Tisch School of the Arts
WINTER 2015 NEWSLETTER
Welcome to the third IPA newsletter! The Institute of Performing Arts at Tisch School of the Arts includes the Department of Dance, Design for Stage and Film, Graduate Acting, Department of Drama, Graduate Musical Theatre Writing, Graduate Theatre Production and Department of Performance Studies. We are also working closely with Open Arts and Art & Public Policy. Chairs, Associate Chairs, faculty and students from these departments are meeting on a regular basis and sharing concerns, ideas and plans for the future. The IPA was formed under Dean Allyson Green during her tenure as Associate Dean of the Institute of Performing Arts and is now being led by Sarah Schlesinger. This newsletter highlights events sponsored by IPA and significant happenings in each of our Departments. What we’re able to share here represents only a small portion of the exciting work that is going on in all corners of the IPA in both our conservatory and academic programs. Our IPA office is in Room 267 at 715 Broadway, Second Floor. It is being run by Hali Alspach and her office hours 9:00am-5:00pm, Monday through Friday. Julianne Wick Davis is the Program Coordinator and can be reached at 212-992-9322. Sarah Schlesinger can be reached at ss4@nyu.edu. We’re anxious to hear your ideas for collaborative programming, events etc., so feel free to contact us at any time. Sarah Schlesinger Associate Dean, IPA
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-IPA Department Highlights-
Art & Public Policy
The Art of Justice
by Sophia Mak , Arts Politics MA Candidate
On November 7th, 2015 artists, activists, scholars, and thinkers, young and old filled New York University’s Hemmerdinger Hall for a one day conference called The Art of Justice: Articulating an Ethos and Aesthetic of the Movement. The momentous event was produced by Caribbean Cultural Center-African Diaspora Institute, the Institute of African American Affairs, the Department of Art & Public Policy, both of New York University, and the Institute for Research in African American Studies of Columbia University. The conference illuminated the stories of the movers and shakers of the Black and Nuyorican Arts Movements of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Participants including Ed Spriggs, former director of the Studio Museum of Harlem, Valerie Maynard, prominent artist, and Woody King Jr., founder of the New Federal Theater (to name a few) shared their experiences during these movements and their unrelenting dedication to Black and Brown liberation through the arts. The past connected with younger generations as people like Monica Montgomery of Museum of Impact, Elizabeth Yeampierre of UPROSE, and Monifa Bandele of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement shared the work they have been doing around social justice issues. Audience members got to learn about history that often goes untold and ask questions of the panelists. In addition to the conference, the first installment of story capturing occurred during the event to further the effort of archiving the important experiences and wisdoms of the those who have paved the way for the work in the present. The day was filled with vibrant conversation, calls to action, poetry, music, visual arts, and most importantly, an exchange of thoughts and ideas. For more information about the panelists, presenters, and performers at the event please go to cccadi.org
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Faculty Update
Congratulations! Art & Public Policy Professor Anna Deavere Smith received the 2015 New Press Social Justice Award on November 16th. The award was presented by Orange Is The New Black author Piper Kerman, with journalist Laura Flanders as emcee. Professor Pato Hebert was invited to participate in La Pietra Dialogues at NYU Firenze where he presented Make No Loud Noise. In this artist talk he gave an overview of his artworks, which address our relationships to place, space, history and one another, while exploring the aesthetics and poetics of interconnectedness. By tracing the historical development of his practice, and sharing recent projects (including a series of performances for the camera performed in public parks, and various participatory text interventions), Hebert was opening a dialogue about how to strategize around art in public space. Professor Karen Finley's performance, "The Jackie Look", sold out at The Broad Museum, Los Angeles, with accolades in the LA Times.
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Dance
Dreaming a Never-Stopping Dance
October 12, 2015 by Deborah Jowitt The Seán Curran Company brings East and West together at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater. Members of the Seán Curran Company in I Dream’d a Dream. (L to R): Dwayne Brown, Jin Ju Song-Begin, Christina Robson, Rebecca Arends, Benjamin Freedman, Aaron R. White, Elizabeth Coker, Michael Richman, David Gonsier. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu
As you enter the BAM Harvey to see the Seán Curran Company’s Dream’d in a Dream, you not only glimpse an embodiment of the title, you begin to enter another kingdom. Not since Peter Brooks’ stunning production of the Sanscrit epic The Mahabharata introduced New Yorkers to the tactfully renovated ruined theater in 1987, have I seen a theatrical vision so compatible with the space. There is no raised stage. Almost the entire audience looks down on the performing area just behind the old proscenium arch. Here’s Curran’s opening image. Hanging at the back and almost filling the allotted space is a stunning panel by Mark Randall. It’s as if he has created a gigantic patterned rug made up of smaller ones of various sizes, all set to affirm horizontals or verticals. Robert Wierzel’s lighting has turned the stage floor red. On six carefully placed red benches and on the ground between them, the dancers are sleeping, curled up on their sides. They all wear pillbox hats and what appear to be exotic, multicolored clothing. As the nine sleepers awake and carry the benches to the sides of the area, Amanda Shafran’s ingenious costume designs are revealed. The dancers wear layers of garments—as European as plaids, as universal as stripes and floral patterns, and as Eastern as bloomers and embroidered vests—all seeming at home together. Three roseate patterns of a lighter red are cast on the floor, as if coming through circular windows. The musicians enter, bow, and take their places at the back. They might as well have come in our dreams. The six are members of the Ustatshakirt Plus Ensemble from the Kyrgyz Republic (Randall’s backdrop was inspired by the felted rugs made in the nation’s mountains) and are clad in festive traditional clothing and hats. Three of them (Bek Alagushov, Aizada Kasabolotova, and Adinai Kudabaeda) pluck the long-necked, three-string komuz; Makhabat Kobogonova plays the kyl kiak, a very small bowed instrument; the ensemble’s musical director and composer, Nurlanbek Nyshanov, and Tolgonai Osmonova play a flute and the haunting, cloudy-voiced choor. The women often sing; several times, they make jaw harps (the metallic timur komuz or the wooden jigatch) emit rhythmic nasal twangs. After a musical prelude introduces us to the music’s rhythmic power; its strident, mountain-air sounds, and its sweet melodies, the marvelous dancers begin to dance.
