A Focus Group of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education

Newsletter Fall 2001

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Reflections on the 2001  ATHE Conference in Chicago.
   Michael A. Mufson
     Douglas L. Paterson, PhD
     Joan Lipkin
     Mark Weinberg
     Sonja Kuftinec

ANNOUNCEMENTS
   Theatre of Change/Changing Theatre
     6 Dudes in Search of An Answer
     Nominations for Outstanding teacher of Playwriting Award

CONFERENCE PLANNING
   Theatre in Moments of Political Crisis
     Performance Studies
     Translation and Performance
     Inter-cultural Theatre Work
     Civil Unrest as Political Theatre
     Living in the Shoes of the Other

Reflections on the 2001  ATHE Conference in Chicago.

   
Michael A. Mufson

I just spent a week hanging out with an astonishing group of people who care deeply about their work and the impact it has on the world around them.  I refer to a thousand, or so, theatre artist-educators who collided in Chicago for the Annual ATHE Conference.  Although I didn’t meet everyone there, every one I met was passionate, committed, receptive and seeking a better world through the communicative potential of theatre and the synergy of theatre combined with education.    

My personal encounters and intersections happened across several spheres, from a tight circle of colleagues whom I meet only at the yearly conference yet we feel like oldest childhood friends, to a broader circle of folk who seem to congregate at the same panels, to the widest sphere of people with whom I share the experiences, insights and frustration of  the larger, less intimate occasions.  Although a major theme of the conference was “Technology,”  I was moved by the powerful, human connections I made at this conference.  

My inner circle felt expansive this year and really reached out to include everyone involved in the Theatre and Social Change focus group.   I listened to the stories, experiences and struggles of so many people who cast their work directly into the human condition, who take the risk of working outside the safety of academia, who care more about their values than their tenure committees,  who build bridges between communities of privilege and communities of poverty, who enter into the crucible of conflict armed only with an arsenal of theatre games, a capacity for listening with empathy and the courage to believe that positive change can happen.  The panels and the meetings could hardly contain the explosion of conversation.  For the first time I sensed that our hope outweighed our cynicism. 

 Among the important news, we learned from several people that their institutions have established the first programs for Theatre and Social Justice or Theatre and Society.  We heard from many practitioners who are using the tools of liberation theatre in the context of more traditional curriculum.  We heard of students who became so excited about the potential of theatre and social transformation that they forced their professor to create new classes to continue the work.  And we learned of those same students taking their work from the halls of a privileged campus to the struggling urban high school around the corner.  We also learned of colleagues who have been invited to work internationally in battle zones of hate, mistrust and cyclic revenge, who will be conducting workshops that bring together Israelis with Palestinians, in one case, and Pakistanis with Indians in another. 

The TASC post conference galvanized the meetings of theory with practice and academy with community.  We spent an afternoon at Columbia College with the extraordinary Albany Park Theatre Project (APTP).  The members of APTP warmed us up, performed several finished pieces for us and shared a bit of their creation process with us.  I found several extraordinary aspects to their work.  First and foremost, the articulate intelligence and self-confidence of  these “at risk” youth.  Second, the combination of  community activism with quality aesthetics.  I’m not referring to production values here; this is Poor Theatre in the Growtowski tradition. The extraordinary depth of the actors’ work, the physical vocabulary, the layers of meaning and experience conveyed through the simplest means, the courage of these actors to reveal themselves through stories of struggle from their neighborhood astonished me.

 I learned the term rhizomatic, which refers to a visible structure above the surface that is supported by a vast structure below the surface.  The experiences described above are just a part of the whole. In the course of the conference I had opportunities to strengthen my technique in theatre composition and create a composition about the recent death of my mother, thanks to members of the SITI company.  I engaged with some of our most influential scholars on the future of theatre in relation to technology.  I work-shopped with people who are integrating voice and physicalization into beginning acting classes (it’s about time).  I spoke with people who are determined to disrupt the artificial hierarchy of “higher education” over K-12 education.  Everywhere I met people who are moving the art, the craft and the communication of our work forward.  

The conference is the people.  Thank you everyone.

