Letter to an Editor: the Yesterday and Today of Poland's Teatr Ósmego Dnia

2005 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-60
Author(s):  
Ian Watson

Teatro Ósmego Dnia, the Theatre of the Eighth Day, has for forty years flourished in Poland, never as part of the established theatre, but as one of what Eugenio Barba calls the ‘floating islands’ – those companies which live as much as make theatre, and form part of an informal international circuit of like-minded though distinct and individual groups. Ian Watson here shapes his own memories of the group in the form of a letter to one of NTQ's co-editors, with whom he has shared experiences of Polish theatre, and in particular the work of Eighth Day, relating their history to the changing political and economic environment in Poland, and the company's relationship with the outside world. Ian Watson, who is a Contributing Editor of New Theatre Quarterly, teaches at Rutgers University, Newark, where he is the Acting Chair of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts. He is author of Towards a Third Theatre: Eugenio Barba and the Odin Teatret (Routledge, 1993) and of Negotiating Cultures: Eugenio Barba and the Intercultural Debate (Manchester University Press, 2002). He edited Performer Training across Cultures (Routledge, 2001), and has published numerous articles on theatre in scholarly journals.

2006 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 336-351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Watson

The fictionalized account in the recent film The Queen of Tony Blair's coaching of Her Majesty into a more voter-friendly response to the death of Princess Diana, largely through the medium of television, is a pertinent reminder of how the presentation of self on television subtly modifies the presentation of self in everyday life. In this article, Ian Watson considers how the now-ritualized debates between the main contenders in American presidential elections are stage-managed to enhance what their supporters suppose to be their candidate's most sympathetic features – supposedly learning the lessons of the first such debate, between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, which displayed Nixon in such an unappealing light. However, what are ostensibly strengths or weaknesses may be read as quite other by an audience attuned to reading signifiers in film or television drama – or simply empathic towards what others perceive as failings, as in the case of reactions to George W. Bush's inarticulacies, awkward mannerisms, and failed jokes, which some read not as signs of ineptness but of an endearing humanity. Ian Watson, who is a Contributing Editor of New Theatre Quarterly, teaches at Rutgers University, Newark, where he is the Acting Chair of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts. He is author of Towards a Third Theatre: Eugenio Barba and the Odin Teatret (Routledge, 1993) and of Negotiating Cultures: Eugenio Barba and the Intercultural Debate (Manchester University Press, 2002). He edited Performer Training across Cultures (Routledge, 2001), and has published numerous articles on theatre in scholarly journals.


1997 ◽  
Vol 13 (52) ◽  
pp. 329-338
Author(s):  
JoAnne Akalaitis

In the following interview, JoAnne Akalaitis discusses her experiences as an actress and director with the Mabou Mines company; her artistic encounters with Beckett, Brecht, and Genet; her thoughts about the relationship between art and politics; and her belief in the connection between the physical and the emotional in performance. Deborah Saivetz is a director and performer who teaches in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at the Newark Campus of Rutgers University, New Jersey. She assisted JoAnne Akalaitis on her production of John Ford's Jacobean tragedy Tis Pity She's aWhore at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and performed in Akalaitis's workshop production of The Mormon Project at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. She had several opportunities to talk at length with Akalaitis during the months that they worked together.


1995 ◽  
Vol 11 (41) ◽  
pp. 40-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Watson ◽  
Susana Epstein

Ian Watson and Susana Epstein went to Chile and Argentina in the summer of 1992 in order to interview several leading theatre artists about the differences the political changes in their countries had made to their own work and the work of their colleagues. Although, as the authors stress, they made no attempt to conduct a systematic study of the theatrical implications of the shift from authoritarianism to democracy, their findings suggest some parallels with the situation in Eastern Europe. Ian Watson, who heads the Theatre Division in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Rutgers University, Newark, is a theatre scholar whose main interests include contemporary Latin American theatre. Susana Epstein, an expatriate Argentine, is a Contributing Editor of The Drama Review.


