Online Summer Programs

Gilbert & Sullivan Scenes Online 2021

Ellen Kerrigan, Program Director
M. Jane Erwin, Creative Director
Baker Peeples, Music Director

Ages: 10 – 18
When: 9 days, June 16 – 26, 2021; Monday – Friday, 12:30 – 4:30 PM; Saturday, 1 - 4pm
Tuition: $650
Application Deadline: Deadline extended, please email yerlabyqf@fspz.rqhude.mcfs@sdlonyerl with any questions.
Requirements: Participants must have previous singing experience and acceptance will be based on submitted video. Instructions about how to submit your video will be sent upon receipt of your application. Videos are due April 10.

Gilbert & Sullivan Scenes Online explores a "Topsy-Turvy" world of unforgettable melodies, ingenious lyrics, and wacky storylines! Engage with peer musical theatre lovers in a program that will nurture creativity and build skills in acting, singing, and movement in a fun and upbeat environment. The program is offered online only and will culminate in an experience for family and friends featuring selected scenes and solos polished during the week. 2021 program highlights to include a group rendition of the iconic “Nightmare Song” from Iolanthe and G&S themed community building.

Sample Daily schedule (12:30 - 4:30)

12:30 Welcome Rally & Warm-ups
1:00 Group Class 1 - Group number or Choreography: Guided period style movement and dance class, including choreography for a hornpipe performance and group rendition of the iconic “Nightmare Song” from Iolanthe
1:30 Break
1:45 Scene Work Master Classes: Scene study and preparation with professional coaches in breakout sessions, focusing on storytelling, acting with scene partners, and dialect.
2:30 Group Class 2 - The World of G&S: Topics will vary by day, including patter songs, lyrics for today, vocabulary, dramaturgy and historical context.
3:00 Break
3:15 Solo Repertoire Master Classes: Daily individual coaching on solo selection in a master class format.
4:15 End of Day Rally

Faculty

Ellen Kerrigan (Program Director) versatile soprano, has been honored as a winner of both the National Council Metropolitan Opera Auditions and the San Francisco Opera Auditions Grand Finals. Ms. Kerrigan was subsequently chosen to participate in the Merola Program, performing the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor, and spent the following year as a San Francisco Opera Affiliate Artist/Adler Fellow. She has long delighted Bay Area opera audiences, most prominently in the roles of Norma (West Bay Opera), Madama Butterfly (Oakland Opera), and Martha (Pocket Opera). A native San Franciscan, Ms. Kerrigan began her performing career singing Gilbert and Sullivan operettas in high school, and thereafter joined the Lamplighters, where she sang nearly all the soprano lead roles. An active arts education consultant, she recently celebrated 25 years as creator and producer of the San Francisco Opera Guild's Opera à la Carte program, which brings an abbreviated version of well-known operas to over 30,000 Bay Area students yearly. As Education Director for the Lamplighters, she created the interactive school assembly program, H.M.S. Pinafore: Get on Board with Gilbert & Sullivan, and the engaging mini-residency programs of The Pirates of Penzance, The (New) Mikado, and H.M.S. Pinafore, which are enjoying popularity throughout the Bay Area.

M. Jane Erwin (Creative Director). In addition to her private voice studio, Jane is on the voice faculty of Sonoma State University, and serves as Stage Director for the SFCM Pre-College Opera & Musical Theater Scenes and Gilbert & Sullivan Scenes programs. Jane is a longtime teaching artist at the American Conservatory Theater (ACT), where she has taught singing, acting and musical theater in the Young Conservatory (YC) and the MFA Program. She has performed across the U.S. and in San Francisco in two national companies of The Phantom of the Opera, as well as sung many leading roles with Bay Area opera and theater companies. Her outstanding performances have earned two Bay Area Theatre Critics’ Circle Awards and a Drama-Logue Award for appearances with Lamplighters Music Theatre. As a stage director, she has helmed productions for Island City Opera, Sonoma State University, Lamplighters Music Theatre, Pocket Opera, SF Opera Guild’s Opera á la Carte, and the International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival in Buxton, England. For her 2016 direction of Ruddygore she received a Theatre Bay Area Awards nomination for Outstanding Direction of a Musical. Jane received her B.A. from Dartmouth College and her M.A. in Integrative Health Studies with Sound Healing Focus from the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she is also a graduate of the Certificate Program in Sound, Voice & Music Healing. Her passion is to help vocal and performing vocal artists become wholehearted storytellers and communicators through their craft.

Baker Peeples (Music Director) is Music Director of the Lamplighters Music Theatre, where he has sung or conducted hundreds of performances of Gilbert and Sullivan, Offenbach and Viennese operettas, and Broadway musicals. An accomplished tenor, he won the Best Male Singer Award in the 1995 and 1997 International Gilbert and Sullivan Festivals in Buxton, England. He holds a degree in French from Yale, where he was a member of the renowned Whiffenpoofs. Mr. Peeples was a finalist in both the Metropolitan Opera and San Francisco Opera Auditions. He serves as Music Director for the San Francisco Opera Guild's popular Opera à la Carte program. In addition, Mr. Peeples has written and directed collaborative school productions of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, which the Lamplighters have presented in Bay Area schools. Mr. Peeples maintains an active voice studio in San Francisco