Peace,
Michael A. Mufson
Associate Professor of Theatre
Palomar College
San Marcos, CA
mmufson@home.com	
http://www.defeatime.org		

 
"Everything around us is asleep.  The function of art is to awaken what is asleep"  Victor Schklovsky

Douglas L. Paterson, PhD

Some thoughts for the newsletter:


The recent ATHE conference and several recent pieces of information lead me
to believe that the work of community-based artists, after 40-some years in the short run and after a century in the making in the long run, has emerged as the most important and influential arts movement in the US, and probably in the world.  I just finished reading nearly 50 major proposals to the Rockefeller foundation concerning arts in communities.  The breadth of work and the depth of community collaborations astounded me.  There was so much going on, and so much that had been building for 15 - 25 years.  But Rockefeller was just the tip of the iceberg, and, some might say, problematic in its relationship to change at the "foundation", as it were.  Then at the ATHE conference we heard of actual programs in community-based theatre in the planning stages and actually starting up. Inspired by what I had seen at Cherry Creek's The Gathering in St. Peter, Minnesota, in August 1981,  I began here at UNO what we believe was the first graduate emphasis in what we called People's Theatre.  For many reasons, including the Reagan Long Winter, the offerings were phased out four years later.   But the legacy of those rambunctious theatres of the 60's & 70's -- Mime Troupe, Provisional, Bread and Puppet, At the Foot, Dakota Theatre Caravan, Traveling Jewish, United Mime Workers, Lillith, Plutonium Players, Out and About, the Roots network, NY Street Theatre, etc. etc -- and the legacy of
the Gathering, and of insurgent work from Boal, TIE, non-formal education, Mexico Teatros, Philippine ETA, Bear Republic, Raun Raun in Papua - New Guinea, African theatre-for-development -- was finally not only center
stage, but about the process of de-centering center stage as soon as the spotlight shone.

I would therefore observe:  Let us keep decentering.  Let us not allow the Green House effect -- capitalism's and the dominant culture's putting glass houses and hoards of attention on a specific work -- to change any of us into pop cultural stars, icons of "the model", or fifteen-second media sound bites.  We will be effective insofar as we listen relentlessly to the voice of poor and oppressed people and consider the voices of dominant and near-dominant populations only in so far as we are agents for dialogue and social justice.  I do believe the ancient phrase, "as ye sow, so shall ye reap", is now true for the community-based movement.  We, and so many
before us, have sown well.  We've sown with principle, with ecstasy, and with sober thinking.  And we've sown with millions of working and marginalized people -- just like us. What has caused this "rhizomatic" emergence, to use Michael Mufson's phrase, is past and present work of truly historic proportions. I therefore further observe:   Let us continue as if the historical proportions were just not the case.  Let us continue in the store fronts, the streets, and the coffee shops (not Starbuck's please) because the primary "partnership", "stakeholder",  and "constituency" has never been other than the people of the neighborhood, of the immediate community. Let us continue to listen relentlessly and to make connections never before dreamed possible.   So doing, let us continue to contribute to the larger struggle for a democratic culture here in the dangerous US and in the wider world, an increasingly restless and dangerous place.

But most of all,  let us, of course,  continue.

Doug.

Douglas L. Paterson, PhD
Chair, Theatre Department
Immediate Past President, UNO Faculty Senate
Isaacson Chair of Research and Creative Activity
Weber Fine Arts Building 302
The University of Nebraska at Omaha
Omaha, NE   68182
o:  402 - 554 - 2422
fax:  402 - 554 - 3436
web page:  http://www.unomaha.edu/~paterson
PTO web page:  http://www.unomaha.edu/~pto

Joan Lipkin

"every year, by the time the TASC post-conference rolls around, like many of us, i am frayed around the edges.  the combination of navigating the preceding women and theatre conference and then ATHE as a whole leaves me over stimulated and  under energized. sometimes i question if i have it in me to conference for  a solid week. but i think the convening  of task purely on our own terms is absolutely vital.  and I groove on the gathering of the tribe and the opportunity to hear about what people are doing.

i also thoroughly look forward to expanding my own vision and experiential base by working with other people and seeing what they bring to the sandbox. our workshop with the Albany park group was extraordinarily productive and encouraging.  in future years, i hope we continue to network with interesting companies and activists in parts of the country where we are meeting and to grow and share together.  my appreciation to the Albany park gang and to all who helped make it possible. here's to a good year of work and activism for all.  and i hope to see you in San Diego, if not before, at theatre of the oppressed in Ohio."