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Foreground: Aaron R. White and Christina Robson. Behind them (L to R): Jin Ju Song-Begin, Rebecca Arends, Elizabeth Coker, and Dwayne Brown. Partly visible at back: Aizada Kasabolotova (red dress), Nurlanbek Nyshanov, and Togonai Osmonova. Photo: YiChun Wu
Had I read Curran’s program note before the piece began, I wouldn’t have been so astounded by its sights and sounds at the BAM Harvey. In 2012, when his company toured Central Asia with DanceMotion USA, he and his dancers heard the Ustatshakirt Plus Ensemble in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz Republic’s capital. Curran, who began his career as an Irish step dancer, immediately sensed a kinship between the Irish and Kyrgyz musical traditions. The dance’s title invokes a dream, and usually the concept of reverie gives choreographers permission to fly about in fantasies. Curran instead drew the name Dream’d in a Dream from a poem by Walt Whitman. Whitman was dreaming of a “new city of Friends,” one in which “Nothing was greater than the quality of robust love.” Without delving too deeply into all that Whitman may have meant by “robust,” I see that quality as one of the dance’s greatest charms. These people dance with happy vigor as members of a community, waking to a celebration. They gather together to compete, flirt, and dance. Those not on their feet at the moment sit and watch the proceedings—maybe sharing a bench with the musicians, or sitting in a temporary shelter made of piled-up benches. Sometimes various ones of them stand at the back and swing their arms around their bodies in a leisurely, marking-time way. Or they move the furniture into new configurations. During one sequence, those not dancing sit on the benches, arranged as if in a church, and jiggle as if to an inner response to the music’s rhythms. David Gonsier follows Jin Ju Son-Begin in Seán Curran’s I Dream’d a Dream. At back (L to R): Makhabat Kobogonova, Aizada Kasabolotova, Nurlanbek Nyshanov, Tolgonai Osmonova. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu
Watching Curran’s choreography makes you realize how many contemporary dance works use the performers feet primarily to travel on or to raise high. The inhabitants of this made-up kingdom do leap, kick high, run, and walk in many ways (one of these walks involves tiny, shuffling steps that could almost reference the maidens of kabuki drama). But they also heel-andtoe in intricate ways, as well as jumping and spinning. I’ll put it this way: their feet are busy. The Asian influences take the form of the above-mentioned tiny steps, along with other elements, such as the dancers’ flexed wrists and ankles, gently bobbing heads, undulating arms, and hands pressed against their chests. Curran deploys the nine dancers in a multitude of ways that highlight them as individuals—
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pairing tall, rangy Dwayne Brown, say, with small Rebecca Arends for a few seconds, having Jin Ju Son-Begin, Elizabeth Coker, and Christina Robson briefly play girlfriends. Now your eye snags on Coker and Aaron R. White strutting along side-byside, loose and wiggly. Now it’s Robson you watch, linked to White and Michael Richman and doing some lustier, crisper steps. In the ongoing symbiosis of music and dance, men may swirl women into the air, but women hoist men too. You can imagine David Gonsier courting Arends in a brief duet or flirting with Song-Begin at another moment. The musicians are a vital part of the picture. Sometimes they all stand to play. During a rest period for the dancers, they again dominate the stage. In the end, the patterned backdrop rises, and Wierzel’s lighting pricks the remaining dark space with stars. Curran, who favors wildness within taut structures, reminds us of the opening passage of I Dream’d a Dream, but won’t let these vibrant people sleep. They’re still forming and re-forming their patterns, still orbiting their belief in community when the lights go out.
The dancers of I Dream’d a Dream (L to R, some partly hidden): Rebecca Arends Christina Robson, Aaron R. White, Elizabeth Coker, Benjamin Freedman, David Gonsier, Michael Richman, Dwayne Brown. Visible at back: Bek Alagushov. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu
Inter-departmental Collaboration The Dance Department initiated its third year of an interdisciplinary project fostered by JCC Manhattan. The group brings Tisch MFA student choreographers together with student composers from Steinhardt and from the Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program. This year’s theme is boundary-drawing and liminality. What is the purpose of borders? In matters as diverse as agriculture, gender, food and the passage of time, Jewish law draws sharp distinctions in some cases and embraces an understanding of a complex continuum in others. The students participate in eight study/work sessions with Rabbi Ayelet Cohen aimed at inspiring and guiding their creative process. This year’s creative teams include choreographers Angela Conte, Rabbi Ayelet Cohen, The JCC Michaela Mann, Kyle Mullins, Eiren Shuman and Bridget Manhattan Struthers. Composers include Emily Chiu, Alison Jiang, Maria Kaoutzani, Andrew Noseworthy, and Gemma Peacocke.
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U.S. State Department Tour of Palestinian Territories Following up on a tour of Israel in 2014, the show “Woody Sez,” co-created by Andy Teirstein, was funded for 2015 to go into the Palestinian West Bank villages of Ramallah, Jenin, Hebron, and Jericho, performing in theaters, factories and schools. The show tells the story of the troubled life of the American balladeer Woody Guthrie, against the backdrop of the United States workers’ movement of the 1920’s to ‘50’s, including imagery and songs of dust bowl refugees, migrant workers, factory workers, and World War II. An integral part of the show involves a “hootenanny” with the audience. The performers learned dabkas and exchanged Appalachian tunes for Maqams across the West Bank. They brought 500 harmonicas, and gave them away at the school
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Design for Stage and Film
Mimi Lien Named MacArthur Fellow
Mimi Lien '03 (MFA, Design for Stage and Film) was named a 2015 MacArthur Fellow. The MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction. There are three criteria for selection of Fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work. Mimi Lien is a set designer for theater, opera, and dance whose bold, immersive designs shape and extend a dramatic text’s narrative and emotional dynamics. Lien combines training in set design and architecture with an innate dramaturgical insight, and she is adept at configuring a performance space to establish particular relationships—both among the characters on stage and between the audience and the actors—that dramatize the play’s movement through space and time. In sets for both large-scale immersive works and for more traditional proscenium stages, Lien envelops the audience in a specific mood or atmosphere. For Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 (2013), Lien designed a full-scale Tsarist Russian salon that summoned up the decadence of early nineteenthcentury Moscow and the chaotic emotional lives of the Russian elite. Her simple and stark set for Born Bad (2011)—brown shag carpet, worn wallpaper, and three wooden chairs on a platform that is overhung by a low ceiling—created a claustrophobic environment that heightened the play’s portrayal of family tensions. For other works, Lien choreographs the movement of set pieces so that they become participants in the dramatic action. She propelled the narrative action forward in An Octoroon (2014), as a series of cascading false walls enacted a sequence of startling set transformations. With surrealist touches such as a sloping floor and an aperture that opened and closed to create a sliver of light suggesting a tightrope, Lien brought to life the eeriness of Hades’ underworld in Eurydice (2008), while also evincing the devotion of Eurydice’s father as he constructs (onstage) a string room for her that is held aloft by helium balloons. In projects that range from large regional theaters, to small experimental, hybrid pieces, to a performance in an 81-acre meadow, Lien is revitalizing the visual language of theater and enhancing the performance experience for theater-makers and viewers alike.
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Mimi Lien received a B.A. (1997) from Yale University and an M.F.A. (2003) from New York University. Her designs of sets for theater, dance, and opera have been seen nationally and internationally at such venues as Soho Repertory Theatre, the Public Theater, Lincoln Center Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Joyce Theater, Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, the Goodman Theatre, and Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre (Russia), among many others. She is an artistic associate with Pig Iron Theatre Company and The Civilians and co-founder of the performance space JACK. - See more at: https://www.macfound.org/fellows/939/#sthash.cMLKc90c.dpuf
Design Department Alumni Family Day
On Saturday, November 14th the Department of Design for Stage and Film hosted their annual Design Department Alumni Family Day. Design alumni spent the afternoon on the 3rd floor building with Legos, making bead necklaces, decorating picture frames, and eating cupcakes! The newest addition to the Design Department family in attendance was just three months old. A yearly tradition since 2001, Family Day is a great opportunity for alumni to spend time together and introduce their families to each other (and to us)!
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Design for Stage and Film Faculty Highlights
Evan Alexander is currently Associate Production Designer for a new touring production for Cirque du Soleil, premiering in 2017. Work continues on The Super Bowl 50 Half Time Show, The 2016 Rock n Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremonies, The 2015 CMA Awards, Pier 17 redesign (South Street Seaport), and the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Campbell Baird ’77 is currently working on costumes for the Masters Of Choreography Dance Concert at Muhelnberg College in Allentown PA, featuring works by Karole Armitage, Donald McKayle, Karen Dearborn, and several others. Algonquin Arts Theatre in Manasquan, NJ just revived his production of ALWAYS…PATSY CLINE (scenic design) directed by Jayme McDaniel, and Nashville Ballet recently completed a run of his production of Peter Pan (scenic & costume design), and is preparing their annual production of The Nutcracker with his costume designs – both pieces choreographed by Artistic Director Paul Vasterling. ML Geiger Women’s Project Theater’s Dear Elizabeth, by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Kate Whoriskey, ran until December 5. Susan Hilferty is working on the designs for Buried Child for the New Group, Familiar by Danai Gurira for Playwrights Horizon, and the sets and costumes for Richard Nelson’s three play cycle The Gabriels (Jason Ardizonne-West ’12 co-set designer). Rigoletto directed by Michael Mayer with sets by Christine Jones is returning to the Metropolitan Opera. Her designs of the sets and costumes for the adaptation of Salomé written and directed by Yaël Farber at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington DC., and Wicked are currently running. Susan’s work is the cover story for NYU’s Arts Digest. Andrew Jackness is currently designing NBC’s Blindspot, a standout hit among the freshman fall shows. He designed the pilot and was able to work with Jon Collins ’08, Sia Balabanova ’08, Marcie Mudd ’13, and on the series worked with Alex Chrysikos ’10, and Feli Lamenca ’14. Laura Jellinek ‘09 is in rehearsals for Marjorie Prime with Annie Kauffman at Playwrights Horizons. In the studio she is working on To Kill a Mockingbird with Eric Ting at Cincinnati Playhouse and Hamlet with Lisa Peterson at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She is also starting work on The Marriage of Figaro with Jordan Fein at Curtis Opera Theatre. Christine Jones is currently designing Harry Potter and the Cursed Child which will open in London in July 2016 (Brett Banakis ‘10, associate set designer and Amy Rubin ‘12, assistant designer). Chris Muller ‘91 worked with his former NYU classmate Darrel Maloney ’92 on projections for two shows that opened on Broadway, Allegiance, and On Your Feet. He is also developing projections with Driscoll Otto ’07 for Becoming Santa, a new opera for the Dallas Opera. He is creating a master plan for a redesign of the Discovery Gateway Children's Museum in Salt Lake City. He recently completed a coloring book for the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U. S. Senate, and lights and projections for A Supposedly Fun Thing and the New York Fringe. Work continues on the Robot Dictionary.
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Gail Segal's short film Filigrane was screened at the Big Apple Film Festival, November 7th at Cinema Village East. Robert Wierzel Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Rusalka by Antonin Dvorak. Eric Simonson, director. Washington National Opera, Appomattox by Philip Glass. Tazewell Thompson, director. Paul Steinberg is in various stages of work on Don Giovanni and Der Rosenkavalier in London, Tristan And Isolde in Karlsruhe and Semiramide in Munich. Constance Hoffman '91 is at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in dress rehearsals for Bel Canto, a world pemiere composed by Jimmy Lopez, with libretto by playwright Nilo Cruz. Directed by Kevin Newberry. Sets by David Korins, Lights by Duane Schuler, Projecton Design by Greg Emetaz. It opens December 7th. She is currently working on the designs for a production of Pericles at the Theatre for a New Audience this Winter directed by Trevor Nunn, and a production of Les Huguenots at the Deutsche Oper, directed by David Alden, to open next Fall in Berlin. Constance Hoffman’s costume designs can be seen at the Lyric Opera of Chicago for Bel Canto, a world pemiere composed by Jimmy Lopez, with libretto by playwright Nilo Cruz. Directed by Kevin Newberry. Sets by David Korins, Lights by Duane Schuler, Projecton Design by Greg Emetaz. She is currently working on the designs for a production of Pericles at the Theatre for a New Audience this Winter directed by Trevor Nunn, and a production of Les Huguenots at the Deutsche Oper, directed by David Alden, to open next Fall in Berlin. Mary Louise Geiger is the lighting designer for THE SOUND OF MUSIC at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in Seattle, which runs through 1/3. In January she'll be doing a new musical, THE GOLEM OF HAVANA, in Miami, directed and produced by Michel Hauseman, which was produced at Barrington Stage Company last year. She is also designing a new play, NATIVE GARDENS, at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, directed by Artistic Director Blake Robison. This fall Peter Nigrini premiered REAL ENEMIES, a collaboration with Composer Darcey James Argue, and Director/Writer Isaac Butler in the BAM Next Wave Festival, LIFE & TIMES EPISODES 7, 8, AND 9 by Nature Theater Oklahoma at the Hebbel Theater, Berlin, INVISIBLE THREAD, a new musical directed by Diane Paulus at 2nd Stage and AMELIE a musical based on the film by Jean-Pierre Jennet at Berkeley Rep. He also designed an addition to the New York Botanical Garden’s Holiday Train Show inspired by Phillip Johnson’s Tent of Tomorrow for the 1964 Worlds Fair. Coming up this spring DEAR EVAN HANSEN will be moving to 2nd Stage Theater, and SPONGEBOB THE MUSICAL will premier at the Oriental in Chicago.
