the Firebelly mission

 

Firebelly Productions is a professional theater company whose primary purpose is to provide educational instruction and training for developing the knowledge and skills of teenage and young adult actors, directors, and theater technicians. We do this through a combination of classroom, professional performances, and directing experience. Our method originates with the development of the young adult’s work ethic—demonstrating how high standards, consummate professionalism, and artistic discipline produce a quality product that in turn matures the individual’s sense of self-confidence and the particular talents the actor  brings to  the  craft.   Success  in  this	|| Mainstage Professional Productions   || Acting Classes   || Children's Theatre and  Outreach Program   || Summer Intensive Acting Camp   || Cabaret Productions   || Student Directed Productions   || Touring
facet of the actor’s life is then readily channeled into other aspects of his or her life—personal and professional.  To ensure diverse audiences for our students, we strive to keep our ticket prices affordable for families, seniors, students, and other artists.  To this end, and to ensure that we are contributing members in our community, we also promote outreach projects to target underserved audiences.   To further our educational purposes, we have engaged in the following activities:
Mainstage Professional Productions   The purpose of our Main stage Program is to produce performances that utilize material having equal casting opportunities for both the young adult artist as well as the seasoned professional.  This creative environment affords the young artist a great learning and mentoring atmosphere, and we have found that the experienced professionals also enjoy having the opportunity to convey their knowledge and experience to their younger colleagues.   We accomplish this by actively seeking work that includes material appropriate to the 15-25 year old age range, and we consciously cast people of this age. Most professional companies consistently cast older actors for young adult and teenage roles.  Our approach is to use the younger actors and teach and train them within the context of a production, thus creating the learning-while-performing opportunity.   We have been gratified that this approach has yielded feedback from the more seasoned performers who have said that they often felt “refreshed” or “vitalized” as a result of their experience.   Our technical staff is comprised of our acting students and local high school students interested in the offstage component of theater. They are given training and then the corresponding responsibility and authority to perform their given jobs as Stage Managers, Light and Sound Board Operators, Assistant Directors, etc. Conservatory Technical students and local professionals act as Technical Directors and provide training for light and sound positions while our directors provide training for stage managers and assistant directors.  We employ only directors with teaching experience and hope to eventually employ the Summer Directing Interns as they develop their experience.   We strive through grants and donations to keep ticket prices low, in order to bring theater to people who would normally not be able to afford it, such as retirees, students, and local artists. We actively advertise and offer discounts to generally overlooked audiences such as assisted living senior communities and high schools.   In keeping with our theme of developing the young artist, Firebelly plans to seek out new works, especially by young playwrights, for future productions.   In the spring of 2003, Firebelly Productions was awarded a Space/Services Grant from Arlington County for performance space at Arlington’s Theater on the Run. We produce 3 full-length productions a year, with an emphasis on high quality theater.   After only two years, the Arlington County Board of Cultural Affairs created a new award for us - the “Shining Star” award.  As the presenter noted at the awards gala, “Firebelly Productions was recognized because of its tremendous achievement in its theatrical productions for such a young company. If its recent outstanding productions of 'Lend Me a Tenor,' 'Of Mice and Men,' and 'Butterflies Are Free' are any indication, Firebelly Productions is well on its way."
Acting Classes   Classes consist of 1 - 2 hours of weekly acting classes, depending on the size of the class, plus 2-3 hours of study outside of class. The sessions are begun on a as needed basis, and run anywhere from 6 – 12 weeks depending on the time of the year. Private coaching is also available as needed for scene study. Classes are kept small, so that individual attention on the student is possible.   The purpose of this program is to teach students the basic principles of Method Acting, from the teachings of Stanislavski, Sanford Meisner, and Stella Adler. They learn to apply the Objective/Motivation/Action/Obstacle basics through improvisation exercises, through scene study, and play and character analysis.   This is one of the ways that we recruit students and young adult actors from the area into our program. Many of our older students come from the local college theater programs, are recent graduates of theater programs who have moved to the area, or are former students from the Artistic Director’s tenure as a local high school theater director. We also seek older actors who wish to enhance their skills, or further their acting training.   This program trains our students for their high school drama productions, audition-based conservatory college programs, public speaking classes and competitions, community theater, and professional productions. We hope to expand our teaching base so that we can offer more sessions and special seminars. Future grants would enable us to continue offering scholarships to deserving students as well as expand our repertoire of special seminars.
