Urban Gateways Artists Wired

[Maia] wild wild west

I am doing two after school residencies right now.  Usually, I am more of an in-school residency kind of gal.  School day residencies have their own set of challenges -- there is the collaboration with a classroom teacher -- more cooks in the kitchen and all that, but after school sometimes seems like the wild west.  In the program I first wrote about on this blog I have had a different group of students every single week.  It was designed to be an eight week drama program leading to a culminating event -- a sharing of an original performance with others in the school community.  It's a tall order to write and rehearse an original piece of theater with fourth and fifth graders in eight weeks, and it's an especially tall order when you have a different group of students every week!  We are trying to make it work; we read through the rough draft of the script last week with the students who showed up (10 of them!; the most we've had ever, I suppose that's a good sign).  It was a bit of controlled chaos.  We added some lines to the script which consists of vignettes about family, the theme the students (the first day's batch of students, that is) chose, played some theater games aimed at creating ensemble and began to develop some stage pictures based on family portraits.  Now we have two weeks off because of ISATs.  We'll see who appears at our next session, when I'll have a final draft of our script which we will have two sessions to rehearse.  Woo hah!

(maia) starting from scratch

Here's what I'm thinking about: Starting from Scratch. 

I have been teaching for some time now, and I have some lessons up my sleeve that I know usually work. A couple of them are based around fairy tales.  I taught a two day workshop this month at Gregory, where I'll be starting an eight week after school program next month, and I decided to work with one of these fairy tale lessons.  Together the students and I list all the fairy tales we can think of.  Sometimes it's rough going.  We get a few Disney movies down and then they're stuck.   

That is how it went with this particular group of students and I began thinking, we really need to start from scratch.  If I truly want to work from a text, we all need to immerse ourselves in it together; short cuts are okay, but the experience won't be as rich or as lasting as it could be.  I can't make assumptions about what material students have read and digested.  This is challenging because it means more reading and more discussing up front which can be less appealing to students than jumping into zip zap zop.

So here on the brink of 2010 and the new schools and lesson planning it brings, I am percolating with how to plan activities that are hands-on and about the art of crafting original bits of writing and theater and at the same time utilize source material that I bring in for the class to experience together.

about maia

Hi.

I am a writer and sometime performer who has been teaching with Urban Gateways for almost 16 years.  Mostly these days I'm working on full-length plays and screenplays, but I'm currently writing a monologue that I'll perform this summer with Tellin' Tales Theater.  So far, I think it's exploring sleep, dreams, sleepovers, twilight (not Twilight) and winter. 

My monologues have been featured several times in Live Bait Theatre’s Filet of Solo Fest and received Critic’s Choice in the Chicago Reader back to back in 2006 and 2007. A founding member of Running with Scissors, I appeared in their award-winning production, The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon and wrote and performed in Breathing Underwater. Other work for the stage includes "Sister, Sister", a collaboration with choreographer Ann Boyd which was nominated for a Ruth Page award, and an adaptation of The Twelve Dancing Princesses for Evanston Children’s Theater.

I graduated with a B.A. in English, cum laude, from Carleton College, and I have taught poetry, creative writing, dance and theater to K-12 students throughout the Chicago area,  working with special needs, autistic and deaf students, as well as in bilingual classrooms. I have designed and led professional development workshops for teachers at Lisle Junior High; with Urban Gateways at the Terra Museum in Chicago, Cleveland State University and the Project for After School Education in New York City. I have developed and taught classes and workshops for the Office of Community Arts Partnerships at Columbia College Chicago, Evanston’s Young Artist Program, Gallery 37 and Steppenwolf and Lookingglass Theatres. I spent two years as full time faculty at the Chicago Academy for the Arts. I lead writing and theatre workshops for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women with The Persephone Project, a program of Stillpoint Theatre Collective.

So far this year with UG, I'm leading a 20 week residency for K-8th graders at Hamilton Elementary with the theme of Birds, Wings and Flying Things, an 8 week after school drama program  for 3rd-5th graders at Gregory Elementary (theme to be decided) and working in a new capacity as lead artist at Fairfield Elementary where I'll get to work with all three residency artists as well as teachers and students to create a comprehensive school-wide immersive arts experience for everyone involved.