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Announcements

 
May 27, 2009

John Emigh Wins
ATHE 2009 Career Achievement in Educational Theatre Award

John Emigh, the newest Professor Emeritus at the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, has been selected by the Awards Committee of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education to receive the  2009 Career Achievement in Educational Theatre Award. This award is one of the highest honors bestowed by the ATHE. It is given annually to indicate a career of distinguished service to the field.

John says, "I will treasure this recognition of my own efforts over the years, but will do so in full knowledge that whatever has been accomplished has taken the effort and good work of many, many others. Think of this then -  as I surely will - as in very large part a recognition of all that we have accomplished together. Congratulations to us!"

John Emigh is the second Brown Theatre Arts and Performance Studies professor to win the Career Achievement in Educational Theatre Award; Don Wilmeth was also a winner in 2001.

 

May 19, 2009

Erik Ehn Named Head of Playwriting and Playwriting Professor

The Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University is excited to announce the hiring of Erik Ehn as Professor and head of the playwriting program at Brown.

Erik Ehn is a professional playwright. Always somewhat hallucinatory -- offering poetic, imaginative and engaged theatricality -- Ehn’s plays are nevertheless grounded in real relationships. His sixty plays have been produced in theatres throughout the U.S. He is the recipient of a Rockefeller Grant, a McKnight Fellowship and a Whiting Award, all major recognitions for a playwright. In addition, Ehn proposed and co-founded the highly significant Regional Alternative Theatre movement (RAT). Of his published work, he is probably best known for his “Saint Plays,” an ongoing project of rare elegance in its conception and writing.             For the past six years Ehn has served as Dean of the School of Theatre, California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles.

Erik Ehn’s work is distinguished by both its reach (the range of his writing and intellectual inquiry) and its outreach (its social consciousness and ethical conscience). American Theatre magazine devoted a cover story to Ehn, focusing not only on his playwriting but on his personal investment in making the world a better place in which to live. While at Cal Arts, Ehn took a group of students and faculty to Rwanda and Uganda each summer to study the genocides and explore the role art is playing in healing. Ehn has also written a staggering work concerning a Rwandan nun, Maria Kizito, who was responsible for the murder of the many people who came to her for refuge from the genocide being perpetrated in their country. Matching these trips to Africa are the Arts in the One World summer conferences that Ehn has organized to discuss a range of subjects on the spectrum of art and social change.

Ehn himself has written:

This is a promising hour for the arts. There are new, global drives to form social groups centered on ideals (this, at the heart of performance). After years of innovation in media technology, there is a sharp hunger for immediacy (at the heart of performance). After decades of important skepticism there is a new search for ways of making meaning (and the word is armature for expression and capture of comprehension). Even our hard times play into an option for the arts. There is a reordering of public space, physically and virtually. Performance shapes and avails of new room (theater both matches and reforms the urgent, present social space).

I believe text for performance sets forth ethical contracts. A writer asks groups of people to behave in particular ways for a while, and then to carry manners and missions learned through enactment into ongoing conduct. The study and teaching of the potentials of writing, as a means to clarified knowing and action through a changed heart, center my life. I believe in the life of Brown, and that life may match life in every prospect.

Brown and the Department of Theatre arts and Performance Studies welcome Erik Ehn to the faculty!

May 18, 2009

Professor Patricia Ybarra's book Performing Conquest: Five Centuries of Theater, History, and Identity in Tlaxcala, Mexico now available

Patricia Ybarra, Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, has published a new book, Performing Conquest: Five Centuries of Theater, History, and Identity in Tlaxcala. Diana Taylor, of New York University, calls the book "[a] new and important analysis of the ways in which plays, festivals, pageants and political events have long exhibited public conformity while, at times, critiquing and challenging their own performance. It will be enthusiastically received by those who study performance, Latin America, and resistance movements."

Tlaxcala is unique among the states of Mexico. Because of its fierce independence during the pre-Columbian era (it was never conquered by the Aztecs) and its strategic alliance with the Spanish invaders in Cortez's conquest in the early sixteenth century, Tlaxcala has played a significant role in Mexican history. Performing Conquest examines the distinct Tlaxcalan identity that has evolved over the last five centuries and the way that performance---especially political speech---has been inextricably linked to its creation. The book focuses on theatrical performances, political events, texts that "perform" despite themselves, and state-sponsored performances designed to foment local and/or national identity. The theatrical strategies included the re-imagination of civic space, the combination of aural, oral, and visual means of communication to create meaning, and the blurring of the line between representation and reality, which made everyday citizens into "actors" in their spectacles. Performing Conquest shows not only that these strategies were deeply embedded cultural practices, learned from and developed within religious conversion plays, political entry ceremonies, festival displays, tragic hero dramas, and state-sponsored patriotic pageants, but also that they transformed at crucial historical moments in response to various wars, national cultural policies, and debt crises.

Performing Conquest: Five Centuries of Theater, History, and Identity in Tlaxcala is available from the University of Michigan Press, Amazon.com, and other book retailers.

May 4, 2009

John Pannill Camp Wins
Joukowsky Family Foundation Outstanding Dissertation Award

John Pannill Camp's dissertation was selected to receive the Joukowsky Family Foundation outstanding Dissertation Award for the 2008-2009 academic year. Of the approximately 200 PhD candidates who will receive their degrees this month, only four were selected to win the award.

Congratulations to Pannill on his achievement.

April 24, 2009

Deptartment of Theatre, Speech, & Dance now officially
the Department of Theatre Arts & Performance Studies

The Department of Theatre, Speech, & Dance has officially changed its title to the Department of Theatre Arts & Performance Studies, effective immediately.  This new name has been chosen to more accurately reflect the Department’s current scholarly practices; to retain our commitment to our nationally recognized theatre program, including dance and design; and to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration between departments which will contribute to the field of performance studies.

Because we are already teaching a significant number of courses that overlap between Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, the name change will better reflect our current practices.  Our highest goal in the name change is to continue and encourage the cross-fertilization, development, and enhancement of our programs in Theatre studies, Dance studies, and Speech.  These changes will also provide us with the opportunity to interact more often and fully with other Departments across campus.

Adding the word “Arts” to Theatre will reflect the broadness of our scope of performance in the department.  The Theatre Arts include not only dance, speech, and theatre, but design, directing, and technical work, as well.  We hope that this will welcome students interested in performance other than theatre to find a concentration home in our Department.

By adding the phrase “Performance Studies” to the name of the Department, we hope to give a name to the broad spectrum of performance which is already being studied at Brown.  “Performance Studies” is not limited to the study of performances of canonical dramatic texts, nor to performances on high art stages. Rather, Performance Studies looks to performance in its multiple occasions from rituals of everyday life to sports events to popular entertainment, social dance, political spectacle, religious and civic ritual, as well as theatre and dance proper.

We in the department are excited to welcome everyone at the University to the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies. 

March 17, 2009

Christian Ducomb Wins ATHE Award

Christian Ducomb, ABD Doctoral Candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies, just won the Theory and Criticism Focus Group's annual paper competition granted by the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) for a paper delivered at ATHE in 2008.  His essay is titled:  "Resounding Towers: Heather Woodbury's Tale of 2Cities."