DTSA

THE GREEN ROOM

A newsletter for the community of
 the Ph.D. Program in Theatre
 at The CUNY Graduate Center

Published twice yearly by the 
Doctoral Theatre Students Association (DTSA)

Upcoming DTSA Events

End of the Semester Party:   Thursday, December 11 at 6:30 pm (Theatre Department, Green Room)

Faculty News

Marvin Carlson writes: My main project this summer was completing my book on German stage directing of the later twentieth century and collecting photographs for it, always a difficult and time-consuming job.  All was finished and sent off to the University of Iowa Press.  The planned publication date is approximately a year from now.  This spring I published an essay comparing German and American perspective on performance as a foreword to Erika Fischer-Lichte’s new book, The Transformative Power of Performance. My major travel this fall has been to Egypt to participate in a number of events including delivering a keynote address at a major international conference at Cairo University, participating in a roundtable at the Hanagar theatre and with a group of student actors in Alexandria, and presenting papers at Alexandria University and at Ain Shams University in Cairo.

Dan Gerould writes: We’ve been busy at the Segal Center, getting the fall program started with the Prelude Festival. I have been involved directly in the appearance of the Theatre of the Eighth Day from Poland, participating in the discussion with the performers, and in the appearance of the Lithuanian-Russian director Kama Ginkas and translator John Freedman, moderating the discussion after the readings of the Chekhov adaptations. I also worked with the Polish Cultural Institute in their presentation of films of Tadeusz Kantor’s work shown at La MaMa, introducing Wielopole, Wielopole, Where Are the Snows of Yesteryear?, and I Shall Never Return. We are working on several new books, including an anthology of contemporary Czech plays and a volume of Eastern Europe plays in conjunction with the Performing Arts Library’s exhibition next year, Revolution and the Arts, commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the fall of communism. An essay of mine, “The Legacy of Symbolism,” appears in the forthcoming issue of PAJ (on-line in December, in print in January) in a special section on theatre and new religions guest-edited by Ed Lingan, graduate of our program.

Jean Graham-Jones writes: Since returning from spring research leave I’ve been on and off the road:  in July I participated –as invited committee member– in Inma López-Silva’s dissertation defense at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, returning in time to lead a articles-in-process writing workshop for the Latina/o Focus Group at ATHE’s annual meeting; in October I returned to Argentina to see porteña diva Nacha Guevara’s restaging of her 1986 Eva: el gran musical argentino at La Plata’s beautiful Teatro Argentino; and recently I was the respondent for an ASTR seminar on new approaches to teaching and staging Spanish Golden-Age comedias. This fall I also served on the three-person jury for the III Premio de Teatro Latinoamericano George Woodyard, given to the best unpublished Latin American play (awarded this year to Cuban playwright José Luis García-Rodríguez for his play Noche cubana, selected from over 100 submissions). My research time is largely dedicated to my book-length study of Argentinean female icons, and, yes, Nacha-as-Eva holds a prominent place in one of the chapters.

Over the summer, Judy Milhous co-wrote three articles, one of them for a memorial volume for the late eighteenth-century scholar Harold Love (Rob Hume’s co-editor of the Oxford edition of Buckingham).  She also polished off an essay for the upcoming festschrift for Marvin Carlson.  In her spare time, she landscaped the new house in Pennsylvania.  She also accepted an invitation to speak at the Dance and Image symposium to be held at New College, Oxford, this spring, so she is now busy pursuing the word “engraving” through the electronic vastnesses of the Burney Collection of eighteenth-century newspapers.

David Savran‘s new book, Highbrow/Lowdown: Theater, Jazz, and the Making of the New Middle Class will be published by the University of Michigan Press http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=338819 in 2009.  He has also contributed an essay, “Neoliberalism and the Education Industries,” to the special issue of TDR dedicated to the Philip Auslander plagiarism scandal.

The Doctors Are In!

Dissertations completed since May 2008

Joshua Abrams, Ph.D.

“Staging Alterity: The Ethics of Performing Difference(s)” October 2008

Marvin Carlson, Chair, David Savran, Peter Hitchcock (CUNY)

Visiting Students / Scholars

Visting Student/Research Scholar Kalle Westerling writes: I am a PhD Student enrolled in the Grad School for Aesthetics at Stockholm University, Sweden, with my concentration in Performance Studies

This Fall I am visiting CUNY Grad Center to advance my research and put my own material in an international perspective. During the visit, I have had the great pleasure of auditing James Wilson’s course on Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Theater and Performance. I also had the opportunity to attend this year’s ASTR conference in Boston, which gave me a lot of ideas and inspiration for my own project. I was inspired by the panel entitled “Unsettling Intentions: Activism and the Limits of Empathy.” Through the conference I contacted many interesting PhD students, as well as other faculty members from a variety of US cities.

I’ve been working as a research assistant in a project about the diva cult surrounding Swedish actress and singer Zarah Leander, who was working in Germany prior to and during World War II. After I finished my MA thesis about Swedish drag troupe After Dark, a publishing house offered to publish my ideas. I currently focus on the Swedish drag queens’ aesthetic strategies to resist and transform heteronormative power structures. I ground my theoretical analysis on scholars such as Judith Butler and Jacques Rancière.

