Using Art to Celebrate Your Community
|
Rebecca facilitates a Community Arts Class public presentation at UNC-A. 2008.
REBECCA WILLIAMS, a co-founder of Serpent Child Ensemble has worked professionally in theater for the past 18 years as an actor, writer, director and teacher. She has toured with Young Audiences of Virginia, Perishable Theater, the Old Dominion Shakespeare Ensemble, and the Virginia Opera. In addition, Ms. Williams is the co-writer and director of a series of community-based folk history plays including "Cross-Ties: Folktales of the Florida Panhandle," "In Tall Cotton: the Idabel Centennial Folklife Project," and "Way Back When: Folktales of Black Mountain and the Swannanoa Valley," all based on oral history interviews conducted with local residents. Currently Ms. Williams teaches Community Arts and Art as an Expression of the Self, in the Arts and Ideas program at UNC Asheville. She also teaches Drama and Critical Literacy for the Creative Arts in Learning program at Lesley University. As oral history coordinator for Together We Read, Western North Carolina’s reading and discussion program, she recently co-wrote and produced an audio cd, Color Lines: Reading Between the Lines about Race Relations in To Kill A Mockingbird. Her current project with Serpent Child Ensemble is to create a documentary film about the Beacon Blanket Factory and life in the mill village in Swannanoa, North Carolina.
|
PROGRAMS OFFERED
A. Performance: “Way Back When” celebrates the history and folk life of small town and rural America that existed before World War II in word and song. Based on recorded oral histories, Way Back When is a ceremony of remembrance that honors the whole community. “Way Back When” is modular, so a performance can be 30 minutes (ideal for the entertainment portion of a meeting or banquet), 50 minutes (assemblies), or 90 minutes (an evenings performance). It is appropriate for groups of all ages from grade schools to Senior citizens, and especially good for mixed age groups. Prices are $1,000 for 30 minute program, $1,500 for the Assembly program, and $2,000 for the full performance. Travel, per diem and housing are extra, and negotiable.
B. Residency: A week long residency including one or more performances (negotiable) will have the artists working with school or civic groups on gathering and preserving oral histories, turning oral histories into art, and presentation, including acting, song-writing, play and short-story writing, and technical theater. Prices are $3,000 for 2 artists or $5,000 for 4 artists. Travel, per diem and housing are extra, and negotiable.
C. Long Term Residency: Our preferred form, a long term residency establishes an on-going relationship between the artists and the community to do a sweeping oral history gathering and archiving, create an acting company of local performers and culminates in a community play that celebrates what is unique and universal about your particular community (please see our web site: serpentchild.org) A residency can be as short as a year: this typically includes 3 two-week residencies and 1 four-week residency before the performances.
Some of our residencies have lasted five years or more. The cost is approximately $1,500 per week per artist, plus travel, housing, and per diem. We recommend doing a one week residency first to see if the partnership is a good fit.
|
Jerry facilitates a students art final at UNC-Asheville
JERALD POPE has been involved professionally with the theater for over thirty years, since co-founding the award winning American Theater Company in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1970. He has written, acted in, designed, and directed over 80 plays, from Shakespeare to his own creations, which include The 1966 Cavalcade of Stars and Harlequin Homeless. He has toured extensively in the grass roots theater movement, and directed internationally, including the Portuguese premier of Tennessee Williams’ Camino Real. His children’s book, "Madeleine Claire and the Dinosaur" was recently published. He is a community organizer and teaches art, theater and humanities at the university level.
|
OUR FOUNDERS
Resumes available on request
|
|