Joan Lipkin
~/~
Artistic Director
that UPPITY theatre company
4466 West Pine Boulevard, 13C
St. Louis, MO 63108, USA
office: 314-534-1454
fax: 314-534-6591
UppityCo@aol.com
www.uppityco.com

Mark Weinberg 

Community-Based Theatre – Classes and Workshops: The Web Site -- Call for Submissions
As part of the Roundtable on Creating and Teaching the Community-Based Theatre Course at the 2001 conference, we created a web site containing syllabi, sample exercises and assignments, reading lists and discussion comments from the participants. We intend to expand and maintain that web site as a resource for those who study and teach community-based theatre making techniques. Please check out the site at:

http://rock.uwc.edu/~mweinber/roundtable.html

We will be adding a section of workshop plans, parallel to the section of syllabi, and perhaps a bulletin board for discussion of significant issues. If you would like your syllabi or workshop “lesson plans” posted please send me either the syllabus in .rtf format or the link to your syllabus if you already have it on a web site. Include your contact information.

In the future, I would like to add a page on which people can post outlines of the process they used to develop particular projects. There are a variety of techniques being used in the field, and it would be of great value to share them.

To make submissions or render opinions and advice, please e-mail Mark Weinberg at mweinber@uwc.edu

Sonja Kuftinec

BTA REPORT:

I wanted to send a brief notice about the Black Arts Movement Today session to Marlon and Robert, who were unable to attend, and to thank Caroline, Mike and Annemarie for participating. I also wanted to say a few things about the Conversations with Women in the Black Arts Movement, which complemented the BAM Today session.

While both panels were plagued with absences, and near absences, the conversations indicated that the BAM remains a rich and complex terrain to keep engaging. As Annemarie and Caroline (and later Nora Brooks Blakely and Joan Grey) pointed out, the BAM needs to be understood as a continuation rather than a past and completed done thing. Mike Sell also underlined the importance of documenting the movement through its living (and ongoing) history.  The paucity of archival sources contribute to some perceptions of
the movement as racist, sexist and homophobic. Caroline astutely pointed towards the cultural context that created some of these perceptions as well as the necessity to voice a "fuck you" to what Baraka later specified as a capitalist, racist white society. In the Conversations session, Joan Grey and Nora Brooks Blakely experientially underlined the vibrant presence of numerous women in the movement; in Chicago, almost all of the black arts organizations are run by women including Grey's Muntu African Dance Theater
and Blakely's Chocolate Chips Theater company for youth.

While we attended to Robert's desire for a "call and response" framework for the session, this became difficult given the structuring principles of ATHE. We did manage to move from a "behind the table" to a circular format (after leaving a room overwhelmed by a voice session next door). Annemarie's work also pointed towards the call and response aesthetic that drives much BAM theater and dance. And session audience members did later weigh in with important questions about who the "we" of criticism is and the audience of
students learning about the movement.

ATHE had invited Laurie Carlos and Robbie McCauley to participate in the Conversations session on Sunday. Unfortunately neither was able to attend due to last minute commitments (and the difficulty of providing adequate funding for artists). We managed to get two amazing local artists at the last minute, and the success of their participation may suggest a strategy for working with local artists in the future. Both women, in conversations with Caroline Jackson Smith, were compelling forces, testifying to the living history of
the movement today. Nora Brooks Blakely's tales of literally growing up with the movement in her mother's (Gwendolyn Brooks) home were especially gripping. I'm just sorry that we had such sparse attendants (lost of factors here mostly due to scheduling), but I'm thankful for the presence of these women.

Thanks again to all of you for participating, guiding, and trying to participate from afar. Marlon, I hope that everything works out well for your family.

