Foundations of Interactive Performance

Amanda Meyers is an LA-based creative director specializing in interactive and site-specific theatre. In 2022, Amanda founded A Party at Anna’s to pull more Gen-Z artists into the world of immersive. Recent stage management credits include Capital W and Will Coile, and original immersive works have featured live musicians, improvised scenes, audience transport, and even a noise complaint or two (successfully negotiated). When it comes to Party At Anna’s, Amanda’s mix of structure and spontaneity leads to inventive, resource-maximizing productions that punch above their weight. Having trained with Jeff Wirth and Joanna Harmon since 2022, Amanda is honored to begin passing along Interactive Performance Training to the next generation of immersive creators.

“Party Tricks” Act Creation Workshop

Dell’Arte alumna Amy Saunders, better known by her stage name Miss Behave, is a British Variety legend whose career spans more than three decades of emcee-ing, speciality acts, and genre-bending entertainment.

Act Development with Daredevil Chicken

Anne Goldmann and Jonathan Taylor created ‘Daredevil Chicken’ on the streets of Barcelona as an interactive street theatre performance. Their performances have evolved and grown since then to create performance art, cabaret acts, burlesque, clown shows, and continue to present them around the world. Combining comedy, circus skills, music, magic and absurd characters they are modern comic vaudevillians.

The Honest Clown: Removing the Nose

Jason Ballweber is a Minneapolis-based actor, director, and educator whose work centers on creating new performances and championing the importance of joy in the process. His credits span a wide range of companies, including Theatre de la Jeune Lune, Sod House Theater, Three Sticks Theatre, Jon Ferguson Theater, Live Action Set, Bedlam Theatre, Minnesota Orchestra, Manitoba Theatre for Young People, and Seattle Children's Theatre. At Know Theatre of Cincinnati, he won an Acclaim Award for his direction of Sideways Stories from Wayside School. At Open Eye Figure Theatre, he co-created and directed the Ivey Award–winning Milly and Tillie, and at Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis, he directed the North American premiere of Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat.

Mentor in Residence

This summer, Jeff Wirth serves as Mentor in Residence, available to support students as they develop their own work. Rather than leading classes, he works directly with artists on in-progress ideas, stuck moments, and evolving pieces. Bring what you’re working on. Jeff helps clarify intention, sharpen structure, and test how your work holds up in the presence of real participants. His strength is in interactive performance, with practical insight that carries across physical theatre, clowning, and experimental forms. The focus stays on your goals, with feedback you can immediately apply.

Beyond the Fourth Wall

Josh Matthews (They/He) is a teacher, actor, and clown/circus performer. He has traveled around the world with his theater company, Under the Table, performing original physical comedies. Josh Has performed at The Lincoln Center (NYC), The Big Apple Circus (NYC) and Third Rail Projects (NYC) to name a few companies. Josh has been a teaching artist and guest lecturer for the past 25 years, some of the organizations Josh has worked with have been the New Victory Theater, Word For Word theater company, American Conservatory Theater, Occidental College, Sarah Lawrence College, and New York University. Currently Josh serves as a lead clown and artistic director for Medical Clown Project medicalclownproject.org.

The Honest Clown: Removing the Nose

Noah Bremer is the Producing Artistic Director of Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre in Blue Lake, CA, where he is stewarding the organization into its next chapter as the country's premier ensemble-based physical theater training center, with complementary focus on international touring and local community engagement.

A veteran physical performer and clown, Noah most recently toured in a clown duo with Minnesota-based Jason Ballweber. Prior to that, he played the lead in Karera, a circus production in Guam, and served as the Interactive Performer aboard the German flagship cruise line AIDA Cosma. His Las Vegas credits include Cirque du Soleil's Beatles LOVE, where he played Father McKenzie from "Eleanor Rigby," and Spiegelworld's raunchy western Atomic Saloon Show as Reverend Peabody. Internationally, he originated the lead role of The Skywatcher in Cirque du Soleil's big-top touring production Varekai.

Finding the Life: Puppetry Fundamentals for the Working Actor

Rebekah Lane is a theatre professional and educator with two decades of experience creating collaborative theatrical work. Her love of crafting movement for the stage led her to specialize in devising, puppetry, movement theatre, and intimacy direction,  One of her greatest joys is teaching actors how to bring an object to life. She began her puppetry journey with MicheLee Puppets, where she worked as an actor and puppeteer for seven years, and later served as Director of Puppetry for ensemble theatre troupe Phantasmagoria. Puppetry has since become a touchstone of her directing practice and a subject she has taught at colleges across the country and at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta.