Making a living as a playwright and performing artist. This 45-60 minute presentation is fun for all ages and great for students who are considering making a living in the arts. Dana offers a “day in the life” look at the realities of being a working artist, from managing your business, diversifying, budgeting and staying honed in your art form. Script readings (by student volunteers) from some of Dana’s published or unpublished works are included in the full hour version.

Play Writing

Do you have in idea for a riveting plot line? A magnificent character you’d like to create? Together, we explore the foundations for a good story and rich characters.

Students will need pen and paper, as we will do several short writing exercises, and volunteers will be chosen to read what they have out loud to their peers. It's down-and-dirty creative writing.

This workshop is about the meat of the story, not the mechanics. 6th grade through college aged students.

Creative Dramatics Join Dana for interactive storytelling! Listen as Dana tells a 15-20 minute story using character voices, sound effects and mime to bring the story to life. Then any and all students who wish to retell the story will act it out under Dana's guidance, bringing the individual characters to life. Core curriculum tie-ins available upon request for each story. All stories contain basic elements of dramatization and theatre. Pre-K through 4th grade. 

Story Dramas Available:

1. "The Lion, the Mouse and the Hunters"
2. "The Junk Eating Dragon"
3. "The Dancing Princesses"
4. "The Musicians of Brementown"

Interactive storytelling starting with a book and growing into a retelling of the story using hand-held puppets and props, student participation and imagination! Great for early literacy foundations. Pre-K through 1st grade.

Poetry workshopsLet Dana inspire your inner poet to emerge as she takes you through some basic building blocks of poetry. Through reading some great poems and examining what makes them work to creating a poem on site together, this one-hour workshop inspires students who never knew they had poetry in them before to write. Great for 4th grade through High School.

Virtual Theatre This amazing theatrical experience is the creation of Kathleen Gaffney, one of Dana's mentors, and has had successful runs in NY off Broadway to rave reviews. Virtual Theatre is Improvisation meets Our Town. 

In Virtual Theatre, Dana will guide students through brainstorming the creation of a fictional small town, with all of it's landmarks, secrets and special places. Then students are grouped into "family units" where they create their individual characters and relationships. The students are the cloth and Dana is the thread as together they weave a completely original story based upon the characters and town they have created.

Will it be a comedy? A drama? It all unfolds with every choice each actor makes. For upper high school students, college students and adults only. Four memorable hours!

In this workshop Dana demonstrates a short mime sketch where she plays three distinct characters. She then breaks down the techniques used to portray each character and has volunteer students come up and re-do the sketch.

At the end, everybody learns the "invisible box" technique, and Dana does a make-up demo on one student.

Teachers select the student they would like the make-up to go onto, because once that student is in make-up, he/she can't say another word! Good for all ages.

Dana introduces several improvisation games and teach students how to play them, and how to think fast on their feet when on stage!

Games Include:

1. Park Bench: This focuses on listening and communication.
2. The Great Sphinx: This focuses on sentence structure and clever response.
3. Taxi: This focuses on characterization.
4. Limmerick: This focuses on rhyme, rhythm and meter, plus thinking fast.
5. Freeze: This game focuses on thinking outside of the box.

Dozens more games are available. I can provide you with a list of possible games ahead of time and you may select the ones you'd like to do if you so desire (some games correspond with some required curriculum). 5th grade through college level.

Learn some basic steps of Renaissance dancing, and understand some of the roots of modern square dancing and ballroom techniques. Dana demonstrates and teaches renaissance dance from both the peasant class country style to the more sophisticated Royal Court dances, and offers some of the history behind the dances taught.

Rates and booking timeslots available upon request. Contact Dana for more information now!