2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-64
Author(s):  
Deborah Saivetz

In October 1998 the Italian director Pino DiBuduo visited the Newark, New Jersey, campus of Rutgers University on the occasion of the major international conference, ‘Arts Transforming the Urban Environment’ For the occasion, he transformed a bleakly concrete teaching block on the Newark campus into a site for the latest of his Invisible Cities projects. These had originated in his Teatro Potlach company's residency in the Italian village of Fara Sabina in 1991, where DiBudo's intention – as in a number of site-specific variations on Invisible Cities since – was to render ‘visible’ aspects of the everyday urban environment which we no longer have the imagination or the patience to ‘see’. While Deborah Saivetz looks also at this original Italian project, and at a later version in Klagenfurt, Austria, she concentrates here on the Newark production, whose development she recorded – in this opening article in her own and DiBuduo's words, and in the following piece through the experiences and recollections of the participants. Deborah Saivetz holds a doctorate in Performance Studies from Northwestern University, and is currently Assistant Professor of Theater in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at the Newark campus of Rutgers University. Her directorial work includes productions for the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, the Drama League of New York's Directors’ Project, New York's Alchemy Courthouse Theater, and the Parallax Theater Company in Chicago. She has also worked with JoAnne Akalaitis as assistant director on John Ford's ‘Tis Pity She's a Whore at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, and created original theatre pieces with Chicago's Industrial Theater and Oxygen Jukebox.


2003 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Watson

In today's technologically complex and racially hybrid society, what is the meaning of ‘cultural memory’? Like performance, Ian Watson argues, culture ‘exists only in the doing’ – yet if our formative experiences are in that sense ‘rehearsals’ for life, the subsequent ‘performance’ is in a constant state of flux and renewal. Here, Ian Watson looks at the interface between theatrical and cultural training in American society, from the old apprenticeship system of the stock companies, through the Delsarte-based approach of the earliest conservatoires and the pervasiveness of Americanized Stanislavsky in the post-war period, towards a renewed concern with the techniques of voice and movement to meet the demands of both the classical and the contemporary experimental repertoires. In contrast to the deep cultural roots of much eastern theatrical training, perceptions of actor training in America are, he argues, as eclectic and diffuse as American society itself, and so (using Eugenio Barba's distinction) lean strongly towards creating a ‘professional’ rather than a ‘personal’ identity for the performer – one which ‘bears the signature of the hybrid narrative it springs from’. Ian Watson, who is an Advisory Editor of New Theatre Quarterly, teaches at Rutgers University–Newark, where he is the Acting Chair of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts. He is author of Towards a Third Theatre: Eugenio Barba and the Odin Teatret (Routledge, 1993) and of Negotiating Cultures: Eugenio Barba and the Intercultural Debate (Manchester University Press, 2002). He edited Performer Training across Cultures (Routledge, 2001), and has also published numerous articles on theatre in scholarly journals.


1997 ◽  
Vol 13 (50) ◽  
pp. 161-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Watson

When is a theatre event not a theatre event? Where, in the shifting relationships between (and even the shifting definitions of) actor and audience in modern and postmodern performance, is a useful line to be drawn – if only for purposes of analysis and discussion? How adequate are such traditional concepts as the ‘suspension of disbelief’, when the distinction between the ‘realities’ of the theatre and of the everyday begin to merge or dissolve? Ian Watson, an advisory editor of NTQ who teaches in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at the Newark Campus of Rutgers University, New Jersey, here explores how the issue is affected by the differing pre-interpretive perspectives of performers and spectators. In this light he describes three recent theatre events – the Broadway production of Death and the Maiden, Harold Pinter's London production of Circe and Bravo, and an instance of Augusto Boal's ‘Invisible Theatre’ – to suggest that it is in these perceptual variations that the clue to understanding theatrical reality may lie.


M. Fabius Quintilianus was a prominent orator, declaimer, and teacher of eloquence in the first century ce. After his retirement he wrote the Institutio oratoria, a unique treatise in Antiquity because it is a handbook of rhetoric and an educational treatise in one. Quintilian’s fame and influence are not only based on the Institutio, but also on the two collections of Declamations which were attributed to him in late Antiquity. The Oxford Handbook of Quintilian aims to present Quintilian’s Institutio as a key treatise in the history of Graeco-Roman rhetoric and its influence on the theory and practice of rhetoric and education, from late Antiquity until the present day. It contains chapters on Quintilian’s educational programme, his concepts and classifications of rhetoric, his discussion of the five canons of rhetoric, his style, his views on literary criticism, declamation, and the relationship between rhetoric and law, and the importance of the visual and performing arts in his work. His huge legacy is presented in successive chapters devoted to Quintilian in late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Italian Renaissance, Northern Europe during the Renaissance, Europe from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century, and the United States of America. There are also chapters devoted to the biographical tradition, the history of printed editions, and modern assessments of Quintilian. The twenty-one authors of the chapters represent a wide range of expertise and scholarly traditions and thus offer a unique mixture of current approaches to Quintilian from a multidisciplinary perspective.


