Rosebud students learn on location

Times Contributor     

 

Rosebud School of the Arts students took their learning on the road this February. First-year students spent 10 days in British Columbia, while second and third-year students visited New York City and Toronto for two weeks. They attended workshops and theatrical productions, toured theatres back-stage, and engaged in talk-back discussions with casts. The trips are registered courses at Rosebud School of the Arts (RSA), with corresponding assignments and grades.

Paul Muir, education director of RSA, said the school organizes annual theatre trips because instructors want to give students a broader perspective of theatre. 

“We wanted their scope on what theatre is to be as global as possible,” he said.

First-year student Jesse Peachment, from Olds, Alta, traveled to B.C. with six classmates, spending time in Vancouver and Vancouver Island. Local artists presented workshops in the areas of their specialty, including speech, movement and dance. RSA students learned to “free up” their voices, present monologues, sing and write music, and breathe correctly.

For Peachment, it was a highlight to see many shows of varying size and quality — The Odd Couple was a favorite — and have talk-backs with actors afterward. 

“There’s so much difference between theatres and what they can put on,” he said. The trip gave him “a different perspective,” Peachment said. “Our (RSA) instructors are all fantastic, but this gives it a new spin … It just comes at it from a different perspective.”

Second and third-year students alternate annual trips between London and New York City, which Muir calls “the major theatre centres in the English-speaking world.” On international trips, he said “there’s all kinds of personal growth,” along with artistic growth. 

“For some (students), it’s their first time in a city that size. For lots, it’s their first time over to Europe. Even to go to London and … navigate around, to understand the subway and the Tube system — that gives them a sense of confidence.”

Meghan Hanet, a second-year acting student from Williams Lake, B.C., and Naomi Esau, third-year Theatre Arts major from Saskatoon, Sask., did this year’s New York trip with 11 classmates and two instructors. Esau saw 15 shows, and Hanet saw 12, including Waiting for Godot, No Man’s Land, and The Carole King Musical. In New York City, Hanet said, “you can see many more shows in a shorter time. In Times Square, you just walked down any street you want and there are many theatres.”

In one workshop, they studied the Meisner Technique, a listening technique that’s about “letting your scene partner affect you in the moment,” Hanet said.

“It was amazing to learn (the Meisner Technique) from the instructors there who had learned from Meisner himself,” Esau said in an email.

For Hanet, the trip’s key lesson is “confirmation in what we’re learning. These professionals who have made it to the big time, they’re telling us the same things our instructors at Rosebud are telling us.”

Esau said, “I made discoveries about myself and acting there that I would not have had in Rosebud. I was reminded of why I fell in love with theatre … I was able to see actors making their living doing what they love.” Even more, “I was able to discover the kind of theatre I want to do.” 

She now has “an energy that can only be found by witnessing the amazing theatre of New York or London.”

The students are back in classes. Upper-year students are rehearsing for C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, and Diary of Anne Frank. Esau and other students are preparing for dinner music. The first year’s Drama Ministries class performs in the community, including at Rosebud Church, March 30. Students in Rosebud Chorale will sing at Hussar Lutheran Church, March 9 and at Rockyford United Church, April 13.