Children's Theatre and Outreach Program   The Program consists of more experienced young adult actors working with our acting class students 2 to3 hours per week, rehearsing a children’s theater play during their class sessions. With this project we are able to educate and train our students within the context of a production as well as in a classroom setting. This also enables us to have casting opportunities for our less experienced students and for them to work alongside some more experienced actors in a production setting. We plan to repeat this program every year as part of our yearlong training program.   For the Outreach portion of the program, we plan to produce the play in a variety of venues, specifically focusing on our community outreach. Those venues planned thus far are as follows:   - Retirement Homes for a "Bring Your Grandchild to the Theater” program. - Arlington School System, especially in lower income neighborhoods.   In addition, we are also seeking Homeless Shelters and Day Care Centers as possible venues. In the future with this program, we hope to mentor and train young adults who have recently completed acting/directing majors and are looking for directing or theater education experience.   We will also produce this production for private venues, in order to raise funds for the royalties in the outreach section, enable the students to save money for their acting classes, and as a fundraiser for our main stage productions.
Summer Intensive Acting Camp   In development for Summer 2005 Program Director, Kathi Gollwitzer   The purpose of this program the first year is to provide 33, 8th – 12th grade students with a two week intensive program of acting, voice training and musical theater dance classes, from 9am – 12 noon. In the afternoon, rehearsal time and special seminars in Stage Combat, Tap, Mime etc., will take place from 1pm – 4pm.   The program will include our Artistic Director as our acting instructor, a vocal coach for voice, a local dance teacher for dance, and several area professionals for the seminars. Three student interns from our program will be employed to assist with the morning sessions. They will gain management training for future theatrical positions such as stage managers and assistant directors as well as foster an interest in directing. Three college interns with Acting/Directing training will direct the afternoon presentation portion of the camp. They will gain directing and teaching experience, and we will have trained student directors for our main stage productions. Our artistic director will rotate and oversee the directing interns.   For our first year we plan to have a total of 33 students in the program, with 3 attending on scholarships. They will break down to 11 students per group. The acting portion will teach Method acting, voice will be vocal techniques for actors and singers, and the dance portion will be standard numbers from musical theater productions and basic jazz dance techniques. Goals for this program include, providing our company with a student base that gives our company future growth potential, and net proceeds from this program will be re-invested in the company’s goals by offsetting costs associated with the company’s main stage productions.
Cabaret Productions   In this program we guide the students in developing a Cabaret Dinner Theater evening of entertainment. It includes comedy routines, musical theater dance numbers, and roughly fifteen songs. Our purpose is to develop the talents of our musical theater students and to provide the company with fundraising opportunities. The students develop a theme, story line and individual characters for each of the performers. Our first project, Sentimental Journey, consisted of magicians as an audience warm-up, singers, dancers, and a musical trio in a 40’s themed evening. Our venue, the Knights of Columbus Club in Arlington, served a full dinner to accompany the entertainment.
Student Directed Productions   In November of 2002 we produced our first full-length production of Sylvia by AR Gurney, in a rented space at the Theater on the Run in Arlington, VA. The cast and crew consisted of high school students, and it was directed by a recent William & Mary Theater Graduate. Our Artistic Director served as mentor for the student director. We ran 3 performances, and paid our director, actors and student crew a token amount.   The purpose of this production was to provide our young recent graduate with directing experience. Most graduate programs for directing require candidates to have the minimum of six directing credits on their resumé. It also gave main stage experience to our student actors and technical crew.   We hope to again provide directing experience and mentoring in our full-length professional productions to young adult directors and to add other adult directors to our company in order to add to our season of productions.
Touring   In development for August 2004.   Firebelly Productions has been invited to perform our summer production of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, directed by Kathi Gollwitzer, at the International School of Prague, as part of their Welcome Back to School program. Our cast consists of five young adult actors. One is a recent graduate of the American University Acting Program, one a current High School student in DC, and the other three are currently in Conservatory Acting Programs at SUNY Purchase in NY, The DePaul Theater School in Chicago, and the University of Limerick in Ireland. Our understudy is a recent college graduate and an acting student new to the DC area.   The purpose of this program is to provide the students with the experience of touring a production, as well as developing their growth as actors.  Actors depend upon experience and personal witness in order to comprehend the rich spectrum of humanity.  The more they experience and witness, the more they understand the world around them.  In the realm of theater, this process produces performances that are truthful and captivating.  In the realm of society, this process produces individuals free of prejudice, who welcome and appreciate cultures and philosophies beyond the boundaries of their own.  The International School was chosen because of its diverse cultural population.   Bringing a uniquely American theater company to perform in this setting, serves as a wonderful celebration of this artistic unity through diversity.  We seek to gather American and English expatriates, international artists and locals under one roof for an evening of unifying, culture-melding theater.  Beckett’s Waiting for Godot was specifically selected in order to produce this experience.   We hope to raise the cost of airfare through corporate donations. We are working on having our food and lodging donated by Prague restaurants and hotels, arranged through business contacts.   In June, of the 2005 season, we hope to attend the Faust Festival in Hong Kong.

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