Theater Arts Day

10:00-10:50 a.m.: Acting Audition Workshop

Step into your next audition with total confidence! Join theatre artist and educator Bakari Lebby for a dynamic workshop designed to demystify the entire audition process. This interactive session covers everything from building a versatile repertoire and finding opportunities to mastering the art of giving the casting team exactly what they need. Bring your current audition materials for personalized feedback and the questions you’ve always wanted to ask in an open format Q&A. You'll leave with the practical tools and strategies to nail that next audition!

11:00-11:50 a.m.: Theatre Methods for Community Expression

Multiple styles and structures exist in the space between theatre, play, and activism. This playful experiential workshop, led by drama therapist and theater professor Melanie Trimble, will present and teach the very basics of a flexible structure well adapted to working with community topics of concern. We will discuss practices of respect and empathy while working with non theatre community members. Participation will be encouraged. Conversation will include differential practices and purposes of Playback Theatre, Sociodrama, Applied Theatre, and Theatre of the Oppressed.

12:00-12:50 p.m.: Theatre Arts Costume

Costume Designers are storytellers. Led by Kendra Johnson, Professor of Performing Arts at Clemson University, the Theatre Arts Costume workshop explores ideas about how to approach designing costumes for theatre. Students learn how to develop designs for characters by using a scene and a character from a play or a fairytale. Participants will learn how costume designers help to define and support characters through hands-on drawing exercises.

1:00-2:50 p.m.: Improv 101 with the Mothers Comedy Group

Did you love Whose Line is it Anyway? A fan of DropoutTV? A seasoned improviser or always wanted to try for yourself? Cameron and Jesse are two improv pros from (Columbia’s own) The Mothers Comedy Group! They are excited to lead you in an active workshop full of games that will have you belly laughing and “yes and-ing” with the best of ‘em in no time!

Kendra Johnson is a professor of theatre in the Department of Performing Arts at Clemson University. She teaches Costume Design, African American Theatre, Theatre Appreciation, and Special Topics in Costume Design. Professor Johnson's scholarly research includes historical clothing, mainly clothes African Americans wore during the antebellum period. The study focuses on the influences of African and Western dress on the enslaved people in America. Her research focuses on self-expression through clothing, the history of African American dress during the 18th and 19th centuries, and how the cultivation of indigo by the enslaved affected their style of dress. She researched the dress of the enslaved inhabitants of Fort Hill plantation in Clemson, SC, and created representative costumes for educational purposes. Prof. Johnson's work focuses on the upstate area of South Carolina. The research has led to collaborations with Clemson professor Dr. Andrea Feeser, an art historian, and Dr. Karen Hall, an ethnobotanist. They examined the fundamental relationship between indigo and the enslaved who cultivated the plants. Prof. Johnson designed and constructed the 18th-century skirt on the cover of Prof. Feeser's book, "Red, White, and Black Make Blue: Indigo in the Fabric of Colonial South Carolina Life." Prof. Johnson's creative research is costume design. She designed for theatre companies in the Midwest, Northeast, and Southeast. Her 100 design credits include the world premiere of "The Power of Sail" at The Warehouse Theatre. Other design credits include "Fences" at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company and Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, "Dutchman" at Nebraska Repertory Theatre, "In the Heights" at Hangar Theatre in Syracuse, NY, "Sister Act" at Geva Theatre in Rochester, NY, "Appropriate" and "God of Carnage" at The Warehouse Theatre, and a recent production of "The Amen Corner" at Cincinnati Shakespeare Company.

Bakari Lebby is a process-based multidisciplinary director, designer, writer and performer, focusing on collaborative design and aesthetic unity and dramaturgical character study, with a passion for subverting form and expectations to provoke American audiences to actionable discourse. A native of Columbia, South Carolina, Kari received an MFA in Directing from The New School (2022) and a BA in Theatre from the University of South Carolina (2013). Bakari is a proud second-generation artist, having learned much about life and art from their late father, Dixiana native Larry Lebby. Recent directing credits include HARVEY (2025, Workshop Theatre), THE GLASS MENAGERIE (2023, Workshop Theatre), IS GOD IS (2022, The New School), WORLDS MELT (2021, The New School), SUNSET BABY (2018, Trustus Theatre), SOME GIRL(S) (2017, Workshop Theatre), music video MAD LOVE (2023) for nationally touring musician Mel Washington, and a workshop of MY DEAD BOYFRIEND IS A ROBOT (2023, National Black Theatre). A prolific performer, Kari was more recently seen on stage at Workshop Theatre in HUNDRED DAYS (2023). Lebby was named the 2017 Jasper Artist of the Year in Theatre and is a proud associate member of The Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.

Melanie is a multidisciplinary professional with a career spanning theatre arts, mental health, activism, and education. Melanie has led experimental start-up programs bringing enrichment, the arts and mental health services to frequently neglected populations in rural and urban settings, in New York, New Jersey, South Carolina and abroad. She brings experience in reaching highly stressed and traumatized children and families across ethnicities and cultures.

She currently works through her private practice, Purposeful, LLC, providing individual therapy, specialized arts education (especially focusing on students with different abilities, and under-resourced populations), and consulting/partnering on experimental community theatre projects. She is also an Adjunct Professor of Theatre at Midlands Technical College. Being a Board Member of Trustus Theatre, and a volunteer with Free Mom Hugs of the Midlands, the Columbia Area League of Women Voters and the Local Advocacy Team for the Lobular Breast Cancer Alliance allow her to contribute to the local community.

Melanie holds a graduate degree in Drama Therapy from New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, where she won the Graduate School’s Samuel Eshborn Service Award and the Drama Therapy Program’s Contribution to the Field Award. She also received a post-graduate certificate from the International Trauma Studies Program in NY the first year of its existence, and a BA in Theatre from the University of South Carolina.

Made up of graduates of improv comedy training programs in New York, Chicago, Clemson University, the University of South Carolina, and other institutions across the nation, The Mothers Comedy Group makes their home in Trustus Theatre in downtown Columbia, South Carolina.

Now in their ninth season, The Mothers have sketch and improv shows, as well as commerce series and recurring events at the Richland Library. Their dedication to community-focused comedy has borne results: the group was awarded the inaugural “Best Local Comedy or Improv Group” in August 2020 from readers of Columbia’s long-running weekly paper, The Free Times and has won every year since.

The Mothers have been featured twice at the New South Comedy Festival, as well as appearing at Girls Block, First Thursday, Tapp’s, and the Columbia Museum of Art.

This workshop will be presented by Jesse Brezeale and Cameron Muccio. Jesse is an improviser, actor and award-winning visual communicator. He brings several years of experience as a previous president of the Overreactors Improv group at USC and actor in numerous USC Theatre productions like The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), Rumors, and These Shining Lives. 

Cameron Muccio is an actor, writer, director, and teaching artist with a BA in theatre from Winthrop University. You may have seen his work on the Trustus Theatre mainstage as the assistant director of Dandelion: An Original Musical. Before moving back to his hometown of Columbia in 2023, Cameron performed with a variety of theatre companies throughout the Charlotte area, including Queen City Concerts, Piedmont Players Theatre, and the Queen City New Play Initiative. Currently, he teaches classes at Columbia Children’s Theatre.