EbzB Productions

EbzB Arts-In-Education

Workshops | School Residencies | Professional Development

Watch EbzB at work in a School Residency - www.timefortolerance.com
A documentary of our work with Whiteville High School Students in Columbus County, NC.

"Thank you... for a wonderful three day experience for our young performers. They enjoyed the workshop tremendously. It was a great intro for our new students and a wonderful support to what I try to do all year long. Thanks for insisting that they work and take it seriously and letting them know that they can have fun in the process. Mrs. Raley and I had them write you notes of observation and appreciation. Again thank you for encouraging [them to] look for the best in themselves and teaching them in the process. We look forward to The Wrights of Passage in the spring."

-Karen Wade, Drama Specialist, Underwood Elementary School, Raleigh, NC

Serena Ebhardt provides professional development to educators from Cabarrus County, NC. The Elementary and Middle School teachers created their own lesson plan using dramatic arts as a teaching tool. The workshop was sponsored by the Cabarrus County Arts Council and each teacher received CEU's for attending.

David zum Brunnen works with High School students from Columbus County, NC on acting and interviewing skills. The students are writing their own production about school desegregation in their community. Students based their monologues on interviews with local residents and school leaders.

Continuing Education Units Available For Educators

Trained in the model of The John F. Kennedy Center For The Performing Arts "Artists as Educators: Planning Effective Workshops" for Arts in Education, Serena Ebhardt and David zum Brunnen both have extensive experience working with students, teachers and business professionals in on-site residencies and workshops.

Serena Ebhardt privately coaches business professionals to use acting tools in everyday communication. She also is known for her work as the director of the Provincial Drama Academy in Canada; and as a visiting professor with Peace and St. Mary's Colleges in Raleigh, NC. Her work with students includes directing at Sanderson High School and serving as a guest artist on two extended occasions with Raleigh's Charter High School. Serena successfully designed tailored residencies for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County schools in North Carolina, as part of an outreach program for Opera Carolina. Her work focuses on the basic tools of an actor: body, eyes, face, voice, for effective everyday communication.

David zum Brunnen is well known for his performance work in the schools. He has toured both in-state and out-of-state schools extensively with The Night Before Christmas Carol, The Tender Nights of F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Wrights of Passage, and with Serena in Nicholas Nickleby in One Hour with Two People. David has worked with students at schools where he has performed, coaching them on the realities of becoming an actor, and "Theatre as a Small Business", so that students may understand the importance of a well rounded education and business classes to the work of an artist.

Serena and David prefer to do a needs assessment with the school or businesses in advance of the residency in order to tailor design the workshops. However all residencies usually take the form of making participants aware of all their means of understanding and communicating a subject effectively through the use of actor tools: research, imagination, sense memory, abstracting, body, eyes, face, voice.

The Goal is to help participants learn to internalize subjects and then communicate those subjects effectively and confidently using all personal communication tools.

Sample AIE Workshop

Title: Acting Across The Curriculum
Especially useful for Arts Education, Information Skills, English, Guidance, Social Studies, Character Education, Physical Education, Science & Language Arts. This residency easily adapts across the curriculum.

Benefit: Using simple actor's tools - research, imagination, sense memory, abstracting, body, eyes, face, voice, students will be able to actively synthesize lessons, therefore increasing comprehension, application, analysis, and evaluation. Linguistic, logistic, spatial intelligence, kinesthetic, inter- and intra- personal skills are all incorporated into this easy and fun residency. By staging your lessons, you may also find that the total involvement of students' minds and bodies reduces behavioral problems.

Approach: The residency leader will provide an overview of an actor's tools and how they might be useful in learning and communicating. The leader will conduct several activities that put actor's tools to use and help teachers and students adapt activities in their own classrooms. The leader will close the residency with curriculum related performances and reviews.

Results: By the end of the residency, students and teachers will

Know the importance of and how to lead a warm-up
Use the body, eyes, face and voice to create and communicate text and subtext
Combine basic tools to create a performance.
Apply the techniques directly to their own subjects.
Appreciate how performing can help a student internalize and remember the lesson.
Apply breathing and focus exercises to maintain control in the classroom and facilitate learning.

Description: Actors utilize a few basic tools when preparing for a performance. Body, Face, Voice, Spatial Relationship, Memorization, Sequencing and Collaborating are essential to the stage player. This residency offers simple acting tools for use in the classroom to enhance the learning experience. Serena Ebhardt, professional actor, producer, and director, brainstorms with you for dramatic effect in your classroom.

In addition to theatrical productions for all ages, Drama Workshops are available for students and also for the professional development of teachers. Please ask about C.E.U.'s. Presentation and Soft Skill workshops are available for Businesses and Individual Business Professionals. EbzB Performing Artists are Teaching Artists trained in The John F. Kennedy Center For The Performing Arts "Artists as Educators: Planning Effective Workshops".