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The Civilians frequently tours around the country with stops at colleges around the country. If you're interested in the Company performing at your school, please email us at info@thecivilians.org. There are a number of other ways to bring the work of The Civilians on your college campus. You can create your own productions of many of our plays. Civilians company members teach WORKSHOPS and give LECTURES at schools around the country. The Civilians often tour recent productions, and RESIDENCIES at colleges and universities have often provided crucial support as we develop new work.
Here is a video from our recent class at the Brooklyn High School of the arts! They conducted interviews about the sixties and used them to make a play.
For more videos, click HERE!!
Some of the schools we've worked with:
Princeton University
Yale University
Carnegie Mellon
Colorado College
Connecticut College
Sarah Lawrence College
NYU/Tisch
Dartmouth College
Georgetown University
Brown University
UCSD
Wesleyan University
Kingsborough Community College
National Theatre Institute
Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts
WORKSHOPS & LECTURES /
Civilians workshops and master classes are designed as an introduction to The Civilians work and method of creating theatre. Sessions teach students the investigative techniques that The Civilians uses to create new work and take them through a brief creative process.
WORKSHOPS
Workshops are led by experienced Associate Artists with the Civilians, who have collaborated on the creation of past works and have experience in all of The Civilians’ methods. The workshop participants will receive an overview to the Civilians method—an innovative and collaborative approach to creating theatre. Through acting exercises and interview practice, the participants will gain insight into the process of creating a Civilians show, and learn first hand how the Civilians approach is useful in creating art and performance work. Skills taught include:
• Engaging peers and community members in meaningful dialogue about the chosen topic
• Putting together a successful interview
• Research techniques
• Presenting interview material back to the class
• Performance techniques
• Writing and editing skills to build a monologue or scene from interview material
ONE-DAY MASTER-CLASS
In a one-day Master Class (5 hours is recommended) students are taught about conducting interviews: how to approach an interview subject; how do you explain the project, how do you listen to them while they’re talking so that you absorb their persona as well as their words; how to guide the interview to the most interesting places? Students will have the opportunity to interview each other, and possibly those outside of the room depending on time, and perform those interviews for the class. Students will also be guided in the beginning steps of collecting those interviews into a cohesive performance.
MULTI-SESSION WORKSHOP
Multi-session workshops (4-6 2-hour sessions recommended) include all of the instruction of the Master Class. In addition, students, working with the Associate Artist, can choose a topic to investigate and over the course of the workshop conduct interviews on a given topic and build them into a short performance. Students learn additional editing, writing and directing skills as well as having the option of performing in front of an audience.
COST
Master Class: The cost for the one-day Master Class ranges from $500 - $1,000. This fee includes the cost of the workshop, artist fees, and supplies. If applicable, space rental fees and travel will be additional.
Multi-Session Workshop: The cost for the multi-session workshops vary depending on the number of sessions and the overall length of time (between the first and last sessions). Typical costs range from $2,000 to $8,000. Travel and Housing would be additional for sites outside of New York.
LECTURES
If you're interested in having a Civilians Associate Artist speak at your school, please contact info@thecivilians.org.RESIDENCIES /
You can participate in the development of a Civilians show in a number of different ways. As we develop shows, workshops and readings are a helpful step in the artistic progression of a play. Steven Cosson frequently works with colleges on developmental workshops that range from one week intensives to semester-long and year-long residencies. Most recently, he was in a residency at Princeton University working on The Great Immensity. Other projects include residencies at Colorado College, Dartmouth College, and Georgetown University. We are always developing new projects. If your school is interested in hosting a workshop or residency, please contact us at info@thecivilians.org.
IN YOUR WORDS /
“The Civilians’ residency here was such a fantastic experience for me. No other experience at Sarah Lawrence has so expanded my conception of what theatre could be, and few experiences in my recent past have been so eye-opening in other ways as well! I loved watching the Civilians work, and getting to work with Jenny as our teacher. It felt so great to be so creative in such a condensed amount of time, and with direct interaction with the outside world being so vital to the process! (Which seems rare to me, working and studying in the theater...) In short, I loved it. I hope more such opportunities arise for The Civilians, for Sarah Lawrence, and for other theatre companies and educational institutions in the future.”
—Audrey Moyce, Sarah Lawrence student
“I want to thank The Civilians for allowing us to work on this piece, to make minor cuts here and there, and for their support of the production. Sometimes lately, I'll be walking down the street or eating a frozen grape, and I will actually feel myself growing (as a person, as an artist, as a theorist, whatever), and that feeling cannot be supported in words. And maybe we all go through this, maybe I'm just walking into another waiting room of life, already filled with people that have been waiting for hours, days, years, to walk into the next room life has to offer. But for now, I am enchanted. And from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for giving us this piece.”
—Evan Katz, Playwrights Horizons Theater School student