Best--

Sonja

Sonja Kuftinec
Assistant Professor
Theater Arts and Dance
University of Minnesota
skuftinec@aol.com
267-330-0168

ANNOUNCEMENTS

THEATRE   OF  CHANGE/CHANGING  THEATRE
Mid-America Theatre Conference Theatre History Symposium

CALL FOR PAPERS

Dates:  March 7-10, 2002 Location:  St. Louis, MO


We invite submissions that document attempts in theatre history to use the
power of theatre as an instrument of change. Such events may include but are
not limited to political, social, cultural, or ethnic in nature.

Papers may also document innovations in pedagogy, theatre practice, especially
in design and new technologies. We are interested in papers that explore
"visionaries" in the history, theory and practice of theatre.

Considerations of acts of misbehavior or transgression as relate to
marginalization in a given culture, practitioners willing to take risks in
order to realize and practice their art, and visionary inventors whose work has
influenced theatre practice are invited.

Please send abstracts to both of the addresses below by November 15, 2001.
Abstracts should be 150-250 words long and must include the applicant's name,
address, telephone number and email address, as well as her/his academic
affiliation. Final papers should not exceed 9 pages or 2500 words. Papers will
be limited to oral presentations of fifteen to twenty minutes maximum!

Send abstracts to:

Rhona-Justice Malloy
Department of Speech Communication
      and Dramatic Arts
333 Moore Hall
Central Michigan University
Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859
Fax:  (989) 774-2498
justi1rd@cmich.edu

Robert Baker-White
Department of Art, Music,
And Theatre
Walsh Building
Georgetown University
Washington, D.C.
Reb9@Georgetown.edu


DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS:  NOVEMBER 15, 2001

6 DUDES IN SEARCH OF AN ANSWER
Cathy Plourde

ADD VERB Productions held a staged reading of Cathy Plourde's new play 6 DUDES IN SEARCH OF AN ANSWER on 9/9 in Portland Maine.  It was hosted by CAST, the University of New England's new Center for Arts and Social Transformation (contact:  Clay Graybeal, CGraybeal@une.edu).  The piece addresses healthy relationships, dating violence and sexual assault and
should be ready to tour to colleges and high schools by February 2002. What makes this play unusual is that it is geared toward the young men in the audience, and raises the issues in an empowering, empathetic way, rather than treating the men in the room as a class of perpetrators.  Often the topic is handled from a female and survivor perspective, and while 6 DUDES is inclusive of young women, men's attitudes and responsibilities are explored.

6 DUDES (working title) is a one-man show, requiring a protean performer to sustain with the audience for approximately 40 minutes.  Hip-hop culture, the strong arm of the law, virgins, jocks, fathers, teachers and friends all have a role in this show.   At this time the program that will encase the performance is being created.  If your school or organization would like to bring the piece to your area, please send a contact and mailing address to:  addverb@att.net or check out the new website at www.addverbproductions.com

"ATHE Playwrights Program Focus Group Seeks Nominations for Outstanding teacher of Playwriting Award"

The Playwrights Program Focus Group of ATHE is pleased to announce that it will present an award for Outstanding Teacher of Playwriting at the 2002 ATHE conference in San Diego.  The award, now in its second year, will recognize and celebrate excellence among college and university faculty who teach playwriting.

Nominations for the award will be accepted through December 15, 2001. Letters of nomination should address the candidate's accomplishments in the following criteria:

1.  Teaching (both formal classroom and less formal mentoring, coaching, etc.)
2.  Professional Accomplishment as a Playwright (plays produced, published, other honors/awards for playwriting)
3.  Service to the Profession (leadership/involvement in professional organizations, etc.)
4.  Other accomplishments or qualifications not covered by the above criteria.

An individual can be nominated by more than one person, each submitting their own letter.

Four copies of each letter of nomination should be sent to:

Fredrick J. Rubeck, Awards Committee Chair
Elon University
Department of Performing Arts
2800 Campus box
Elon, NC   27244

OR ...

