For Artists

It's not an easy question to answer, as it's something that can only be determined through the lens of personal experience.  And since the Institute For Arts Entrepreneurship™ is based in experiential learning, we want to help you find an answer to this question which could define your career.

- A 45 minute show pre-scripted show that you will, with direction, tailor to fit your individual artistic talents and entrepreneurial perspectives. Through this show you will teach the audience about the vital tools of imagination training, such as flexibility, fluency, improvisation, having heart, the willingness to fail and more.

- A 45 minute solo workshop taught by you in which you lead a small audience group in exercises and discussion based on your personal artistic abilities and interests.

Through the development and execution of your own Bite-Size Arts Ensemble™ show, you'll learn how to become more flexible with your artistic voice and begin to formulate and refine your vision in active, real world scenarios.  This experience will sharpen your communication skills and you'll learn how to interact more effectively with the community through the presentation of your original workshop, developing your abilities to see a product from creation to execution.  Through this experience, you will gain an understanding and appreciation for what it means to be a "do it yourself" artist while truly beginning to discover, develop and test how your ideas might become a viable business. 


Sign up for a Bite-Size Arts Ensemble™ 12 week immersion experience. Classes meet once a week for 3 hours.  Click here to enroll for our first workshop beginning June of 2010. This workshop is an excellent beginning to your arts entrepreneurship journey. 

Enroll in the Institute For Arts Entrepreneurship™, opening in January 2011.  As a student at the IAE, you will continue to expand your "do it yourself" capabilities through our experiential learning modules, classroom learning a guerilla coursework.  Our unique blend of curriculum will help you access and shape your new ideas and then teach you everything you need to know about how to create, brand, operate and market your new artistic enterprise.

Learn more about the Institute's curriculum here.

LANCE BRETT HALL is a theater director and acting coach originally from Bureau County, Illinois. Lance came to theater after making the unexpected discovery that math and science weren’t where all of the smart people were up to in the world at large, and turned away from a career as a high energy physicist.  Lance specializes in creative ensemble presentations, helping individuals uncover deeper and more specific ways to present information, group movement patterns, and is an expert in eighteenth century German acting technique.

Lance is a graduate of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, Illinois, and attended the Tulla-Gymnasium in Rastatt, Germany on a U.S. Congress-German Parliament Scholarship.  He continued his study of a different kind of craft at Cornell University under the mentorship of Pulitzer Prize nominee David Feldshuh.  He holds an honors degree from Cornell in Theater Direction and Acting History.

The professional theaters with which Lance has been associated in Chicago include Looking Glass Theatre Company, Victory Gardens Theatre, and Chicago Dramatists.  His favorite work in Chicago has focused on interdisciplinary performance, and he is a founding member of Tip Your Waiter Productions, which focuses on Chicago based, upcoming theater artists, and performances blending theater, music, poetry, and the visual arts.

The arts have always fascinated Lance as a group of disciplines able to produce more than simply art for art’s sake.  To this end he has used theater as a tool to teach social interaction and awareness of personal behavior and has studied the interface between the sciences and theater.  Continuing these lines of thought, Lance is working with Bite Size Ensemble members to develop tools for personal and professional growth.

SHAWN BOWERS is a writer, director, actor and improviser hailing from Overland Park, KS.  Dedicated to being an entertainer since he was but a wee child, Shawn specializes in improvisation, sketch comedy and meta theatrical pieces that put an emphasis on performers playing themselves as characters.  Shawn is constantly looking for new media through which to create; in the past, he has worn the hat of graphic designer, illustrator, journalist, copywriter, editor, brand consultant and anything else that he could get his hands on that would allow him to reach the public with his work.

Shawn graduated from the University of Kansas with a Bachelor's in Theatre and Film and moved to Chicago shortly thereafter to begin study at the Second City Conservatory and iO Training Program.  An accomplished producer and writer, Shawn has mounted a series of original works in theatres across the Chicago community, including his found-text compilation CRAIGSHOW: Tales From Craigslist and his most recent original play, Time Traveling Mom-Dad.