Author(s):  
Kathleen Jasonides ◽  
Janet Karvouniaris ◽  
Amalia Zavacopoulou

Innovative since its inception, the ACS Honors Humanities program has a long history of more than 40 years as an interdisciplinary team-taught course that examines essential questions through literature, visual and performing arts, philosophy and history.  This innovative approach has continued to motivate successive teaching teams to modify and enhance a program that challenges students academically, utilizing the best possible resources and taking advantage of new technology. In this article, we present one in-depth case study where we explain how we transformed the Honors Humanities course from Face To Face to i2Flex. We will describe and present examples of how we redesigned the course format and presentation, learning activities and assessment. We present data on student feedback and our findings regarding the benefits and challenges of adopting the i2Flex methodology for this course.


Author(s):  
Laura Lukes

Theme:The Science of Learning: Using Research to Improve Teaching7th Annual ConferenceSeptember 18, 2015 Conference Director:Laura Lukes (Center for Teaching & Faculty Excellence) Advisory & Selection Committee: Boicu, MihaiBoyette, JoannaClare, KatieCressman, RobEby, KimEdwards, CodyGeorge, ChristianGliozzi, MarioGoldman, JonathanHannan, HeatherKoch, LisaKravitz, DavidLawrence, SusanLukes, LauraMallett, KarynOffutt, JeffOlesova, LarisaOwen, JuliePettigrew, KathyReid, ShelleyRogers, PaulSaleem, RajaSaunders, CathyScott Constantine, LynneUsher, BethanyWarren, JohnWest, PatriciaWillis, OdetteWolf, PaigeYigit, Erdal Logistical Coordination:Ashleen Gayda (Center for Teaching & Faculty Excellence)Tamara Day (Events Management) Logistical Support:Office of Events ManagementEvents ProductionMason CateringAndrew Cote (OSCAR)Samira Lloyd (OSCAR)Denise Nazaire (OSCAR) Conference Proceedings:John WarrenJeri WieringaLaura LukesAshleen GaydaEmily LambackChyna Staten (Retroactive)                               Sponsors: BlackboardGeorge Mason University LibrariesGeorge Mason Publishing GroupProQuestUPCEABarnes & Noble College: George Mason Bookstore4-VAThe New York Times in Education Supporters:College of Education and Human Development; College of Health and Human Services; College of Humanities and Social Sciences; College of Science; College of Visual and Performing Arts; Graduate Student Life; Higher Education Program; Information Technology Services; Office of Distance Education; Office of Student Scholarship, Creative Activities, and Research; School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution; School of Business; School of Policy, Government, and International A airs; University Life; Volgenau School of Engineering; Writing Across the Curriculum; and The Writing Center.Volunteers:Dorothy Amoah-Darko, Sam Ashworth, Jesse Capobianco, Cameron Carter, Andrew Cartwright, Zella Christensen, Lynne Scott Constantine, Svetlana Filiatreau, Andrew Finn, Darcy Gagnon, Liesel Hamilton, Caitlin Holmes, Tabine Kamaleddine, Mills Kelly, Joey Kuhn, Ying-Ying Kuo, Shawn Lee, Jaime Lester, Jessica Matthews, Je O utt, Larisa Olesova, Julie Owen, Nathalia Peixoto, Richena Purnell-Sayle, Esperanza Roman-Mendoza, Robert Sachs, Catherine Saunders, Linda Sheridan, Darlene Smucny, Debra Sprague, Carol Stiller, Bethany Usher, John Warren, Gerald Weatherspoon, Margaret Weiss, and the students of TOUR 440.  of Engineering; Writing Across the Curriculum; and The Writing Center. 


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