24 Hour theater recap

Steve Glines, a BagelBard and organizer of the 24 hour theater event, wrote a recap of the evening/experience:

This past weekend I participated in Guaranteed Overnight Theater or GOT. I haven’t had so much fun in years. We survived in spite of my mistakes. Silly me saying the event would start at 5 P.M. on a Friday – what was I thinking … that theater and writer types live on the same schedule I do? Twelve people showed up and two promptly left. I think I must look scary. One gentleman came in very late with a rather morose short story he wanted converted into a script. When it was clear that wasn’t going to happen he left. We lost another overnight – an email stating that she would rather work on her own plays and did not wish to collaborate further. Well la de da, that left 8 of us.

By 10 PM we had the outline of 7 mini scripts and a framework that would tie them all together. By 10 AM we had reassembled and disassembled to work on our various scripts. By 1 PM we were ready to rehearse. We managed to do about 3 walkthroughs before the show.

Read the rest of it on his blog >> 

Thanks Steve, and everyone involved in making this event happen.

Faculty Profile – Susan McLucas

Susan McLucas

Classes taught: Bicycle Riding for Beginners

Teaching with the Center since: More than 20 years!

Susan (at left) with her students

Susan McLucas has taught with the Center for more than 20 years. When not teaching riding, she works with Healthy Tomorrow, a group that fights female genital mutilation in Mali and around the world.

How did you start teaching bike riding?

I wanted to be involved in the bicycle world. I was a mechanic, and I thought it’d be fun to do something more people oriented, and I had some friends I had already taught. I noticed what an empowering thing it was for people. People would say “I’m okay, I know how to ride a bike now; I’m normal!”

I started out just doing it one by one, and then the Learning Annex (an adult ed center based out of NYC) came to town, and they asked me if I would do a group session. As soon as the first class started gathering, I realized how nice it is for the students to have each other.

How’s the class work?

We meet at my house near Davis Square, Somerville and walk bikes to the Powderhouse School. I have a fleet of bikes that students can rent, or you can bring your own. Then we head to the bike path in Davis Square. The maximum is 8 students per class. We meet four times and it varies how quickly people pick it up. Everyone does get it—virtually every student learns to ride. The last class is a picnic celebration and everyone brings food. We’ve been doing it like this for 15 years.

What are the students like?

It’s a complete range. People in our classes at the Cambridge Center are anywhere from 20-somethings to people in their seventies and occasionally eighties. Maybe around half of my students are from other countries. Many are fulfilling a decades-old dream. It makes it extra fun when there’s a little extra drama—a woman who’s so petrified she doesn’t even want to come back (but she does) or a man who doesn’t want to be there, but has promised his wife he’d learn to ride. No matter the particular circumstances, everybody leaves happy.

The great thing is, after all this time it never gets old.  It’s always just as great when someone learns to ride.

The next Bicycle Riding for Beginners course begins on September 30th. Register here. >>

The Baby Boomer Think Tank

This interactive series of afternoon discussions will both give you a chance to get up-to-date on critical issues that the leading thinkers of the boomer generation are grappling with, and make sense of them with your class-mates in facilitated discussions. The topics addressed this fall are:

1. The Changing Nature of “Retirement”
2. Your Health: What Do you Really Need to Worry About, and How is the System Prepared for You
3. Keeping Cognitively and Culturally Fit: The Role of Arts and Education
4. Psychological/Developmental Issues after 60.

CCAE Executive Director Jim Smith will moderate the series, with guest experts joining us weekly. Bring your lunch, and roll up your mental sleeves.

Register here >>

Faculty Profile – Bob Gautreau

Bob Gautreau

Classes taught: Comedy and Improvisation

Teaching with the Center since: 1996

Bob Gautreau is a professional entertainer since 1978.  His comedy and impressions have taken him to clubs, colleges and cruises as well as HBO and An Evening at the Improv. He graduated from Emerson College in 1985 with a BS in Theater Education and has taught Stand Up Comedy and Improv Comedy year round at CCAE since 1996.

My courses are great fun, with an informative approach to comedy.  I aim to provide students with a new, unique sense of freedom and empowerment.

What do you do for fun?

I work! I wrote, directed and starred in the musical comedies King of Beasts: Aesop’s Fables, Vaudeville Revisited and Legendary Love Songs. I currently perform my Stand Up act locally at Giggles in Saugus. Next year, I’m celebrating 30 years in comedy. (I started five years before I was born.)

Bob also teaches courses seasonally, including Sketch Comedy, Improv 2, Acting in the Romantic Comedy, and Women in Comedy.  You can watch a clip of Bob’s standup at his website: www.bobgautreau.com

Poetry for Breakfast – The BagelBards, and How They Came to Be

I spoke with Doug Holder last week about the BagelBards, a group of poetry readers and writers that meets regularly in Cambridge.  They’re the group behind the 24 Hour Theater project that’s on the ccae front page.  Doug Holder founded the group three years ago, and we talked a bit about how the group got its start.

“A friend of mine, a poet in Cambridge, called me a few years ago, and basically talked about how he felt isolated as a poet,” Doug said.  “He was bemoaning a lack of community, and so I thought, let’s get people together and read.”

Doug started the meetings with his colleague Harris Gardner.  Doug got his MA in Literature from Harvard, but both were unhappy with the lack of poetry happening outside of the university setting.  “A lot of why we started was a desire to take poetry out of the Academy,” Doug told me.  So they decided to meet on weekend mornings, down the street from Harvard at the Finagle a’ Bagle.

“We were two Jewish kids, and we ate bagels, so we called ourselves the BagelBards,” says Doug.  Among being a Bard, Doug is also founder of the Ibetson Street Press and has published over 40 books of poetry and 20 issues of the literary journal Ibetson Street.  “Now, we get anywhere from 20-25 people.  There are core members who come, and then there are always different people, who range in age from people in their 20s to people as old as 70, and everywhere from unpublished poets to university professors.”

The BagelBards have since published two anthologies made up of original work by its members.  Poet Afaa Michael Weaver, a BagelBarder himself, wrote the foreword to the first anthology.

The group has since moved from Finagle in Harvard Square (it moved when Finagle moved, down the street).  Now they meet alternately between the Au Bon Pain’s in Davis and Central Square.  “We generally meet on Sunday mornings.  It’s very informal—people come and chat and we help each other out.”

Doug confesses the group is comprised of “very unusual people.  But we’ve become friends, we throw parties.”

If you’d like to join them, look for the large group in discussion on weekend mornings at your local Au Bon Pain.  Or try the 24 Hour Theater project, which begins next week on Friday (9/21).

Fall Term Begins September 24th

First day of Fall Term classes will commence on Monday, September 24th.

Browse courses now >>

Take Classes with the Kids! The Fall Family Flyer

Just finished mocking up the Fall Family Flyer. It’s a collection of events that are geared towards families. There are classes you can take with your kids, or for your friends who have kiddies, whether it’s building birdhouses or baking pizzas. We’ll send them out to schools around town and leave a few in our registration office. You can download a copy here, too.

Fall Family Flyer ‘07