Via e-mail to: <rubeck@elon.edu>

DEADLINE:  Letters must be RECEIVED by December 15

----------------------
Fredrick J. Rubeck
rubeck@elon.edu
Elon University
2800 Campus Box
Elon, NC 27244
(336) 278-5695

CONFERENCE PLANNING 2002
"Re-imagining Ourselves: Teachers, Learners, and Theatre in the 21st Century." (DEADLINE 1 NOV 2001)

Theatre in Moments of Political Crisis
Sharon Green

I have been thinking how we, as a Focus Group committed to thinking through the role theatre and performance can play in creating a
more just world, can address or respond to the events of Sept 11.  I have two ideas in mind and very much welcome input on these.

IDEA #1 "Making Theatre in Moments of Political Crisis."  I thought it would be interesting to further our understanding of how theatre can participate in a current political conversations, in coping with such large scale grief and fear, etc; to look at the theatre that has been created at other historical moments of such political uncertainty or crisis.  I am thinking, for example of papers that address the kind of theatre that emerged as a reaction to Nazi occupation, or the Argentinean Dirty War, or Pinochet's Chile. 

IDEA #2 "TEACHING Theatre and Performance in Moments of Global Political Crisis" (Or something like this). At Davidson College where I teach (a small liberal arts college), there has been much talk about how to address the events and their aftermath, both within  the context of our own individual disciplines and more generally. I thought a roundtable could look at some pedagogical strategies employed during this time, with a look forward to how we might weave together our teaching of theatre and performance with
whatever political events continue to unfold.  

If there is sufficient interest in these two ideas, I will approach the Advocacy Committee to see if we might co-sponsor some such event. If you are interesting in presenting on either of these 2 panels, please send me a brief (1-2paragraph) description of your work/presentation

I look forward to hearing from many of you over the next few weeks. Do not hesitate to get in touch with me for any reason, to ask any question.

Official session proposal forms are available online at:

http://www.hawaii.edu/athe/conf/index.html

You can either email proposals to me at: shgreen@davidson.edu ; Or send them via snail mail to me at: PO Box 826, Davidson, NC 28036.

Performance Studies

CALL FOR PROPOSALS - ATHE 2002:
"Re-imagining Ourselves: Teachers, Learners, and Theatre in the 21st Century." (DEADLINE 1 NOV 2001)

The Performance Studies Focus Group of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) seeks proposals
for performances, roundtable discussions, scholarly panels and papers for the 2002 ATHE conference to be held in San Diego, CA, July 25-28, 2002.

The description of the 2002 ATHE is as follows: "Enter a conversation about WHO WE ARE - as an organization, a profession, members of an ever changing community. Re-imagine the possibilities that occur as we begin to acknowledge other ways of knowing and learning, renegotiate our relationship to history, consider our many professional roles, and tune into the diverse voices around us - including those of a growing elderly population and those of increasing numbers of differently abled in our classrooms and audiences."

With this goal in mind, we welcome proposals on a variety of topics in the areas of performance, including (but by no means limited to): spirituality in performance, performance of grief, ethnomusicology, critical pedagogy, ritual studies, queer and feminist performance theory, historical interpretation, political performance, and performance ethnography. Sessions which address the relationship between
Performance Studies and other aspects of Theatre Studies are welcome. Now, more than ever, it is essential to enact a conversation about who we are as artists and scholars, and what our role is in reshaping an uncertain world. As a performance studies focus group, we are particularly interested in proposals for events that are performative and dynamic, engaging these issues in innovative and interactive formats.  Our selection process will favor sessions that provide a unique forum for the communication of knowledge and
experience - performances, installations, roundtable discussions, seminars, interactive tours, or presentations. 

The Performance Studies Focus Group welcomes all types of presenters, including junior and senior scholars, theatre and ritual practitioners, graduate students, and performance artists, as well as scholars and performers from outside the U.S.

The deadline for receipt of proposals, either for complete sessions, or single projects, is November 1, 2001.  Please note that all proposals must be accompanied by ATHE's official session proposal form, which can be downloaded (along with other relevant
conference info) from ATHE's website:

http://www.hawaii.edu/athe/conf/index.html

Please direct inquiries and/or submissions to:

J. Lawton Winslade
Conference Planner, Performance Studies Focus Group
Department of Performance Studies, Northwestern
University
Annie May Swift Hall
1905 Sheridan Rd.
Evanston, IL 60208
jlw321@northwestern.edu

Email inquiries and electronic submissions are welcome. There will be an available fax number in the future.

