin, of Staging Shakespeare, a collection of essays on Shakespeare in performance, and she is the author of several articles on Italian Renaissance literature and on Shakespeare in performance. The article that she is proudest of having written is entitled “Harry Potter and the Shakespearean Allusion.”

Class Description:
Dr. Johnson-Haddad will lead an informal discussion on how to engage students with Shakespeare’s language and plays. We’ll explore some fun physical ways to help students learn about Shakespearean verse, and we’ll discuss the many contemporary themes (such as the role of women and class differences) that we see in Shakespeare’s plays. Special focus on techniques for teaching A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of Shakespeare’s liveliest and most accessible plays.

“Acting Out: Examining What’s Normal and Exploring Our Emotions” Workshop with Dr. Nikysha Gilliam

Dr. Nikki Gilliam earned a B.A. in English from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, later an M.A. from California State University, in Northridge, California, and most recently, an Ed.D. from Loyola Marymount University in Educational Leadership for Social Justice. She has been an educator in the Los Angeles Unified School District for over 20 years in elementary, middle, and high school and has received various awards and fellowships. She enjoys teaching and learning new things, and has always had a love for the theater, and watching students discover the power of their own voices is one of her greatest joys. Dr. Gilliam makes her home in Los Angeles with her husband and two grown-ish children.

Class Description:
For nearly three years, we’ve heard people describe our lives, our way of being, as the “new normal.” What exactly does that mean? What exactly is normal, and who decides what is? Join us as we, in groups of various sizes, take a closer look at what we normalize and how we feel about those things.

Acting Workshop with Aubrey Saverino

Aubrey Saverino is a professional actor, director, and theater professor with an MFA from The Old Globe/USD and a BA from Occidental College. She currently teaches theater courses at Fullerton College, Moorpark College, and Mt. San Antonio College. Her directing credits include Men on Boats at Mt. San Antonio College, Almost Maine at Ventura College; Epic Theatre Ensemble’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream REMIX at The National Black Theater in Harlem; an immersive and site-specific production of Persephone Rises on Governors Island in New York; and Romeo & Juliet, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Julius Caesar and Antony & Cleopatra for A Noise Within’s Summer with Shakespeare program. As an actor, Aubrey has performed on screen (including Adam Sandler’s The Week Of on Netflix) and in professional Off-Broadway and regional theaters productions around the country including King Lear, Twelfth Night (The Old Globe); Henry IV Parts I & II, Twelfth Night (Independent Shakespeare Company); The Great Gatsby, Love’s Labour’s Lost (Orlando Shakespeare Theater); Pride & Prejudice (Capital Repertory Theatre); In The Next Room or the vibrator play (San Diego Repertory Theatre), the recent one-person show Matinicus, at Chance Theater in Anaheim and is a member of Ensemble Shakespeare Company in Pasadena.

Class Description:
In this workshop you will learn how to activate classical text– transforming it from poetry on the page to an exciting, dynamic performance for the stage. By both physically embodying the characters and thoughtfully decoding the language, you will learn how to bring these words to life for yourself and for your students.