For the past 34 years, the Atlanta Workshop Players have been offering classes, workshops, and camps on acting, improv, musical theater, voice acting, and pretty much any other subject related to film, television, or stage production. Most of those years were spent teaching throughout the Atlanta area until the troupe moved into the Barefoot Playhouse, its own teaching and performance space in Alpharetta, Ga., eight years ago.
“One of the classes we’re going to be doing this year is on TV and film through time,” says founder-director Don Stallings. “We’re going to look at some of the early techniques in television and film acting and various different styles. We’re going to take a look at Meisner, Stanislavski, Stella Adler, Uta Hagen. So, the [students] will get a little bit of exposure to a lot of the different great methods for acting. Everybody’s going to jibe with something a little differently. We want them to find what it is that helps them work as an actor and helps ground them and get them where they need to be as a performer.”
Because they teach the fundamentals of filmmaking and stage acting to children and adults, the Playhouse typically focuses on family-friendly productions. But Stallings says the troupe will soon be hosting some darker, more mature themes, beginning with “Wicked Little Tales,” a collection of Victorian horror stories by Orlando’s Phantasmagoria, making its Georgia debut July 31-Aug. 2, with an accompanying workshop through Aug. 1.
“Phantasmagoria’s a good step for us because it’s something that can appeal to both kids and adults,” says Stallings. “It’s a little darker and a little more grown up. We’re going to use Edgar Allan Poe, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens—that’s a little more mature of an audience. My friend John DiDonna created it and is directing the show. He’s an amazing performer and teacher who just loves theater and loves creating and making stuff that’s a little bit different.
“The kids are going to get a little bit of everything in this workshop,” he continues. “It’s also open to adults and it’s going to include everything from storytelling to puppet work to dance, stage combat, some circus things, and fire tricks. That will culminate in a matinee performance using people who were in the workshop as the opening act for the show.”
With summer camps currently taking place, and more classes and workshops beginning in August, there’s no rest for this wicked at the Barefoot Playhouse. And in the coming year, Stallings hopes to start working with a broader group of Atlanta-area actors.
“The musical theater production company that we have does two musicals during the course of the year that are cast from those classes,” he says. “The other two shows we did in the past year were auditions open mainly to our audience base that we’ve already started creating. We’re looking into opening it up to performers from throughout the Atlanta area for the shows we’re going to be producing over the course of the next year. It’s going to be opening up to general public auditions once we build that audience base and are able to bring in more performers.”
Following the Phantasmagoria shows, the theater will host a cabaret showcase in October, as well as a comedic Christmas singalong called “The Bethlehem Inn.”
“It’s the story of the birth of Jesus as told through the eyes of the befuddled innkeeper at the Bethlehem Inn, who has people complaining to him constantly about the noise behind the hotel. In the winter we’re looking at bringing in a piece called ‘Rosemary Leaves,’ written by Chattanooga playwright Rex Knowles, about a man with bipolar disease and intermittent explosive disorder. That’s going to be a bit more of an adult production.”
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