Aimee Art Productions is comprised of talented teaching artists that work with your child to write, collaborate, create and perform in their original theatrical experience. Theatre classes specialize in various techniques including Intro to Acting, Musical Theatre, Improvization, Comedy, Creating a Character, Original Work, Poetry, Storytelling, Shakespeare, and Playwriting. Classes are provided throughout Burbank, Glendale, Los Feliz, North Hollywood, Hollywood, Pasadena, Altadena and Silverlake. Theatre classes culminate with a final performance where your child shares their experience with friends and family.
Children's Plays are also produced at many schools throughout the Los Angeles area. Classic productions such as Cats, Wizard of Oz, and Alice in Wonderland are led by experienced directors, musicians and choreographers to create fun, dynamic performances.
Theatre Acting Tools and Technique
Shakespeare Workshop Teacher: Kathy O’Mara Grades: K to 5th Students will be introduced to the works of William Shakespeare. Using original text students will learn and work with sonnets, monologues and scene work. The original text will be adapted and modified to each student's interest and learning level. Students will have exposure to Shakespeare's work and learn about the different plays and select the text that they wish to rehearse for the production. All students will participate in voice, combat, movement, mask, and stage presence classes. This program is a process oriented class and will culminate in a performance celebrating the original text of Shakespeare.
Write! Star! Direct! Teacher: Ellen Lawler Grades: 4th to 12th Here is a chance to create dynamic theatrical "events" by being the author, actor, designer and director of your work. Using techniques from a multidisciplinary palate, students are engaged in exercises to create mini plays and solo performances based on fact and fiction. Students will sketch each other to create portraits, which then morph into characters. They will draw maps from their memories and current environments, which then develop into set designs. Storytelling techniques are explored for text; then props, costumes, lights, sound, music and movement are all integrated to create a full theatrical experience.
The Dreaded Monologue Teacher: Chad Hamblin Grades: Do you hate finding the right monologue? Memorizing all those lines? Making the right character choices? Keeping our confidence throughout the process? Without the right preparation, the pressure of performing alone for two or three minutes can feel like and eternity! Private monologue coaching can help every step of the way! Wheterh preparing for an audition, play, speech team or college entrance, students will learn how to choose a monologue with confidence, gain simple memorization, techniques, understand character analysis and discover how to make their performance unique and exciting. From Shakespeare to Simon, private monologue coaching will help you command a room and transform your cold-sweat into feverish applause! Taught by award-winning and critically acclaimed Los Angeles actor Chadbourne Hamblin.
Character Creating Your Own Unique Character Teacher: Rita Renee Grades: 5th and up In this class, students work up a character analysis/biography creating a unique character with vocal and physical qualities different from themselves. They then present a final performance of the character relating a story or monologue as that character. This class would need to meet at least 4-5 sessions for the best success. It would also contain preparatory improv games.
Clown Clowning Around with Improv Teacher: Abel Arias Grades: 3rd and up
Students will have a chance to really clown around! The course will begin with basic improv games that increase listening skills, build confidence and encourage support for other actors. Activities will then teach students basic clowning skills such as entrances and exits, basic physical comedy bits, and interaction with everyday objects. Students will use these games and exercises to develop their own clown routine that will be performed in a brief clown show at the end of class.
Improvisation
Improvisation Relation! Teacher: Staff Grades: Preschool and up You are the playwright! You and your cast members create scenes through games and your own experiences “in the moment” Having fun “playing” you will learn the rules and boundaries of the theatre, while exploring relationships, feelings, space and pantomime to name a few!
Improvisation Creation! Teacher: Scott Sayre Grades: 3rd and up Students learn to make choices that work on the stage and, through theatre games and collaborative exercises, they begin to build confidence, teamwork, and drama literacy.
Ensemble Theatre
Theatre Production Intensive Teachers: Aimee Young Hopkins & Kathy O’Mara and team Grades: K to 12th Students put on a performance of a major musical (abridged and adapted for their age level) such as The Sound of Music, Oliver, Grease, Annie, The Nutcracker, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, The Hobbit, Treasure Island, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Aladdin, and more. Students memorize lines, learn choreography, experience costumes, lights, sound and stage directions. This immersion process can be facilitated with 20-50 students.
