Meron Langsner
  • Home
  • About Meron
  • Blog: Taking Note and Taking Notes
    • Most Popular Blog Posts from Taking Note & Taking Notes
  • Playwright
    • Plays Available for Production or Development >
      • Playwriting Press/Book Covers/etc
    • Slippery Slope Podcast
    • Selected Videos of Short Plays from the Gi60 Festival
  • Theatre & Performance Scholar and Dramaturg
    • TEX Talk: "The Impossible Body" (Tufts Idea Exchange)
  • Fight Director/Movement Specialist for Theatre, Opera, & Film
    • Photos of Combat & Movement Compositions >
      • Press Quotes for Stage Combat & Movement Work
    • Stage Combat Resources >
      • Martial Arts Resources for Fight Directors
      • Cautionary Tales: Stage Combat Gone Wrong
  • Educator
    • In-Class Group Exercise Based on MARISOL
    • In-Class Group Exercise for CLOUD NINE & BLASTED
    • Class Exercise: Muppets, Casting, & Shakespeare
    • Sample Assignment: Towards a Dramaturgy of Stage Combat
    • The Cinematographer Exercise: Introducing Non-Contact Blows
    • Dramaturgy Prompt Assignment
    • Selected Comments from Student Course Evaluations
  • Contact Meron

Theater Educator

Picture
Meron Langsner, MA, MFA, PhD is an award-winning educator available for workshops and guest lectures  in a wide range of subject areas in the Greater New York Area.

Please contact him to make arrangements.

  
Teaching Competencies  
Academic: Theatre History, Dramatic Literature & Criticism, Performance Studies, Dance and Movement Ethnography, Popular Entertainment, Film Studies
Studio: Playwriting & Dramaturgy, Stage Combat, Acting, Directing, Movement, Devised Work, Creative Writing


    Teaching Awards

Award for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education - Tufts University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
 
Osher Scholar - CELT (Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching), Tufts University


Citations for Major Positive Impact on the Tufts Undergraduate Experience, Tufts Senior Survey 2008, 2009, & 2011.

Nominated for Tufts Graduate Student Council Outstanding Graduate Student Mentoring and Contribution to Undergraduate Education award in 2008

2018 Commencement Keynote Speaker - Tom Todoroff Conservatory, NYC



    Selected Experience

Instructor at: Boston University, Emerson College, New York Film Academy Summer Institute at Harvard, The Tom Todoroff Acting Conservatory (NYC),  Tufts University (Department of Drama & Dance and Osher LLI), and Prescott College on subjects that included: World Theatre History, Playwriting, Stage Combat, Acting, Dramaturgy, Movement, Improvisation, Theatre Appreciation, Violence in Shakespeare & Contemporary Plays. 

Guest Lecturer/Workshop Leader for: New York Summer Sling, The Social Distance Showdown, Massachusetts Educational Theatre Guild, Lyric First Stage, New Repertory Theatre, Bank of America PIC Interns, Yellow Taxi Productions, Cabinet Gallery, Salve Regina University, New England Institute of Art, Eastern CT University, Manhattanville College, TEX: Tufts Idea Exchange (alumni speaker), Citizen Schools, MAPHERD, PAVE (Peers Against ViolencE), StageSource, Region I KC/ACTF, ATHE, Last Frontier Theatre Conference (featured artist), MDC: Male Dancer Conference, Pla Pla Pla Playwrights (Rio de Janeiro), Weston Drama Workshop, and other organizations on a wide variety of subjects, both scholarly and studio related. 

Served as a teaching assistant for courses on directing, screenwriting, Shakespeare on Film, advanced acting, and stage combat at Tufts, Brandeis, and SUNY Buffalo. Assisted such luminaries as Kazimierz Braun and Stephen McKinley Henderson. 

Meron has judged for several METG (Massachusetts Educational Theatre Guild) Festivals, as well as for the August Wilson Monologue Competition.

He is also an accomplished Fight Director/Movement Specialist and Stage Director, and has served in those capacities in numerous academic venues.

Other teaching experience over the years includes Kaplan Test Prep (Math, Logic, and Language),  Sylvan Learning (Math and Reading), Brandeis University Student Support Services (Test Prep), IMPACT Boston (Self-Defense and Personal Safety), and several years as a martial arts instructor.




    Sample Syllabi:

Syllabus for DR112 - Advanced Acting Workshop: Stage Combat - Spring 2011, Tufts University

Syllabus for DR10 - Introduction to Acting - Spring 2010, Tufts University




    Sample Class Exercises:
 
Applied Dramaturgy Group Exercises for Marisol

Group Exercises for Cloud 9 and Blasted

Muppets, Casting, and Shakespeare


The Cinematographer Exercise: Intoducing Non-Contact Blows (Stage Combat teaching piece)

 

Click Here for Comments from Student Course Evaluations

Click Here for Links to Published Articles by Students that Began as Class Assignments


    Links to Selected Pedagogy Articles:

Paper Assignment: "Dramaturgy & Stage Combat" - This appeared in both The Fight Master: The Journal of the Society of American Fight Directors and Volume 4 of the LMDA Dramaturgy Sourcebook


"Applied Dramaturgy Exercise: Jose Rivera's Marisol" - This was included in Volume 5 of the LMDA Dramaturgy Sourcebook

"The Cinematographer Exercise - Introducing Non-Contact Blows" - Pedagogy article in The Cutting Edge: The Newsletter of the Society of American Fight Directors







Sample Lecture: The Impossible Body
The video below is footage from a talk at TEX: The Tufts Idea Exchange in November of 2011

  


  Statement of Teaching Philosophy


    A teacher’s job is threefold; the first and simplest task is to transmit knowledge and skills, the second is to coach the application and development of what has been taught, and the third is to create the forum in which that learning can be applied beyond its original context.

    This last element is most important for those of us who teach theatre arts and performance studies.  Theatre is simultaneously practical and intellectual, visceral and abstract, historical and theoretical.  The best theatre practitioners are those who have an understanding of their collaborators’ functions as well as competence in their own specialty.  My pedagogy addresses the collaborative nature of our profession, regardless of which discipline I am teaching.  

    As a teacher I strive to create a specific understanding of whatever elements constitute any given course while also teaching where those same element exist in a larger context.  To this end I have assigned dramaturgy papers in stage combat courses, analyses of business structures in theatre appreciation courses, and casting exercises in theatre history classes.   

    Ideally my classroom is an adaptive system that can take advantage of variables such as ongoing productions within reach of the students, different student experiences and backgrounds within a class, new technologies, and current events when appropriate.  There is delicate balancing act wherein adaptations must not come at the expense of course content, but I have learned that it is possible to create a classroom in which I learn from my students as they learn from one another.

    The assignments and discussions that arise as a result of this philosophy are empowering for the students while continuously engaging them- and me.  I encourage them to see themselves as emerging professionals in a multifaceted field.  As I respond to the insight of my broad-minded students, no lesson is lost.   Whether the next class I teach is history, playwriting, performance studies, stage combat, or anything else, I strive to apply those lessons of each class to the benefit of the next one.


Picture
Picture

Resources

Plays Available
Stage Combat Resources

About Meron

Playwright
Fight Director
Scholar
Educator

The Blog

Taking Note & Taking Notes
Most Popular Posts

Contact & Press

Links to Press
Student Testimonials
Contact Meron
All content Copyright Meron Langsner 2011-2020 unless otherwise specified