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Drama
Tisch Drama Adds London To Its Artistic Review Tour
For the first time ever, Tisch Drama's Artistic Review Tour is going abroad. In February applicants to the Department of Drama will be able to participate in acting and musical theater review sessions in London. Kenneth Noel Mitchell, Drama’s Associate Chair of External Outreach and Administration, and Chris Andersson, Director of Admissions, share their thoughts about the London initiative. Why has Tisch Drama decided to go to London? Chris Andersson: We’ve wanted to hold artistic reviews abroad for a long time. As NYU evolved into the Global Network University, it seemed clear that we should more actively engage with our international applicants. As a theatre capital, London is a great place to do that. What does Drama hope to achieve in London? Kenneth Noel Mitchell: I hope this initiative will speak to Drama’s deep commitment to inclusion. Holding auditions in London will enable international students to show us their work in person. That will help us to build a student body reflective of this beautiful, diverse mosaic of life on the planet. Andersson: I agree. I hope traveling abroad to meet young international theatre artists demonstrates our commitment to hearing their voices, listening to their stories, and helping them share their perspectives on the world with all of us. At Tisch Drama, we are a global
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community of artists from a wide array of cultures, all gathered in the artistic mecca of New York City. By continuing to explore holding artistic reviews abroad, we hope to increase the multiplicity of voices that we welcome into our department. How do you think international applicants in London will differ from other prospective students? Andersson: I presume there will be differences in the international candidates' overall theatrical experiences, from what they read and study to what they see and do. However, I don't expect there to be any differences in their passion, enthusiasm, and desire to create theatre. Has NYU’s Global Network University influenced your decision to go to London? Noel Mitchell: Inspired by the GNU, Tisch Drama is committed to offering collaborative, international training opportunities to the next generation of student artists. In Spring 2016, we’re launching an acting training program in Berlin. With the London artistic reviews, Drama’s global presence will begin early—during the application process—encouraging a wide range of students to participate. We train our students to be citizens of the world. To truly embrace that concept, we’re creating opportunities for students to study and create art with all kinds of people. Going to London is part of that plan. Andersson: Our regional tour exists to make our in-person artistic review process accessible to more applicants. London is, I hope, the first of many global sites at which we can meet and review candidates.
Production and Design Studio’s LED Lab Paves the Way for Lighting Design Innovation Less than 10 years ago, the gulf between what lighting designers could achieve on Broadway stages as opposed to what students of lighting design could achieve in academic theaters was a wide one. “Power was a big restriction,” recalls Lenore Doxsee, head of lighting design training at Tisch Drama’s Production and Design Studio who also earned her MFA at Tisch. “We did our best, but it would look pretty amateurish to today’s audiences.” But the addition of 36 new cutting-edge light emitting diode (LED) lighting fixtures last year to The Shop Theater at Tisch Drama has had a dramatic effect on lighting for student productions. The relative newness of the technology has also given students the opportunity to develop their own innovations in lighting design that can be applied to theaters and arenas of any size. “The theater often has up to three shows performing, and we used to have to reload and adjust lighting before every show,” Doxsee says. “With LED lights, all three shows can easily share one light plot, while giving each play a truly distinct look.”
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Much has been written about the advantages of LED lighting, including lower energy consumption and heat generation, longer lamp life, and improved durability over standard incandescent lighting sources. For academic theatrical settings, the color mixing capability of LED fixtures has been a critical tool in the development of stage lighting techniques for both LEDs and incandescent theater lights. “Our students are coming of age at a very exciting time in lighting design—one that will likely alter long-accepted practices and disrupt former orthodoxies,” Doxsee says. “And they will likely be leading the charge in making that change happen.” Drama students in the Production and Design Studio examine LED equipment.
Drama Stages the New York Premiere of Blue Stockings
In November Tisch Drama StageWorks presented the New York premiere of Jessica Swale’s Blue Stockings. Directed by faculty member and Tony Award-nominee Michele Shay, the play is set during the early years of the women's suffrage movement and follows four female students at Cambridge University's Girton College as they navigate an academic system rife with prejudice and hostility. Some two hundred Drama students auditioned, drawn to the play’s subject matter. ”The challenge of being a person who breaks through the walls of bias to attain freedom and equality of opportunity resonates in any decade,” said Michele Shay. “The students brought a lot of heart to the rehearsal process. Combined with the gifts of the production and design teams and the brilliant dramaturgical assistance of Janice Orlandi, we had a remarkable, joy-filled creative experience bringing the play to life.”
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Department of Drama Faculty Highlights
Gwendolyn Alker became the Editor of Theatre Topics in September. The national journal explores the relationship between theory and practice in the field of theatre and performance. She also welcomed the publication of her first special issue curated under her leadership: “Theatre And/As Education” acknowledges, locates, and challenges some of the divides between the fields of Theatre Education, Theatre and Performance Studies; the issue also records and analyzes cutting edge interdisciplinary work that is being done with theatre pedagogy and other fields. Kevin Kuhlke directed a production of his adaptation of Salomé, with music by Cynthia Hopkins. He also finalized all elements of Tisch Drama’s new Berlin study away program, Stanislavsky, Brecht and Beyond: An Integrated Approach to Contemporary Actor Training in Berlin. Carol Martin’s book, Theatre of the Real, was published in paperback. Martin gave a keynote address "Performing Detroit: Notes on Location Performance" at the Rethinking Political Theatre in the West conference at Tel Aviv University. Two of her students were selected as the only undergraduates to present papers at the Arthur Miller conference at the University of Michigan. Orlando Pabotoy collaborated on two 2015 Bessie Dance Award-winning productions: I Understand Everything Better by David Neumann/ Advanced Beginner Group (Outstanding Production) and The Object Lesson by Geoff Sobelle (Outstanding Visual Design). Louis Scheeder, Arts Professor, and Teacher Daniel Spector of the Department of Drama joined forces with the Grad Acting Alumni of Studio Tisch to present a series of scenes from Shakespeare's As You Like It in O.P. (Original Pronunciation) this past July. Scheeder and Spector directed the transcription prepared by Jennifer Geizhals, who also played Rosalind, under the supervision of renowned scholar, David Crystal. Shane Ann Younts of Grad Acting served as vocal consultant for the presentation. Geizhals will serve as a consultant for The Classical Studio as they prepare for a full production of Hamlet in O.P. in spring of 2016. Lisa Sokolov had a chapter published this summer in the collection, “Giving Birth to Sound: Women in Creative Music,” edited by Renate Da Rin and William Parker, and published by Buddy's Knife, Koln, Germany. In August, she taught and performed alongside renowned trauma specialists Dr. Peter Levine and Anngwyn St. Just, at the Learning Festival of Ideas in Weggis, Switzerland. The topic was Depression, Aggression and Full Aliveness. Bob Vorlicky, Associate Professor, (TSOA Drama, Affiliate faculty, NYUAD) and Assistant Professor Debra Levine (NYUAD, Theater Program; Affiliate faculty TSOA Drama) received competitive grants from NYUAD Global to host their NYUAD students at the Kampala International Theater Festival, Uganda, in November. During their time in Kampala, the group attended eight productions (including those from Uganda, Kenya, Kosovo, Iraq, and Belgium), met with festival playwrights and directors, and participated in discussions with African journalists, theatre critics, and scholars.
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Graduate Acting
Scenes from Court Life
Scenes from Court Life by Sarah Ruhl, is an original work making its debut here at the Graduate Acting Program. It was developed here at the Tisch School of the Arts in collaboration between Grad Acting and the Department of Design for Stage and Film. Last spring, two separate teams of student actors and designers each worked with a professional playwright and director for two weeks to develop a dramatic idea around a particular subject. They liberally followed the Joint Stock method, a company-centered theatrical research process devised by the Joint Stock Theatre Company, a pioneering British troupe, active from 1974 to 1989, whose work is still influential. The group: actors, designers, playwright and director amass as much information on a given subject as possible through interviews, videos, field trips, talks, theatre exercises. The playwright is then asked to let his or her imagination have free rein using the "research" as a kind of inspirational mulch, straying as far from the subject or keeping as close to it as they desire. Over the summer, each playwright crafted a full-length play with roles for the actors on their “team,” while the directors and designers, using the workshop as their reference, conceived the conceptual work on their respective productions. After numerous script revisions, the plays went into rehearsal in early October. This is our sixth iteration of the “new play slot”; already, the initiative has attracted some attention. A few summers ago, one of the plays, Acquainted with the Night by Keith Reddin, was presented at the O’Neill Theatre Center in New London, directed by the chair of Grad Acting, Mark Wing-Davey. One recent playwright, Mona Mansour, was awarded the prestigious Whiting Prize for 2012 and is being
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produced at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago this season. Other playwrights of note that we have produced recently include Adam Rapp, Lucas Hnath and Rajiv Joseph. It’s a tradition we plan to continue; bringing in published playwrights and working directors to create new worlds with our student actors and designers. Those worlds keep expanding, thanks in no small way to your curiosity and enthusiasm. Set designer Kris Layng '15 (Department of Design for Stage and Film) Costume designer Ntokozo Kunene '15 (Department of Design for Stage and Film) Lighting designer Jennifer Hill ' 15 (Department of Design for Stage and Film)
Alumni Update
Edi Gathegi (Class of 2005) to appear on the third season of “The Blacklist”. Danai Gurira's (Class of 2004) play “Eclipsed,” starring Lupita Nyong'o, will transfer to Broadway after a sold-out run at the Public Theater. Previews begin on February 23rd. Michael C. Hall (Class of 1996) to appear in David Bowie's new musical at the New York Theatre Workshop, previews began November 18th.
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Graduate Musical Theatre Writing
The Public Theatre to produce Southern Comfort musical in February
The Public Theater has announced that its winter schedule will feature the musical Southern Comfort, written by composer Julianne Wick Davis (Adjunct Faculty, Cycle 16) and bookwriter/lyricist Dan Collins (Cycle 16), to be directed by Thomas Caruso. Performances are scheduled to begin on February 23rd. Based on the acclaimed 2001 documentary of the same name, Southern Comfort is a folk and bluegrassinspired musical that tells the true story of Robert Eads, a transgender man with ovarian cancer.
Buffalo Bella Selected for the Sundance Lab at Mass Moca Buffalo Bella: An American Tall Tale, by Adjunct Faculty Kirsten Childs (Cycle 4), has been selected for the Sundance Lab at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Buffalo Bella is a musical tall tale that explores the African-American experience in the Old West.
Skirball Center to Host New York Premier of Dog Days
Dog Days, with Book and Lyrics by Royce
Vavrek (Cycle 16, right in picture) and Music by David T. Little, will receive its New York premier at the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in January. The production will be directed by Robert Woodruff, with music direction by Alan Pierson, and star Obie winner John Kelly
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and Lauren Worsham. Based on a short story by Judy Budnitz, Dog Days tells the story of a working class family attempting to survive an imagined future war on U.S. soil.
Deborah Brevoort Wins the 2015 Liberty Live Commission Adjunct Faculty Deborah Brevoort (Cycle 6) has won the 2015 Liberty Live commission. Liberty Live is a partnership between Premier Stages and the Liberty Hall Museum in order to commission a new play celebrating New Jersey history. Deborah will be writing a play called My Lord, What a Night, dramatizing the night singer Marian Anderson gave a concert in Princeton and was refused a room at the Nassau Inn because she was black. Albert Einstein invited her to stay in his home instead, beginning a friendship that would last their lifetimes. The play will receive three staged readings from November 13-15th at the Liberty Hall museum, and a full production at Premiere Stages in October 2016.
