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Summer Advanced Actors Showcase

Acting students performing in a summer play

Summer 2020 registration is open!

SUMMER ADVANCED ACTORS SHOWCASE

Who can rehearse and perform a full-length play in one week? We can! This very unique and highly intensive program gives actors the experience of performing a full-length production while receiving top-level training.

 

Summer 2020 Production:  CHANGE OF SEASON
World Premiere Play by Lisa Nanni-Messegee &  Todd Messegee
Directed by Lisa Nanni-Messegee

“Change Of Season” is a play in four parts, with each story representing one of the four seasons, told in different towns, and different time periods, in America. A small town wrestles with its legends, a start-up company faces entrepreneurial challenges, a soldier comes home, and a family considers their holiday traditions. Themes of community and family resonate through the time periods and characters in this world premiere production.

Actors will have the opportunity to develop complex characters while working on this world premiere play!

WHAT TO EXPECT
On the first Monday we meet, a group of actors audition for roles in a play that they’ve never read. By the end of the day, they have begun learning songs and choreography or blocking the play. This continues through mid-week, along with focus on specialty skills that may be needed in the production (stage combat, for example). By Thursday and Friday, the actors are running the show off-book and memorizing their material, all the while developing their characters. By the weekend the ensemble is performing for an audience, on stage, with simple technical elements (lights, basic set, props, costumes, and sound.)  This is a very advanced and exciting challenge for any actor! The plays are always ensemble in nature, meaning each actor is given time to shine on stage.

 

Ages:  12–18
Dates:  July 27–31, 2020 + Aug 1 & 2 performances
Times:  9 a.m.–3 p.m. (M–F)
Saturday performances, 2 p.m. & 7 p.m.
Sunday performance, 2 p.m.
Tuition:  $385 (include show T-shirt and two performance tickets)
Discounts:  Register by May 15 for $10 off
Location:  Mason Fairfax Campus,  deLaski Performing Arts Building
After Care:  $90/week (pickup by 6 p.m.) Learn More

The After Care program is located in Mason’s deLaski Performing Arts Building. Before the final checkout, search for and add “After Care” to your cart.

In the event of program cancellation due to COVID-19, a full refund will be issued.

Register Now

 

 

PROGRAM FACULTY

 

Lisa Nanni-Messegee, Acting Lessons
Director: Lisa Nanni-Messegee
Read about Ms. Nanni-Messegee

Lisa Nanni-Messegee is a published playwright (Just So, Mr. Kipling as solo writer, The Value of x, Carol vs. Christmas co-written with her husband Todd, all published by Eldridge Plays and Musicals) and produced screenwriter (Christmas Homecoming – Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, Romantically Speaking – Hallmark Channel and PiXL, both co-written with her husband Todd.) Lisa has consistently worked academically and professionally as a theater director since 1994. Recent credits include Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Proof, Sea of Tranquility and Fierce Creatures (for AFYP.) As an actress, Lisa has worked professionally on stage (Durang/Durang – Marsha, Tamarind Theater and Hollywood Court Theater in Los Angeles) and on camera (Thurston – an award-winning Western Drama for the web – in the recurring role of Jo for three seasons.) Lisa has an M.A. in Acting and an M.F.A. in Directing Theater. She is a senior teaching artist and Resident Playwright for AFYP and is also on the theater faculty of George Mason University.

Mary Lechter
AFYP Director:  Mary Lechter
Faculty at Mason’s School of Theater
Read about Ms. Lechter

A graduate of University of Maryland, College Park with a Bachelor of Arts in Theater and Speech Communications, Mary has been working professionally as an actor in the metropolitan Washington-area, Los Angeles, and New York since 1985. She has worked at Washington area theaters including Theater of the First Amendment, Arena Stage, Studio Theatre, and Source Theatre. Television, radio and film credits include ABC’s All My Children, Barry Levinson’s Avalon, Diesel Films’ Dracula’s Mother, the MGM/Lionsgate thriller Hit and Run, and several spots for NPR’s Morning Edition.

Mary founded AFYP in 1997, and has seen the company grow from being its only teacher with a sporadic program schedule in rented spaces to where it is today: a year-round program with a full staff, working in conjunction with Potomac Arts Academy, for which she is Associate Director.

She is a longtime member of Mason’s School of Theater faculty in the areas of Performance and Theater Education. She was named a 2013 “Teacher of Distinction” and was a 2014 TEDxGeorgeMasonU speaker (“Magic Moments: the Transformative Power of  Theater“). She previously taught at the Studio Theatre Acting Conservatory and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Her professional memberships include The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Actor’s Equity Association, and the Educational Theatre Association.

Mary’s directing credits include An Experiment with an Air Pump and Shakespeare in Hollywood (George Mason University); Still Beating Hearts and A Godless Man (Theater of the First Amendment First Light Festival); Happy Holidays, Charlie Brown, 101 Dalmatians, It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play; Willy Wonka, Jr.; Peter Pan, Jr.; A Seussified Christmas Carol; Alice in Wonderland, Jr. (AFYP).

 

 

 

 

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