YOUTH EMPOWERMENT WORKSHOPS
CORRESPONDENCE is SEEKING 10 YOUTH PARTICIPANTS (AGES 15–25) OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN DESCENT TO JOIN ITS FREE YOUTH ENGAGEMENT WORKSHOPS (YEW).
YEW provides an opportunity for youth to learn through participation in intercultural, interdisciplinary, and intersectional theatre, addressing migration, diaspora, and other youth issues. The workshops, facilitated by local Southeast Asian artists, offer experience with singing, acting in film, improvisational theatre, creative movement, and creative writing. Participants will also visit the Museum of Anthropology at UBC to examine, analyze, and reflect on cultural belongings from various Southeast Asian collections.
YOUTH ENGAGEMENT WORKSHOPS (YEW) OBJECTIVES:
ENGAGE youth in varied artistic explorations, building expressive, creative skills and confidence.
EMPOWER youth to appreciate their culture and heritage.
ENLIGHTEN youth through examining underlying socio-cultural conditions that give rise to critical thinking.
YEW provides a platform for connecting: young people will meet other young theatre enthusiasts and various role models from their own community. Participants will be invited to put what they learn to use as the facilitators of post-show Talkback sessions that follow Correspondence performances. They will use what they have learned from the workshops and the integrated leadership training to be the connecting bridge between the audience and the production. Participants can build up towards their volunteer hours through their engagement with YEW.
WORKSHOP TIMES AND LOCATION:
Week 1 | RH | Sunday, March 6 | 11–7pm
Week 2 | MoA | Tuesday, March 15 | 11–5pm
Week 3 | Sunday, March 20 | 11–7pm
Week 4 | RH | Sunday, March 27 | 11–7pm
* RH: Russian Hall (600 Campbell Ave, Vancouver, BC, V6A 3K1) | MoA: Museum of Anthropology at UBC (6393 NW Marine Dr, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2)
further questions? contact us at yew@npc3.ca
deadline extended: wednesday, march 2, 2022.
INTERESTED IN PARTICIPATING? FILL OUT THE registration form:
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Dr. leonora angeles |
keynote speaker
Dr. Leonora (Nora) Angeles is an Associate Professor at the School of Community and Regional Planning and the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia. She is also faculty research associate at the UBC Centre for Human Settlements where she has been involved in a number of applied research and capacity-building research projects in Brazil, Vietnam and Southeast Asian countries.
Her continuing research and interests are on community and international development studies and social policy, participatory planning and governance, participatory action research, and the politics of transnational feminist networks, women’s movements and agrarian issues, particularly in the Southeast Asian region.
abi padilla |
creative movement workshop
This workshop will explore different movements inspired mainly by the four elements and how movement can be an access point for characterization, storytelling, and simple choreography.
Born and raised in the Philippines, Abigail Krishna Padilla moved to Vancouver where she pursued her passion for multi-disciplinary arts and storytelling. She is a filmmaker, theatre actor and writer. Having the honour and privilege to live and create in the unceded Coast Salish territories, the most impactful experiences she had was dancing Filipino folk dance with Kathara Canada and collaborating with Butterflies in Spirit, a dance group consisting of family members of missing and murdered indigenous women.
She had technical roles in multiple short documentaries that were featured at CBC Arts. Her directorial debut short film "Thank You Mila" premiered in the MAMM Festival under Vancouver Asian Film Festival. The first two short plays she co-wrote, "The Banyan Tree" and "How to F*ck Up a Funeral" are being produced at Studio 58, where she was an acting student. Her theatre acting credits include "The Bright Young Things", directed by Ming Hudson and "Everybody" by Kim Collier. Abi's artistic advocacy revolves around family reconciliation and respectful celebratory cultural collaborations.
jeremiah carag |
voice workshop
In this workshop, participants will explore singing and connect it with the most fundamental of acts: breathing. Using bel canto technique, participants will be introduced to vocal production that is relaxed, free, and expansive.
Jeremiah Carag is a Vancouver-based classically trained tenor in opera and musical theatre. Born and raised in Manila, he worked in the corporate world for three years in the Philippines and Canada after finishing an accountancy degree at De LaSalle University-Manila. Even then, singing was a serious hobby of his and even earned him a golden ticket in the 2008 season of Canadian Idol. When he decided to go to UBC for a degree in arts, he was seen by Prof. Nancy Hermiston as one of the finalists in UBC’s Got Talent and the chair of the Opera and Voice division convinced him that opera was the way to go. He obtained his degree in Opera Performance (BMus) program at UBC under the tutelage of renowned tenor James Patrick Raftery and baritone Peter Barcza.
