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CREATING A SOLO SHOW WITH TJ & MEGAN -  SPEAKER SERIES!

In this series, we go over everything you need to know to self-produce on every level... from small-scale Fringe to larger-scale tour! We have speakers covering showcasing, touring, advertising/business models, festivals, digital dramaturgy, taping your show... and everything else. ARCHIVAL!

SPEAKER SERIES

Oct 25

 How to Livestream / Digitally Dramaturg Your Show

Chloe Ziner

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Chloe Ziner is one half of the Mind of a Snail shadow puppetry duo currently based out of Vancouver B.C. Canada, on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlil̓wətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. 

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Nov 1

How to Package & Book Your Show

Alastair Knowles

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Alastair Knowles, Co-artistic Director, James & Jamesy Society. With a Commerce Degree and a Clown School Certificate in hand, Alastair focuses his business acumen in the field of performance arts. As co-Artistic director of James & Jamesy, he has staged his productions over 700 times across Canada, the US, and UK.  Since their 2012 debut performance - a two-night run at a tiny venue, to their upcoming Christmas tour, a 35-show / 23-city performance marathon, renting venues and self producing has been a constant intrigue and presuit.

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Nov 8

How to Showcase Your Show

 

Stéphanie Morin-Robert

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Stephanie is a critically acclaimed Canadian comedian and multidisciplinary artist who successfully and extensively tours to recognized festivals, venues, schools, and clubs across the globe. Her work as a performing artist has been celebrated by a wide range of audiences, critics, and producers with sold-out runs, raving 5-star reviews, and multiple awards underlining her outstanding talent, professionalism, and charm. She recently co-produced and hosted “Mom’s the Word” for the Winnipeg Comedy Festival in 2022 and toured her standup comedy special across the country this last summer.

 

She is currently focused on expanding her career towards the francophone performing arts networks after a solid 8 years of showcasing and touring her productions for thousands of anglophone Canadian, American, and European audiences.

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Nov 15

How to Design Your Show

 

Jon Paterson

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Jonathon has been working in the theatre industry for the past 30 years and has over 2 dozen producing credits with the Fringe touring company, RibbitRePublic, overseeing everything from marketing, promotions, web design, poster design, lighting and sound design, and stage management.

Jon is also a performer, stilt-walker, theatre technician and Winnipeg Jets fan.

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Nov 22

How to Market, Brand, and Monetize Your Show

Adam Francis Proulx

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Adam is a Canadian theatre artist known for his writing, performing, and puppetry.He is perhaps best known for his solo show BAKER'S DOZEN: 12 Angry Puppets, which has travelled North America and won numerous awards.Outside of his own creations, Adam has worked with such companies as Neptune Theatre, Drayton Entertainment, the Victoria Playhouse Petrolia, Sudbury Theatre Centre, The Lower Ossington Theatre (first Canadian cast of Avenue Q), Mad Science Productions (Star Trek Live! at Kennedy Space Center), and Walt Disney World Entertainment.A graduate of the University of Waterloo, Adam holds honours degrees in Arts and Business as well as Theatre and Performance. Additional training has come from New York University (MA level vocal performance).Recently, Adam was an Artist in Residence with The Puppetsmithery in Australia, and spent three seasons as the Assistant Artistic Director of the Victoria Playhouse in Petrolia. In the early days of the pandemic, Adam created 100 daily episodes of a family web series called Spencer Stays Inside.

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Nov 29

How to Video Your Show

Chase Padgett

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Chase Padgett is a multifaceted artist, musician, and storyteller. He has spent the majority of his career either in front of the camera or on stage performing his notable one man shows, 6 Guitars, Nashville Hurricane, and Lucky Break. Over the years, Chase experienced first-hand the need for quality video of one’s live stage work to secure bookings. Sadly, he found it quite difficult to find reliable media professionals who can deliver high quality video of live performances at budget friendly prices. This lead to Chase investing in professional grade camera equipment and mastering multi-cam filming and multi-track recorder for live stage shows. To date Chase has shot over 100 live stage shows with a particular focus on quality audio, thus providing the high quality video services he struggled to find as an artist years ago. These services include pre-production design and planning, proper isolated sound capture of all audio sources, multi-cam filming and editing, color correction, motion graphics, and more.​

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Dec 6

 How to Give Your Show a Life After Fringe 

Julia Mackey

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Julia Mackey was born in Birmingham, England, and grew up in Beaconsfield, Quebec, in the 1970s & 80s. Both her maternal and paternal families have had strong ties to the performing arts for many generations. Julia first began creating and writing theatre in the mid 1990s in Victoria, BC, with independent theatre company, Theatre SKAM. Since 1997, Julia has worked as a professional actor in theatres across Canada. In 2007, she and Dirk Van Stralen created Juno Productions. To date, they have toured their multi-award winning play, Jake’s Gift, to over 250 communities across Canada, including stops in the US, the UK and Normandy, France. When not on the road with Jake’s Gift, Julia lives in the historic town of Wells in the Cariboo District of BC. In November 2018 Jules joined the Sunset Theatre creative team as Director of Presentations, a position that was developed as part of the Sunset Theatre’s long-term strategic plan.

*Member of Canadian Actors’ Equity Association & UBCP/ACTRA

Dec 13

How to Fringe/Self-Produce Your Show

TJ Dawe & Megan Phillips

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TJ Dawe & Megan Phillips have cumulatively performed and produced in over 150 Fringe shows since 1999. Since TJ started Creating a Solo Show, Level I, in 2016 (with Megan TA-ing), they have had over 60 graduates, many of which have gone on to perform their own solo shows at Fringe festivals all over the world. Fancier individual bios are available below.

