How to Register
Call the Workshop at 847.866.6597. We accept VISA or MC.
Or download, print and complete this registration form, and mail
it to us with your check or credit card information.
10% Discount
For all students
attending more than one class in the same session, we offer a 10% discount
off the second class of equal or lesser value. (Offer good September
through May.)
Refund or Transfer Tuition Policy
Tuition is refundable or transferable, minus a $75 administrative fee for each class dropped, only if the Workshop is notified by the next business day after your class has met. Students are responsible for notifying the Workshop that they wish to drop a class; not attending does not constitute an official withdrawal. Classes may be cancelled due to low enrollment. Tuition will be refunded promptly. Cancellations may be made at the last minute and students will be notified by phone.
Make-Up Class Policy
If for any reason a class is cancelled for an unforeseen circumstance, a Make-Up will be scheduled for the cancelled class. No refund will be offered.
Important Dates to Remember
Sept 6
Young People’s Classes Begin Sept 13
No Classes / Rosh Hashanah Sept 22
No Classes / Yom Kippur Sept 24
Adult Classes Begin Nov 21 - 24
No Classes / Thanksgiving Feb 4
Youth & Adult Spring Classes Begin Mar 31 - Apr 5
No Classes / Spring Break (Youth Classes Only)
Scholarships
The Workshop is pleased to offer a limited amount of need-based scholarships to its students. To apply for scholarship aid, please download the application form and send it to the address below.
Children's Scholarship [pdf]
Adult Scholarship [pdf] Piven Theatre
927 Noyes St. #110
Evanston IL 60201
ATTN: Scholarship Committee
|
|
Take a risk! Play a game! Tell a story! |
|
|
 For 35 years, the Piven Theatre Workshop has remained a leading and acclaimed
training center for both children and adults. We happily accommodate all
levels of experience, from professional actors honing their skills to beginners
who wish to explore their creativity through the theatre arts. By focusing on
the communal experience of theatre and the ensemble as a whole, we celebrate
each individual's unique presence and personal expression, fostering both the
discipline and the freedom that are essential to the art of theatre.
Our superb team of instructors, many of whom have studied at Piven since childhood, share a cohesive
view of the craft and strive, with their students, for truthfulness in each
moment,
creating an invigorating
and stimulating learning environment.
Youth Classes
Our purpose with young people is to focus their natural sense of play
on the creative process of theatre. Children may indeed be natural
people but, contrary to popular mythology, rarely natural actors. We
use Story Theatre and Theatre Games, elements of the Stanislavsky system,
mime, a basic focus on "the other person," and concentration
on the task at hand to counter that self-concern that is so often self-defeating.
The tale is told, the scene or event played in words and spaces the
children help to find. A kind of community is the aim and, in our experience,
often the result. Our purpose is less to make professional performers
of the children than to foster both the freedom and the discipline
that constitute the theatre experience.
For young people, we offer a fall session, a spring session and a
six-week Summer Institute.
Adult Classes
At its best, study and exercise within the theatre discipline is an invigorating
process. It takes from life to give back in fuller measure. It distills experience
in order to re-create the life spirit when it may be in decline. Theatre promotes
fresh insights and the energy it generates is called presence: manifest awareness
in the moment of performance. This unteachable essence is what we strive for
in all the workshops. In script work presence is not possible outside the
nature of the text. This understanding must be incorporated into any concept
of "naturalistic"acting. Our scene work is geared toward finding
the nature of the text and making it accessible to the actor. Thus… the
games we play, the exercises we devise, the scenes we study, the stories we
stage. From our classes has evolved a company of actors that forms the nucleus
of our professional acting ensemble.
Students are required to attend a performance
of the production that is running during the session in which they are enrolled.
It is essential that students attend all the productions of the Piven Theatre
subscription season. This vital component not only reinforces the symbiotic
relationship between the class work and performance, but productions (either
scene, story, adaptation or acting "style") are often used as points of departure
for more intensive class exercises; to teach the process. See the shows, develop
a context for the games you play, the scenes you work on, the theater language
we speak.
|
|
