Laughing Pig Theatre Offers Fall Arts Classes

Laughing Pig Theatre, a nonprofit community theatre based in Mesa, is offering a wide variety of 6-8 week virtual classes for youth and adult students to provide a creative outlet for those who are unable to attend classes in person, whether it be due to scheduling or the restrictions of our public health crisis.

All classes will be held over Zoom once a week for one hour for maximum flexibility. Class registration is open now through October 24, and classes begin the week of October 25. A full course catalogue can be found on their website, laughingpigtheatre.org.

Taylor Moschetti, the Artistic Director of Laughing Pig Theatre, is also a full-time Drama teacher for BASIS Education. She says she felt inspired to create the virtual program after speaking with other educators about how the arts programs at their schools had been affected. "Support for arts education in Arizona has always been threadbare, but the pandemic only exacerbated that," says Moschetti. "I wanted a program that allowed anyone, kids or adults, to improve themselves without risking their health."

Moschetti and Laughing Pig have brought on a team of expert Teaching Artists from across Phoenix and beyond to lead a variety of specialized courses on movement, sketch writing, meditative painting, improvisation, acting with developmental disabilities and more. Some of these instructors are working professionals in the Valley theatre scene, while others were met through the Molly Blank Fund ASU Gammage Teaching Artist Program, which Moschetti and her husband and co-founder Tony Moschetti completed earlier this year.

Laughing Pig Theatre was established in 2017 and quickly integrated itself in the Phoenix Underground theatre scene. It focuses on the production of new and ground-breaking work from playwrights like Rachel Lynett, Darcy Parker Bruce, and MJ Kaufman. They are proud to be an anti-racist, LGBTQIA+ friendly theatre for social change for artists of all ages and abilities.