Translation and Performance

Dear Colleagues,

I'm interested in organizing a panel for ATHE called Translation and Performance that looks at translation as a cultural loaded practice worth exploring in a performance context. My own contribution will involve a discussion of current trends in translation theory and translation studies that might contribute to a more thoughtful exploration of translation practices in contemporary theatre. I'm looking for others similarly interested in language politics and how specific translation practices and problems can help inform our understanding of what is at stake in particular intercultural exchanges. I am interested in proposals that deal with inter-lingual translations (between languages) as well as intra-lingual (within languages). Clearly how translation is defined will influence the subject being considered.

Whereas older paradigms of knowledge insisted on binary approaches to translation--faithful vs. free, literal vs. creative, good vs. bad,
adaptation vs. translation--I'd like our conversation to provide different approaches to the issues. Some relevant questions to be asked:  What are the power dynamics involved in translation, and how are they played out in the choices made?  What are the material and political effects of certain kinds of translations? What can we learn from the language politics/practices of particular cultures (including our own) as they get played out in performance choices? Such a discussion might best be prompted by particular performances or performance-related projects that involve translation.

I am collaborating on this panel with Lucinda Kidder, who is producing a theatre project showcasing work by Arab women playwrights in NYC in January (a project with far more resonance now than it might have had before Sept. 11, when it was being planned.)

Please email me directly (jspencer@english.umass.edu) with your proposal or ideas 
Thanks,

Jenny Spencer
English Dept.
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003
jspencer@english.umass.edu
413-545-5506 (office)

Inter-cultural Theatre Work
Ellen W. Kaplan ekaplan@smith.edu


I am interested in being a panel participant at next year's ATHE conference, and I'm not sure which focus group would be more appropriate, so I am writing to you both.  It's been a few years since I last came to the conference, and I don't really know whom to contact about being on a panel with me, so I was hoping that what I propose to present might fit in with a pre-existing group.
 
In brief - I am currently living in Israel (Jerusalem) on a year long sabbatical.  I teach acting and directing at Smith College, and I am also a playwright.  Currently, part of my work here involves a commitment to an East/West Jerusalem theatre - Palestinian and Israeli actors (the Palestinians are professionals mostly, part of a long-standing theatre company in East Jerusalem), who create work based on intercultural dialogue. The effort is essentially to hear individual stories, to develop them for the stage and present them to a bi-cultural audience.  I am now reworking and translating to English a piece they d id last year called "Madness" = the two principals also plan to work on a new piece this year.  In addition to the specific work I'm doing, I am observing rehearsals of the East
Jerusalem company, and I will be observing intensive developmental workshops held by City of Peace (Robbie McCauley is involved with this group in the US, I believe) between Palestinian and Israelis.  I hope also to observe similar work being done in Jaffa.
 
I have extensive background creating theatre with "exceptional" populations, meaning kids in inner cities, adult literacy groups, in prisons, etc.  I also created my own performance piece last year which drew from the experiences of refugees from many backgrounds.  Theatre as dialogue and as a way to explore inter-cultural fissures is quite important in my own work, therefore, and I bring this background and interest to these current explorations.
 
I should also say that I come to this with my own strong response, as a Diaspora Jew who believes firmly in the right and necessity of Israel's continued existence, but with a commitment too to a just and peaceable solution which recognizes the right to autonomy of all people.  I am writing a play which explores these themes, and that too is very integrated into my work. 
 
It is important to me to find a venue to present information about the inter-cultural theatre work that is happening here.  Do either of you have any suggestions as to possible panels into which this might fit?
 
Thanks very much!
 
Ellen W. Kaplan
Smith College
ekaplan@smith.edu

CIVIL UNREST AS POLITICAL THEATRE
Michael A. Mufson

This topic was suggested at last year's  Black Theatre Association (BTA) business meeting.  It presents a great opportunity for collaboration between BTA, Theatre and Social Change and  Performance Studies.  If you are interested in participating please contact me at mmufson@home.com.