The Art and the Audition with Karen Kohlhaas
New York, NY
US
Karen Kohlhaas
Everyone starts the week with a tour through the town and surrounding area, beginning at the Tennessee Williams Rectory Museum. Many of Williams most famous plays are set in, or refer to the Mississippi Delta, including CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (Blanche and Stella鈥檚 home), THE GLASS MENAGERIE (home of Amanda Wingfield鈥檚 gentleman callers), and ORPHEUS DESCENDING. SUMMER AND SMOKE and THE ECCENTRICITIES OF A NIGHTINGALE are set in the rectory itself. We then tour the town, reading monologues and scenes at the actual sites they鈥檙e set in, and then we drive out to the Mississippi River. We finish with dinner at Moon Lake, the site of Blanche鈥檚 husband鈥檚 tragic suicide in STREETCAR. Moon Lake is featured in all of Williams鈥� Delta plays.
During the week we have daily monologue class with time to rehearse in the late afternoons and evenings. We have the incredible Katie Honaker, master voice & speech teacher, who will coach accents (Southern and non-Southern) and voice. Sunday is a day off. There are additional guest classes with amazing teachers on image/style and career. Morning yoga is an option with the excellent teachers from Delta Yoga, for a very modest additional fee. We finish with public performances of the monologues. Our last day ends with dinner and Blues in town.
TRANSPORTATION
The nearest airport is Memphis, about 75 miles away. For those not renting cars, there will be airport pickup and dropoff on arrival and departure days, within certain windows. When you register you will receive air travel recommendations. Cars have always worked out easily with some people renting, or driving to the training, and sharing and chipping in for gas.
HOUSING
There is a range of places to stay in Clarksdale from about $60/night and upwards. There have been some donated rooms in the past for those who otherwise could not afford to come, please inquire about that. When you register you will receive housing recommendations.
MEALS
Participants are responsible for most of their own meals. I host a couple of group dinners. Most of the B&Bs in town have kitchens and/or include breakfast food. There are several restaurants.
BIOS
Karen Kohlhaas
Karen is a director, teacher, author, filmmaker and Tennessee Williams scholar. DIRECTOR | Karen is a founding ensemble member of New York's Atlantic Theater Company, where her productions include plays by Harold Pinter, David Mamet, Annie Baker, Keith Reddin, Shel Silverstein, Joe Penhall, Hilary Bell, Tennessee Williams, and Kate Moira Ryan. She has also directed for the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater; Ars Nova; Montreal Comedy Festival; Naked Angels; Ensemble Studio Theatre; New York Live Arts; the 24 Hour Plays on Broadway; the Alley Theatre, Houston; New Dramatists; Menagerie Theatre in Cambridge, UK; Theatre Oxford; The Culture Project; NYU mainstage; the Practical Theater Co. in Sydney, and others. TEACHER | Karen has over 35 years teaching experience and is a senior teacher at the Atlantic Acting School, where she developed the first and second year script analysis curricula and trains script analysis faculty. She developed her own approach to rehearsing audition monologues, which is used by actors and teachers all over the world. She teaches her own online and hybrid classes in Monologues; Fearless Cold Reading, Throughline Script Analysis; and Directing. She has taught guest workshops around the US and internationally, including theaters, schools, conferences and universities in Atlanta, Austin, Seattle, Memphis, Dallas, Cleveland, Burlington, Oklahoma City, Miami, Mississippi, New Orleans, the UK, Italy, and Australia. She teaches Monologue Teacher Training to university and high school teachers. AUTHOR | Karen's books include The Monologue Audition: A Practical Guide for Actors, How to Choose a Monologue for Any Audition, and the Monologue Audition Teacher's Manual. She is the creator of The Monologue Audition Video (DVD) about her complete monologue technique. FILMMAKER | Karen's films include two music videos with acclaimed performer/playwright Taylor Mac, several short documentaries, and the instructional film Roots and Branches 5 Element Qi Gong for the T鈥檃i Chi Foundation. She is currently editing a documentary series about Tennessee Williams in the Mississippi Delta.TENNESSEE WILLIAMS SCHOLAR | Karen is the curator of the Tennessee Williams Rectory Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and is frequently a presenter and panelist at the New Orleans and Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festivals.
Katie Honaker is an actor, voice-over artist, teacher and coach who has been teaching voice and speech at Atlantic Acting School/NYU Tisch since 2003. She became a certified Miller Voice Method teacher in 2021. Originally from Nashville, Tennessee, she lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, two daughters and sweet dog May. You can find out more about Katie here:
Aug 13, 2025 - Aug 19, 2025
$0.00 – $0.00 per hour
补产补03补25-别产26-4677-863产-0肠78产诲9蹿别诲0诲鈥�
*NOTE: Do not copy/paste the above email address as it is
encoded with SPAM protection. Just click it to initiate an email from your
preferred email client.