Shows and Songs by GMTWP Alums In Festival of New Musicals The 27th annual National Alliance for Musical Theatre’s Festival of
New Musicals, which took place on Oct 15-16, featured Costs of Living, with Book, Music, and Lyrics by Timothy Huang (Cycle 11), and The Last Queen of Canaan, with Book by Harrison David Rivers, Music by Jacob Yandura (Cycle 20), and Lyrics by Rebekah Greer Melocik (Cycle 20). The festival also hosted a Songwriters Showcase that included songs from Mortality Play by Scotty Arnold and Alana Jacoby (Cycle 20), and a Songwriters Cabaret that included songs by Ty Defoe and Tidtaya Sinutoke (Cycle 22).
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Open Arts
Open Arts Fall 2015 Day of Community: Tisch + PS3
Open Arts is proud to continue our tradition of community building both inside and outside of the school. We hosted two different workshops in October as part of the Day of Community and 50th Anniversary celebrations. First was a collaboration with PS3 that combined elementary school students with TSOA students from Dance, Drama, Graduate Acting, and Graduate Musical Theatre Writing.
Halloween + Special Effects Makeup For our second October workshop, Open Arts faculty member Rob Benevides welcomed students from Staples High School in Westport, Connecticut for a set of Halloween-themed projects in special effects makeup.
Embodied Performance Workshop
This January 22-24, 2016, Tisch instructor and theatre practitioner Elizabeth Hess will conduct a weekend of workshops based on her new book ACTING & BEING: Explorations in Embodied Performance. Ideal for all students interested or engaged in the arts, the workshop will present a fusion of physical theater techniques from western and eastern practices and from related performance disciplines.
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Walter Murch visits NYU
Three-time Academy Award winner Walter Murch stopped by Tisch in October to pay a visit to his namesake Open Arts course Portrait of an Artist: Walter Murch taught by Brane Zivkovic.
Angela Pietropinto at the Milan International Film Festival Open Arts faculty member Angela Pietropinto was recently at the Milan International Film Festival on behalf of the film ALCHEMY, which won Best Cinematography for a Short Film. Angela writes from Italy: "ALCHEMY, the short film that I collaborated on with a former student of mine... Ian Kevin Scott, won for best cinematography in a short film. Brandon Polanco (our director) and I accepted the award for him. We have been so well received and several winners and our team are collaborating on new projects ... The festival prides itself in bringing filmmakers together and helping them with the business end of making a film. This has been an incredible and eye-opening experience."
New Courses
Open Arts continues to expand and explore new curricula with the introduction of several new courses for Spring 2016 and beyond: The course series Collaborative Arts Lab provides a platform for students to explore collaborative, creative responses to issues of meaning in the community. Also new for Spring 2016, Green World was first incubated as a seminar for Art & Public Policy students, and we will now be offering it to an undergraduate audience. Continuing our rollout for 2016, new courses such as Writing Your Life, Crowdfunding Video Production, and Making Webisodes will explore new avenues for our storytellers and creative entrepreneurs.
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Performance Studies Department Events Fall 2015 Undergraduate Student Orientation
First-year Performance Studies B.A. students gathered for the first annual B.A. Orientation to kick off an exciting school year. At the orientation students, faculty, and staff introduced themselves and shared their interest in performance studies. The department staff provided materials to help the new students get acquainted during their first few days at NYU.
Performance Studies MoMA Visit PS BA students traveled with faculty and staff to the MoMA to observe Performance Studies MA Alum, Mark Hayes, interpret Yoko Ono's Bag Piece. After B.A. students Manion Kuhn and Maria Koblyakova performed in Bag Piece, the group viewed the rest of the Yoko Ono exhibit for the afternoon.
Dahn V천 and The Communism of Incommensurability In celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Tisch and as a part of the Tisch Days of Community, the Department of Performance Studies welcomed back Ph.D. alumnus, Joshua Chambers-Letson. Joshua presented a meditation on the work of conceptual artist Danh V천; exploring the opportunity of V천's work to open up an opportunity to perform into being an existing queer and brown communism of incommensurability.
A Celebration In The Rights of Alchemy: Fury & Affiliation in Born in Flames
In partnership with the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, we had the pleasure to welcome Jayna Brown to the Performance Studies department for a lecture on the 1983 film Born in Flames by Lizzie Borden. Born in Flames is a documentary style feminist science fiction
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film that follows the creation of a Women's Army led by two radical lesbians, Dj's Honey and Issabelle, who hijack the airwaves through two unlicensed radio stations. Brown's talk was dedicated to a feminism that dances, screams, and blows things up, as captured in the film.
Discotropic: Alien Talk Show
The department was a proud co-sponsor of DISCOTROPIC: Alien Talk Show by niv Acosta as part of the “Bring Your Own Body” exhibition, organized by Performance Studies alum Jeanne Vacarro. In DISCOTROPIC: Alien Talk Show, niv Acosta seizes on an elementary medium of transgender exposure-television and the confessional culture of the talk show- to explore the relationships between science fiction, disco, astrophysics, and the black American experience.
Scott Saul in Conversation with Eric Lott on "Becoming Richard Pryor" In collaboration with the Department of History, the New York Institute of the Humanities at NYU, and the Center for the Study of Transformative Lives, the Department of Performance Studies invited Scott Saul, Professor of English at University California, Berkley and author of "Becoming Richard Pryor". At the event, moderated by Professor of English and Comparative Literature at CUNY, Eric Lott, Richard Pryor talked through a few ways he reframes our understanding of Richard Pryor, pegged to some basic discoveries he made about his life and his artistic sensibility and "the intimate public sphere" created by his work.
Youth Hosteling with Vaginal Davis 11/17/2017
In conjunction with The Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, the Department of Performance Studies is excited to welcome Vaginal Davis with special guest Susanne Sachsse. Performance Studies acting chair and professor, Tavia Nyong’o, will moderate the event. Both Davis and Sachsse will be discussing their current and past collaborations as a part of the Cheap Collective in Berlin. This event coincides with Davis's staging of “The Magic Flute” here at NYU.
Sattriya: Classical Dance of Assam 11/19/15
We are excited to welcome Dr. Sunil Kothari to the department to deliver an illustrated talk on Sattriya, the classical dance of Assam, India. Dr. Kothari's lecture will include excerpt screenings of From Mist of Majuli Island, a film that depicts the lives of celibate monks who offer dance as workshops to Lord Krishna, and demonstrations by two dancers from Assam, India.
