EDUCATION STATION - APRIL 2010

SCR's Summer Acting Workshop.

Summer Acting Workshop Inspires Kids—and Instructors

All of the students in SCR’s Summer Acting Workshop are new to the acting experience; in fact, that’s a prerequisite. The workshop is only for kids who never have taken classes at SCR. Many of them go on to the year-round program; others find acting is not their thing. But they all have a good time.

According to Diana Burbano, one of the program’s most enthusiastic (not to mention talented) instructors, “We are process based. No one is ‘performing’ or getting set up to perform. It is all about creating trust in an ensemble, and feeling the freedom to explore.”

And the fun part of that exploration is seeing the kids blossom. “It means a lot to me,” Diana said, “to get a shy kid, who a week before wouldn't even speak up in class, to lead a rousing chorus in a Viking anthem while wearing mile-long goldilocks braids.”

An actor herself, Diana can relate to the kids’ experiences. “I started in theatre professionally when I was 12 years old, so I understand where their heads are. I always make a speech at the beginning of each session that when you are an actor you work with eight-year-olds and 80-year-olds, and they are all your peers. I treat my students like colleagues and encourage them to enjoy themselves, and to enjoy themselves in the work.”

The Summer Acting Workshop has been going on for so many years—more than 30!—but there’s always a freshness to the program and an enthusiasm that the instructors pass on to the kids that’s totally unforced. When asked what she attributes that spirit to, Diana had the perfect answer:  “The fact that most of us still feel and act as if we are 13!”

(l. to r.) Preston Maybank as Homer, Diana Burbano as the President, Jennifer Chang as Fern and Guilford Adams as Wilbur in Charlotte's Web.

All about Diana

And that fresh, young exuberance is helpful in Diana’s own acting career.

Besides being an instructor in both the Kids Acting Program and the Neighborhood Conservatory (which offers free after-school acting classes to kids in under-served areas), Diana has appeared in the lots of Theatre for Young Audiences shows.

In The Hoboken Chicken Emergency she portrayed Miss Pickles; in Bunnicula, Chester the cat; in James and the Giant Peach, a spider; in Charlotte’s Web, four characters, including a sheep; and in Imagine, an imaginary princess and a thumb!

While the theatre is her favorite place to act, Diana has appeared in such television shows as "Cold Case,” “Threat Matrix,” “The District,” “The Unit” and “What about Brian.”

With all that experience, and by feeling and acting as if she were 13, Diana is one reason why the students in SCR’s Summer Acting Workshop enjoy themselves so much—while learning all about theatre for the first time.

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