Woiwode, Erica

Musical Theatre

In this fellowship, students will take a basic dramatic script and song outline, and will create and write plot, dialogue, and lyrics to develop their own musical play.  Working both in small groups and as a whole, they will also create basic scenery and props, and write stage directions.  They will rehearse and perform their play.  The students will keep written copies of the play (scripts, with their credits), and their performance will be videotaped, so that they can watch their own production, and see how their written and creative work came to life!  This fellowship is great for students from Kindergarten through eighth grade.  There is also the option to do a play without music, or a song-and-theatre sketch show, in which students work in small groups and each group creates a scene or song, culminating in a performance of all of their work.

This fellowship teaches students how to use writing to create dialogue, lyrics, stage direction, and how to express themselves creatively, specifically through the mediums of writing, music and theatre.

The Instructor

Erica Woiwode, M.A., is a college writing instructor, published poet, and accomplished musician and actor.  Recently relocated to Portland from San Diego, she has taught writing composition, literature, and creative writing in the community college and university for the past three years, and has worked as both a lead newspaper reporter and a freelance editor. Erica has over fifteen years of experience in professional and community theatre, with lead roles in musical, dramatic, and improvisational/comedy productions.  She has taught drama workshops, directed children’s theatre, won a drama scholarship in 1991, and co-wrote, produced, and directed ‘Poetic Stage’ in 1999, at The Fault Line Theatre in San Diego.  Erica is an accomplished classical pianist, and has won many awards for piano competition and performance since the age of ten.  She has taught music/piano for over twelve years, and she is a choral singer.  Erica has been published in Academic Exchange, Turbula, Artistic Rights, CSUSM Pride Literary Supplement, L.A. Miscellany, and The Poetry Conspiracy.  Erica was recently featured in an article on teaching writing and writing poetry in San Diego’s North County Times.  Erica has worked with children for many years, including as a piano teacher, a teaching aide for elementary school students with disabilities, and a camp counselor.  She is enthusiastic and fun-loving, an ardent promoter of fine and performing arts and education, and a skilled and gifted teacher.