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Praxis (Feb2016)
This Spring the Department of Performance Studies will be holding its annual all-day community event, Praxis, to bring current students, alumni, faculty, staff, prospective students, and friends to engage in conversation, learn new skills, and stay connected. This year we are especially excited to welcome our first class of undergraduate students to Praxis as both presenters and attendees. Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, a publication founded in the Department of Performance Studies in 1983, has initiated a Public Program Fund supporting experimental and artist-driven work that engages with the journal’s primary concerns: gender, sexuality, feminism, and performance. Over the past year, the Public Program Fund has helped to sponsor a wide array of events and activities through New York City, with more still to come: GOOD MORNING EVENING FEELINGS a performance by artist Dynasty Handbag at The Kitchen in April, 2015. A live conceptual one-hour hybrid morning/latenight/childrens show for adults hosted by everyone’s favorite no-one, Dynasty Handbag. This inspirational hour was designed to help its audience navigate “the five basic human feelings - fear, anger, grief, sex, dogs - that pop up throughout your day and try to kill you.” The show featured “an emotionally stunted musical performance, an unpleasant, nonresults based exercise routine, a grief squelching cooking segment, and experimental commercial breaks for imaginary feminist products."
WELFARE ARCHIVE AND BRUNCH: A public discussion and exhibition of documents from the National Welfare Rights Organization and Wages for Housework movements at Abrons Art Center in May, 2015. Moderated by Arlen Austin and Aliza Shvarts, speakers included Frances Fox Piven, Silvia Federici, Mimi Abramovitz and Premilla Nadassen. This exhibition presented enlargements of original documents from the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) and Wages for Housework movements, two organizations that countered the violence the welfare system with transformative feminist programs. NOT-NOT BACK TO SCHOOL WITH WOMEN & PERFORMANCE: CPR’s New Voices in Live Performance series presented “Not Not: Back-to-School with Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory on September 12, 2015, curated by Joshua Lubin-Levy. The organizers invited three artists to contribute works that hover between artistic practice and scholarship, a series of (not) not performances by Effie Bowen and Mariana Valencia, and a lecture-demonstration by Jack Ferver featuring his students, Savannah-Lyons Anthony and Trevor Joseph Newton. NOT NOT also featured a public reading room with free printouts of journal articles, and a series of artist video submissions, co-curated by Neal Medlyn, including work by Amber Hawk Swanson, Penis, Julie Tolentino, Dynasty Handbag, Erin Markey, and more. Synth Nights: Champagne Jerry, Penis, and Tami Tamaki, hosted at The Kitchen, December, 2015. This bill brings together artists forming new performative personae, each from their own radically different place on the musical spectrum. Sophia Cleary and 24
Samara Davis created Penis, a feminist punk band committed to transformation, remaking value systems, and vulnerability. Champagne Jerry is the hip-hop project of Neal Medlyn that seeks to “continuously create and provide the most significant moments in everyone’s lives.” Making her US debut, Swedish electronic artist Tami Tamaki crafts sweeping, shimmery dance tracks that combines soft-focus romance with frank sexuality. Organized by Matthew Lyons. Photo Credit: Marian Valencia, So Far So Much, presented at “Not Not: Back-toSchool with Women & Performance” – photo courtesy of Charlotte Curtis.
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Institute of Performing Arts Collaboration with Skirball This semester, Institute of Performing Arts began a collaboration with NYU Skirball, Center for the Performing Arts, to send multiple groups of IPA students to numerous shows that offered pre-show talks, post show talk backs and other beyond the show programming. Pilobolus: Shadowland Pilobolus’s Shadowland made its North American Premiere at NYU Skirball. Pilobolus's Shadowland is a mix of shadow theater, dance, circus, and concert, incorporating multiple moving screens of different sizes and shapes to create a performance that merges projected images with front-of-screen choreography. Shadowland was the first show of its kind to combine shadow theater with dance and has since inspired many similar productions around the world
Heidi Latsky and Axis Dance Company In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Heidi Latsky Dance and AXIS Dance Company will perform together to create an unprecedented evening of innovative dance.
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“Waiting for Godot� Gare St. Lazare Ireland and Dublin Theatre Festival On a country road, two friends wait for a man named Godot to arrive. Their comical efforts to pass the time parody the human condition, and the everyday language of their exchanges takes on a universal significance.
The Minstrel Show Spectrum Dance Theater The Minstrel Show Revisited interrogates and critiques the 19th Century black-faced entertainment genre whose legacy is still felt today and continues to play a significant role in cultural stereotyping.
The IPA Student Council
The Institute of Performing Arts Student Council met four times in the 2015 Fall Semester and continued to work towards a greater sense of community within the IPA departments and events that can encourage and facilitate communication and collaboration across the departments. Art and Public Policy -Anastasia Myasnikova Dance - Dimitri C Kalaitzidis Drama Meisner -Katherine Schneider Experimental Theatre Wing -Patrick Connor Sweeney New Studio on Broadway -Ysabel Jasa Design for Stage and Film -Oona Curley Graduate Acting -Margret Odette Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program -Laura Barati
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-Deepali Gupta Performance Studies -Caitlin Dowd
Upcoming IPA Events! GSO and IPA present “Collab Fest” Mark your Calendars - February 5th-6th 2016
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IPA Events
IPA Day trip to the Two River Theater to see “Seven Guitars” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”
The IPA sponsored two special event day trips to Redbank, New Jersey to see August Wilson’s “Seven Guitars” and Stephen Sondheim’s “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”. Before both shows, Two River Theatre’s artistic director, John Diaz gave a pre-show talk and after “Seven Guitars” the director, Brandon J. Dirden.
“Tisch on Broadway”: A Conversation with the Creators of the Tony Award winning musical, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder”
On November 2nd, 2015, Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Alums Steven Lutvak and Robert Freedman joined Larry Maslon, Graduate Acting, in a conversation about their Tony Award winning musical, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder”. The conversation covered their road to Broadway to songs that were cut from the show. Current Broadway cast members Catherine Walker, Jeffrey Kready, Scarlett Strallen and Jefferson Mays heightened the evening with performances from the show.