From Script to Stage Teacher: Scott Sayre Grades: 3rd and up Students create and mount a play that they write themselves, from the very first idea to the final script, to rehearsals and finally to a production. Depending on length of residency and age level, plays can be simple one-acts, ten-minute plays, monologues, or full-length plays, even musicals. Writer/director teaching artist helps students develop ideas and shape their scripts, as well as cast and perform it with flair!
From the Page to the Stage Teacher: Kathy O’Mara Grades: 4th to 12th Students will create and produce an original performance piece based on the skills, talents and interests of the students. Students will participate in Theater games, voice class, fight combat, movement, and line study. Students will participate in a Rehearsal/Production process that will culminate in a final performance. The performance will include students reciting monologues, scene work and poetry, a dance and/or fight combat movement piece and an ensemble closing curtain call. Students will participate in the writing of script, music selections, choreography creation and costume design.
Musical Theatre
Create Your Own Musical Teacher: Ali Mandelbaum Grades: K – 3rd or 4th and up Like to write? Sing? Perform? Then this is the class for you! We start with a blank page and write a mini-musical from scratch! All ideas welcome! We culminate with a performance at the end of the course!
Heritage Teacher: Ali Mandelbaum Grades: 3rd gr and up Want to create and perform a musical about your ancestors? "Heritage" is a collaborative project where you choose the ancestor you'd like to portray in the show, and then we create it together. For the very creative who like all parts of musical theater!
Storymakers! Child-Led Musical Theatre Class Teacher: Elizabeth Hurwitz Grades: Preschool to 2nd This class combines creativity, music, and child-centered choreography to create a nurturing environment in which kids create their own Broadway-style Revue! Students will sing, act out and choreograph Broadway songs so that each number tells a story. By using the music, the storylines, and their imaginations, the children will create movements, characters, and short snippets of dialogue and narration, which evolve organically into their own little one-of-a-kind performance. This is a highly collaborative, mixed-age class where the children run the show and get to use their ideas. The differentiated teaching model is used to accommodate the needs of each different age group, so that children can be challenged accordingly and can enjoy the theatrical process, each at their own level. Though the emphasis is on the process rather than the final product, we invite parents and the community to watch on the last day of class for an informal cabaret-style show, in which the students will get to share all they have learned.
Musical Theater Teacher: Michelle Hanley Grades: Preschool to 12th Creative Movement class with a focus on basic Musical Theater (song and dance) technique, building classroom skills, motor-skill development, and learning to create song and dance combinations. We will build on skills and our routine each week to culminate in a performance demonstration.
Oral Presentation – Performance, Poetry and Storytelling
Fairy and Folk Tales Teacher: Alina Hevia Grades: Preschool to 5th The class will read stories from around the world, finding similarities and differences in the stories of varied cultures, learn about archetypes and structure, and produce our own collection of stories. We will also incorporate the musical narrative tradition, and explore the differences between telling a story through song, and other mediums.
Shel Silverstein Celebration Teacher: Kathy O’Mara Grades: K to 5th Students will participate in Theater games, voice class, movement, and line study of Shel Silverstein's poetry. Students will participate in a Rehearsal/Production process that will culminate in a final performance. The performance will include students reciting poetry, a dance movement piece and an ensemble closing curtain call. Students will participate in the selection of poetry, music choice, choreography creation and costume design.
Kid Rap Teacher: Clara Presby Grades: 3rd to 12th KID RAP is an innovative literacy program designed to encourage students to write stories from their own personal experience, read the stories created by their peers, and work collaboratively in the editing, rewriting and performance of these stories. By connecting the student's literacy development to their own life experience KID RAP fosters a personal connection to the written word that would otherwise be absent. KID RAP culminates with a show where the students perform their stories for family and friends.
Oral Presentation - Performance/ Poetry, Storytelling and "The Newscaster"
Teacher: Rita Renee Grades: 5th and up Students work with putting poetry performances to music, storytelling and delivering their own "news event". Students learn to feel confident with different methods of oral presentation and work on various oral techniques of communication such as vocal articulation and expression as well as physical gesture. Several sessions
Playwriting
Writing Your Experience as a Play Teacher: Scott Sayre Grades: 7th to 9th
Students write their own experience as a play, using writing exercises to trigger memory and free the mind to write what is truthful. Through these exercises, young writers begin to see humor, pathos, drama, conflict and redemption in their own lives and to get it down on paper for actors to perform. When possible, professional actors are brought in to read the students’ work at the half-way point and for the final performance, culminating in a staged reading of these works-in-progress.