Megan's socials:

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TJ's socials:

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Speaker Series

SPEAKER COSTS

PURCHASE SPEAKER TICKETS

To keep this cost-effective, we are offering a PWYC model - pick whichever one best suits your needs.

 

**Please note - there is NO prerequisite for individual speakers! Come lollygag with us!**
 

PER SESSION

Tier 1 - $10 

Tier 2 - $25

Tier 3 - $35

WHOLE SESSION SERIES - includes all 8 speakers

Tier 1 - $70 (saves $10)

Tier 2 - $180 (saves $20)

Tier 3 - $250 (saves $30)

Here are the steps to buy your ticket!

1) Please fill out THIS FORM with the DATES you would like to attend.

2) Pay us your  monies, hunnies!

3) Once we have received that sweet sweet dough, you will receive all the Zoom login info.

Payment can be made via any of the following:

 

E-Transfer: info@soloshowcourse.com (no need for a password)

PayPal: info@soloshowcourse.com

Venmo: @TJ-Dawe-1

**Please note: we are committed to keeping tickets and admissions accessible. If funds are a barrier, please email info@soloshowcourse.com for scholarship information**

Speaker Tickets

TJ DAWE

your instructor

TJ Dawe has been been writing, performing, directing and touring solo shows since the late 90s. He’s participated in more than one hundred theatre festivals across Canada and abroad. He’s worked on shows that have toured the world, won awards, been on TV and had off-Broadway runs in New York. He’s worked with movie stars and high school students. He’s got published scripts he hocks after performances. You can find his solo show Medicine on YouTube, in full. He teaches a course on solo show creation at Langara College in Vancouver, and has lead workshops in cities ranging from Charleston, South Carolina to Winnipeg.

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Bios

MEGAN PHILLIPS

your TA

Megan Phillips is an award-winning singer, actor, comedian, songwriter and vocal coach based in Vancouver, BC, Canada. She has written and toured shows across North America (Periscope, Not Enough, Strapless Comedy). Perhaps her fanciest accomplishment is the musical song cycle People Suck – co-written with Peter Cavell, winner of Best of Toronto Fringe, Patron's Pick, and optioned by Second City Theatricals, it has been produced by Salty Theatre at Theatre Works St Kilda in Melbourne, AUS. A Vancouver, Canada-raised human and wombat-lover, she uses her BA in Music and MA in Musical Theatre to teach musical theatre, singing, and drama from her home studio (Zoom). You can sing, she promises. She does stand-up, improv and sketch, most notably as the creator and show runner of The Anxiety Show, a comedy show where she can be seen calling feelings and supporting others to turn their personal demons into ha-has and lolz. Her creative wheelhouse is taking big feelings and making beautiful art and comedy out of them. Because otherwise, what's it all for?

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TESTIMONIALS

TJ’s creativity and seemingly boundless curiosity are matched only by his willingness to move forward into further creative endeavours. We’ve taken our love for Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Batman and transformed it into theatrical expressions that embody truth and love. These solo shows have transcended borders and won over the confidence of Lucasfilm and the Lord of the Rings people. TJ was the key to this success. He helped me confront my concerns and doubts surrounding my own limitations (both as actor and writer), and he walked through the many doors with me. As an actor, writer and director, TJ continuously challenges his own self-doubts and sees a production to its fruition. He does not give up and because of that I refuse to. - Charlie Ross (creator/performer: One Man Star Wars Trilogy, One Man Lord of the Rings, One Man Stranger Things)

 

Working with TJ has made me a writer with guts. That is to say his encouragement, guidance and teaching has helped me to trust my gut, and write with a sense of abandon. He has also helped me to find humour through exploring the truth, and poetry through writing with honesty. -Alice Nelson

TJ Dawe makes a jungle gym of his expertise and experience: you climb through and discover your own instincts, fears, and fascinations. His teaching process focused on finding my own voice for my own show. - Devon More (writer/performer: Berlin Waltz)

From the first day, TJ (without any obvious effort) created such a safe place - to say whatever, try anything and open myself up to honest feedback. What emerged from the experience was unexpected and wonderful:

    •       I found a creative community - now, months later, we still meet to create, collaborate, attend each other's shows and readings

    •       I found my voice, started a blog and performed several times at storytelling events

-Maia Gibb

TJ’s teaching style is highly supportive, accepting, and non-judgmental, allowing we the students to relax, as much as possible, given the degree of self-exposure each of us feels with our personal material. But his exercises also usefully allow and challenge us to express and reveal our stories, to experience different ways of presenting the material, and to find our own personal ‘voices.'  - Falcon O’Hara

TJ has an empathy for the story like no other dramaturge I know. He inspired a belief in me that my story needed to be told. He freed the words from my grasp, held them to the light and then gently handed them back to me.  - Richard Lett (creator/performer: Sober but Never Clean)

TJ has helped me develop four solo plays. He is a joy to work with as he is always positive and always looking to improve the work. He draws on more than twenty years of experience and has an exceptional career as a solo artist himself. - Keir Cutler (creator/performer: Shakespeare Crackpot) 

 

TJ has this magical way of guiding you to push through your fluff and find your truth, but in such a way that he guides you to authenticity for you to find it for yourself. He creates an extremely safe and fertile environment that supports deeper and deeper creative growth, and gently nudges you into mining your own experiences to alchemize into creative gold. I already have years of writing and performing under my belt, and my confidence as a writer, performer, and human skyrocketed under TJ's supportive, nurturing wing. - Megan Phillips (creator/performer: Breaking Velocity, Not Enough, Periscope)

SCHOLARSHIPS

I know, I know. Times are messing with all of us. We have a limited number of scholarships available for those in financial need. If this pertains to you, please apply!

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Scholarships
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