(Jeffrey Kready, Jefferson Mays and Catherine Walker)
(Scarlett Strallen, Jeffrey Kready and Catherine Walker)
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(Steven Lutvak)
Events Sponsored by IPA
Seán Curran Company and Ustatshakirt Plus On October 10th, a group of IPA students attended “Dream’d in a Dream” at BAM and on October 16th they attended a post show talk back with the choreographer, Seán Curran, Dept. of Dance, and demonstrations by Ustatshakirt Plus. Seán Curran Company met the electrifying Kyrgyz folk music ensemble Ustatshakirt Plus at the foothills of the Kyrgyz Republic’s Tien Shan Mountains during the company’s cultural exchange tour in 2012, as part of
(Members of Kyrgyz folk music ensemble Ustatshakirt Plus)
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DanceMotion USASM, a program of the US Department of State produced by BAM. In Dream’d in a Dream, named after Walt Whitman’s hymn to “robust love” in Leaves of Grass, that auspicious meeting bears creative fruit, featuring nine dancers and six musicians in a brilliant collage of American and Kyrgyz styles. Twangy jaw-harp multiphonics, energetic playing on the lute-like komuz, and other traditional sounds directed by composer Nurlanbek Nishanov back Curran’s ebullient choreography, lending a contemporary accent to an ancient musical language.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company Lecture/Demo
The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company was born out of an 11year collaboration between Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane (1948–1988). During this time, they redefined the duet form and foreshadowed issues of identity, form and social commentary that would change the face of American dance. The Company emerged onto the international scene in 1983 with the world premiere of Intuitive Momentum, which featured legendary drummer Max Roach, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Since then, the 9-member Company has performed worldwide in over 200 cities in 40 countries on every major continent. Today, the Company is recognized as one of the most innovative and powerful forces in the modern dance world. A Conversation with Slava Dolgachev Dolgachev is the Honored Artist of Russia and the author of more than 50 productions in Moscow theatres, one of the most prominent representatives of the older generation of Russian directors. He worked with many Moscow theatres: K. S. Stanislavsky Theatre, N. V. Gogol Theatre, M. N. Yermolova Theatre, Mossovet Theatre and others. In 2009 the production of “Nastasiya Filippovna” was awarded the Grand Prix of the International Theatre Festival of Slava Dolgachev and translator, Sergey Gordeev, in the plays after F. Dostoyevsky in Staraya conversation with Gigi Buffington, Meisner Studio Russa. In 2008 Dolgachev staged “The Seagull” by A. P. Chekhov in Classic Stage Company in New York, USA. The other productions of V. Dolgachev were staged in France, Sweden, Slovakia, Israel, USA and Switzerland.
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Guest Artists Sponsored by IPA
Design for Stage and Film: Guest Artist Daniel Fish Daniel Fish was a guest director in Associate Arts Professor, Constance Hoffman’s Costume Design II class for five weeks in the fall semester. Their focus was on Shakespearean language and designing Romeo and Juliet. Daniel conducted a text workshop over the first two weeks, guiding the students in reading and interpreting the text of the play, and then responding in critique to their individual approaches to the play as designers. Asked to comment on their experience, the class unanimously said, “He entirely changed our point of view about Shakespeare and how we interpret the characters and their actions on stage. His questions always spurred us forward.” Daniel recently collaborated with designer Jim Findlay on the world premier of Who Left This Fork Here, an interdisciplinary piece inspired by Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters, at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, December 9th – 12th. Department of Drama: Naila Al-Atrash On Sunday October 4th, guest artist Naila Al-Atrash conducted a workshop to explore actor shifts between narration and character embodiment by drawing on traditional Arab entertainment forms. On Sunday October 25th, she led a devising/playwriting workshop, open to anyone at TSOA. Working with texts by the Tunisian writer, Jalila Baccar, Naila trained writers to work with found texts, particularly found texts that engaged experiences of people from different cultures and with different political experiences. Naila al-Atrash is a graduate of the Krastyo Sarafov National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts in Sofia Bulgaria. She served as the head of the Damascus High Institute of Theatre for 8 years, where she designed the acting curriculum. She has been a frequent performer in Arab film and television, winning The Best Actress Award at the Carthage International Film Festival. She has directed and given acting workshops throughout the Arab World, in Europe and the US. She is a prominent opposition figure and came to NYU in 2012 on a Prins Fellowship in collaboration with Scholars at Risk. Department of Drama, Meisner Studio: Slava Dolgachev Slava Dolgachev is one of the world’s most honored directors and teachers of Chekhov’s writings. The work challenged every aspect of our Third Year student’s training, made demands that quite literally transformed their understanding of process and gave them insight and a beginning understanding of why, along with Shakespeare, Chekhov is considered the ultimate barometer against which actors measures their craft. The Intensive culminated in a presentation of three of his lesser known short stories and scenes from The Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya.
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Department of Dance: Eric Franklin Eric Franklin, NYU Tisch Dance Alum (MFA 1982), is a Swiss dancer, movement educator, university lecturer, writer and founder of the Franklin Method, a method that combines creative visualization, embodied anatomy, physical and mental exercises and educational skills. “The fastest way to change movement is to change your mind,” says Eric Franklin, who lead a seven-session workshop on the Franklin Method for BFA and MFA dance students. With the aid of smooth orange balls, and 11-foot resistance bands, the students learned foundations of dynamic alignment through imagery and movement. “You need to learn how to create feelings and experiences in your body that serve you better than what you were doing before,” he says.
IPA Faculty/Staff Collaboration Grants
The Modernizing Performance Project The Modernizing Performance project is investigating the challenges with, and future of, live performance. Broad based, the project engages members of the faculty and staff from every department at Tisch, to see why performance is losing audiences, where they're going, and what we can integrate from those other genres to make performance widely popular again. The project ends with a prototype production that will try to capitalize on the information we glean from our research, and a talk-back with audiences to check our hypotheses. Blood Effects for Stage and Film Theatrical Production, in collaboration with faculty from the Department of Drama and Open Arts, will be offering a workshop in February 2016, exploring the use of blood effects for stage and film. Guest lecturers who are experts in the field will cover a basic overview, plus targeted break-out practical workshops to explore and practice working with some of the more affordable and innovative tools and tricks of the trade. Exact date and speakers are to be announced. All interested students, faculty and staff are welcome. Stay tuned for more info!
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Dean Allyson Green -- Associate Dean of the Institute of Performing Arts Sarah Schlesinger
Program Coordinator, Institute of Performing Arts Julianne Wick Davis Administrative Assistant, Institute of Performing Arts Hali Alspach Institute of Performing Arts Tisch School of the Arts 715 Broadway, New York, NY 10003 Second Floor, Room 267 212-998-1654
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