Theatre Beyond the Stage

Episode 145: Theatre Beyond the Stage Jesse Wilson started life as an actor. Born in LA he started acting young and even went to Juilliard. But that traditional “actors” life is not the one he leads now. A one day novelty experience with at-risk teens turned into a two month monologue creation project. He frequently works with correctional facilities through arts rehabilitation programs.  How do you create theatre with non actors? What are the steps to creating a life inspired monologue? What was the end result? In this episode, we take Theatre beyond the stage. Show Notes Ted Talk Monologue Everything Scene Spurs  Emergency Lesson Plans  Episode Transcript Welcome to TFP – The Theatrefolk Podcast – the place to be for Drama teachers, Drama students, and theatre educators everywhere. I’m Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Hello! I hope you're well. Thanks for listening. This is Episode 145. You can find any links to this episode in the show notes at theatrefolk.com/episode145 and I think this is one of those episodes that we should just get right to. Suffice it to say we’re talking theatre beyond the stag, beyond the entertainment value, beyond working with “actors.” How many of you have to deal with administrators who only see your class as games or fluff? How often have you had to have students or students in your class who are and will always be non-actors? You want them to have the experience; you want to include them and to get them to have a great experience with your classroom – how? We’re talking about theatre, real people, real life, all together, holding hands – maybe not. But, anyway, Jesse Wilson is my guest. Let’s get to it. LINDSAY: Hello, Jesse! JESSE: Hey, Lindsay! How are you? LINDSAY: Awesome. Tell everybody where you are in the world. JESSE: I’m in an amazing little planet called Colorado Springs in Colorado. LINDSAY: Conveniently enough, Colorado Springs is in Colorado. JESSE: That’s right! Born and raised in LA, lived in the west coast pretty much, well, until I was eighteen, and then lived in the east coast and I’ve navigated my way back and forth between LA and New York and Philadelphia. Somehow, I ended up here and it’s going great. LINDSAY: Awesome! So, just start by saying, what’s your connection to theatre? JESSE: Well, my connection to theatre probably begins the day I was born. I don’t remember ever doing anything that wasn’t theatre-related. I grew up in the industry and began acting at a very early age. And so, that’s just been who I am and what I’ve been doing for forever. I’d probably say the biggest, most pivotal experience in the theatre is when I went to Juilliard and that was right after high school and that’s what really got the ball rolling. LINDSAY: Awesome. That’s a whole other podcast for a whole other day because that would be interesting to, well, you know, we have a lot of listeners who have students who go, “Where should I go to school?” or “What’s it like to be…?” you know, that notion of LA has a… stigma is not the right word. Well, it has a preconceived notion of what that’s like. JESSE: It does, it certainly does. LINDSAY: That is very interesting that that is your background but we’re going to talk about something a littl...