He was an official representative of Canada in the World Championship of Performing Arts in the Opera and Musical Theatre categories. His opera credits are Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Don Curzio in Le Nozze di Figaro, Corey in Choir Practice (World Premiere) from UBC Opera; Vancouver Fringe Festival: Preston in The OC: The Musical; UBC Suite Style Musical: Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls; and Roger Davis in Rent. He is also an active music educator with the hope of empowering communities through the art form. Among his educational work is the annual MigARTion (led by CoErasga Dance) where he collaborates with other Filipinx artists in creating educational experiences for migrant communities.
karla comanda |
creative writing workshop
Dust off your pen, paper, and laptop by joining Karla Comanda for an afternoon of writing! Using prompts and writing exercises based on music, Filipino folk poetry, objects, and more, Karla will guide participants in reflecting on their experiences within the diaspora in this generative workshop. The workshop invites the participants to feel all the feels and to focus on the process of writing, rather than coming out of the workshop with something "good," and writing "correctly."
Participants will come out of the workshop with images, phrases, lines, fragments, or paragraphs that they can use now or save for later. Resources will be shared at the end of the workshop for ways to sustain the participants’ writing practice and how they can get their works out into the world. This workshop is open to writers of all levels and experiences in the Southeast Asian community.
Karla Comanda is a Vancouver-based poet, playwright, editor, translator, educator, and arts administrator. Born and raised in the Philippines, she received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Her poems have appeared in Contemporary Verse 2, filling station, Poetry is Dead, Room Magazine, and others.
In 2019, she hosted the Sinag-Araw Writing Workshop, a poetry workshop series for Filipino youth in the diaspora. She currently works as the Communications Manager for rice & beans theatre and sits on the Vancouver International Burlesque Festival's Board of Directors, and has worked with the Vancouver International Film Festival.
anjela magpantay |
improv theatre workshop
Workshop Title: Limitless Choice
“The actor who will accept anything that happens seems supernatural; it’s the most marvelous thing about improvisation: you are suddenly in contact with people who are unbounded, whose imagination seems to function without limit.” - Keith Johnstone
If the body does not know itself, the soul will not enter the body. In this workshop we will be using physical theatre exercises to explore our patterns of choice to unlock boundless imagination. Everyone has the potential to be or do anything but the actor always makes it a conscious choice. Drawing from methods of Grotowski, Clowning, Laban, and the Viewpoints, we will be integrating the mind, voice, and body, working towards a 'ready' actor for devising and performance creation. All levels welcome, wear comfortable clothing that will allow you to move without restriction.
Anjela is a first generation Canadian originating from the Philippines and graduated from Simon Fraser University with a BFA in Theatre Performance. She has worked internationally as a performer and collaborator in Hong Kong and across the UK. Her international performance training background ranges from devised theatre, clowning, Grotowski, and has involved working with renowned teachers such as Acrobat of the Heart author, Stephen Wangh, and Viewpoints founder, Mary Overlie.
Anjela works freelance as an actor, director, clown, teacher and collaborator with various artists of different disciplines. She is a Co-Founder of New(to)Town Collective and lives on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Up next, she will be Assistant Directing Bad Parent by Kim's Convenience creator Ins Choi, premiering at the Cultch Spring 2022.
thai-hoa le | introduction to acting
workshop
The journey of an actor towards being at ease with herself and her craft (let alone master it) can take many years if not a lifetime. Our search has always been: how can I make the acting “real”? In this short introductory class, Thai-Hoa will go over the history of contemporary theatre acting in the West, starting with the research led by Konstantin Stanislavsky and culminating with what is now known as “The Method”, an approach to acting developed by Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York City. The purpose of this technique is to help the artist embody the inner life of a character. The student will experience “sense memory”, a tool used by “Method” actors. Among other respected teachers, Thai-Hoa studied under Elizabeth Kemp, who taught Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga and Hugh Jackman.
This Montreal-born actor holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from The Actors Studio Drama School in New York and a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B) from the Université de Montréal. He also studied classical singing at the École de musique Vincent-d’Indy in Montreal. He speaks fluent English, French and Vietnamese, and hopes to be fluent in Italian and Mandarin within the next 12 years. Thai-Hoa is also intent on being sworn in as a lawyer by 2025, unless he is slowed down by more acting gigs!
Thai-Hoa has been seen by millions as General Nhuan opposite Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique and Peter Dinklage’s Dr. Trask in X-Men: Days of the Future Past (2014). You will see him next alongside Zac Efron and Russell Crowe in "The Greatest Beer Run Ever" by director Peter Farrelly (2018 Oscar-win for "Green Book").
Thai-Hoa is the president of the Southeast Asian Cultural Heritage Society (SEACHS) and has performed for its two intercultural productions, Mai-Dao and Banyan.
