LSU Department of Theatre, Swine Palace to Hold Master Class with Oscar Winning Actress Olympia Dukakis

BATON ROUGE – LSU’s Department of Theatre and Swine Palace are proud to present a unique master class with Oscar Award-winning actress Olympia Dukakis during the month of September, exclusive only to LSU Theatre students. The master class will focus on acting, directing, theatre, film and television.

During the class, Dukakis will train one-on-one in an intimate class setting with eight LSU Theatre students – four LSU Theatre undergraduates and four LSU Theatre Master of Fine Arts Professional Actor Training students. Each student will have the distinctive opportunity to work with Dukakis in scene and character work.

Dukakis’ visit follows in a long and rich history of guest artists working with LSU Theatre and Swine Palace. These include playwright and filmmaker Adam Rapp, international theatre director and artist Ping Chong, and theatre director Deb Alley.

Dukakis is an actor, director, producer, teacher, activist and, most recently, author, with her best-selling memoir, “Ask Me Again Tomorrow.” She has appeared in more than 130 off-Broadway and regional productions, and she has received two Obie awards, for Bertolt Brecht’s “A Man’s a Man,” and Christopher Durang’s “The Marriage of Bette and Boo” at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater. Dukakis starred in Martin Sherman’s one-woman play, “Rose,” both on Broadway and in London. She will be reprising her Broadway and international triumph, “Rose,” at the Manship Theatre in Baton Rouge on Monday, Sept.19, and Tuesday, Sept. 20, at 7:30 p.m. each evening. For more information about her performances at the Manship Theatre, visit www.manshiptheatre.org or call 225-344-0334.

For her work in the Norman Jewison film “Moonstruck,” Dukakis received an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress, the New York Film Critics Award, the Los Angeles Film Critics Award, and a Golden Globe Award. She has appeared in more than 50 films, including “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” “Steel Magnolias” and, most recently, “Cloudburst.”

Dukakis’ work on television includes one of her favorite projects, “Tales of the City,” a six-hour miniseries based on the novel by Armistead Maupin, which was a controversial blockbuster for PBS. She starred in its sequels, including “Further Tales of the City” and “More Tales of the City,” for which she earned Emmy, Screen Actors Guild and British Academy of Film and Television Arts nominations.

For more information on LSU’s Department of Theatre, visit www.theatre.lsu.edu.

To learn more about Swine Palace, visit www.swinepalace.org.