I will spend December, my last month in New York, writing. I will be writing a comparative study between contemporary Stockholm and New York drag queens, which I expect to present at next summer’s Performance Studies International (PSi) conference. The paper is based on a round table talk conducted with New York drag queens, combined with performance analyses and interviews with Swedish drag queens

Student News

Dalia Basiouny is doing the final revisions for her dissertation The Prevalence of Women’s Voice in the Arab American Theatre Movement. Recently, she was invited to participate in New WORLD Theatre: Intersections IV conference, and she was a guest speaker at Swarthmore College where she talked about her current research on Arab American Theatre. She also moderated a panel at the Segal Center discussing the work of Palestinian dramatist Betty Shamieh.

This fall she is participating Actions of Transfer: Women’s Performance in the Americas presented by The UCLA Center for Performance Studies and the Hemispheric Institute.

Basiouny is currently editing the Anthology of Arab American Women Theatre and developing Pharoes in NY a feature film about the experiences of Arabs living in the United States during the Iraq war.

Kevin Byrne is a level III student, currently working on his dissertation about blackface and minstrel performance in the 1920s.  Ask me about it at your own peril, as I enjoy talking about it at length.  I also work on Western European Stages, published through the Martin E. Segal Center.  Anybody heading to this part of the world is encouraged to contact me about writing a review article.

Boris Daussà Pastor spent his summer in Kerala (India) learning Malayalam language. Although his knowledge of Malayalam remains fairly limited, he managed to publish a book while he was in India: Practical Approach to Kathakali Training and Its Body-Exercise Routine. The book is co-authored with his Kathakali teacher Kalamandalam KM John. Indeed, this has been a very Kathakali-oriented time for Boris: in October he was invited to teach a Kathakali-based master class at the Dance Conservatory of Barcelona; also, a short article on Kathakali will appear next December in the Spanish theatre magazine Fiestacultura. In addition, he became a regular contributor to Diálogo, the journal of University of Puerto Rico. Boris’s monthly section is a fictionalized account of theatre-going around the world called Espectacular Mapamundi. The first issue appeared on November.

Boris is also very involved in serving the Theatre PhD community, enjoying his duties as DTSA First Vice-president, and at-large representative at the DSC (Doctoral Student Council). He is also running for Graduate Student Representative at AAP (Association for Asian Performance).

Rick DesRochers writes: Lucy Frances [Rick's lovely baby daughter] is 6 months old on November 17th and ready for her First Exam! And her father has a comment in November’s TDR regarding new play development and regional theatres.

Troy Dobosiewicz is originally from South Bend, IN.  He received his BA in communication from the University of Dayton, his MA in theatre from the University of Illinois, and he completed the Atlantic Theatre Acting School’s (NYC) summer intensive in actor training.  Before entering the PhD program, he was adjunct instructor of acting at Northern Virginia Community College for six years and taught theatre, speech, and English at the secondary level.  He has directed nearly 30 full-length productions and is a huge fan of David Mamet’s system of actor/director training: Practical Aesthetics.  His current research interests include medieval liturgical drama, Polish theatre, theatre as an essential academic discipline, and religion and theatre.  At ATHE this summer, he will present “Ways Technology Can Be Used To Curb Plagiarism.”

Frank Episale writes: At ATHE this summer I presented some remarks on “Queer Space” at the LGBT pre-conference, coordinated and chaired an interdisciplinary session entitled “Spectacles of Incarceration: (Im)prison(ment) and/as Performance,” participated in a session of play readings, and made some useful contacts. Also over the summer, I worked as Assistant Editor on Cinema Journal, a position I’ll be taking up again soon.

This semester, I’ve been teaching a section of Intro to Theatre and a section of Intro to Acting at Brooklyn College, and Fundamentals of Speech (Public Speaking) at BMCC. I’ve finally submitted my second-exam lists and started learning Spanish in preparation for jumping through the hoops separating Level II from Level III. Boris and I have proposed an interdisciplinary session to ATHE 2009 called “Rethinking ‘Asian Theatre.’” I’ve also been serving as the Theatre department’s rep to the DSC. In addition I’ve taken over as Theater Editor for offoffoff.com, a site that was once very active but has more recently fallen into hibernation and disrepair. It’s up and running again, and I’m trying to build a stable of writers who are willing to write penetrating, pithy reviews in exchange for free tickets to off and off-off-Broadway shows.

Andrew Friedman and his theatre company, the Riot Group, are preparing for their semester-long Atelier Project residency at Princeton University. In addition to co-teaching a course on ensemble theatre practice, he will join his company, thirty undergraduates and Philadelphia’s New Paradise Laboratories in creating a show about the destructive power of charisma and the metamorphosis from “collective” to “cult”, entitled: Ruby Ruby Ridge. At CUNY, he plans to continue his research on the construction of the performing and statistical body in Major League Baseball.

Gad Guterman continues to enjoy post-exam life and is slowly transitioning into the dissertation process.  He continues to work as the Education Director at the Vineyard Theatre. This year, he also began to teach at Wagner College in Staten Island, tackling theatre history in the fall and a drama survey course in the spring.  He looks forward to the publication of his essay, “Field Tripping: The Power of Inherit the Wind,” in Theatre Journal‘s upcoming special issue on popular culture and theatre history.

Bethany Holmstrom passed the First Exam in August and has spent the fall taking classes, teaching Intro to Theatre and Performance Histories at CSI, translating Finnish, drafting fields, and being 2nd VP for the DTSA. Her article “Recycling the Refugee: The (Ab)use of Children in Human Rights and Corporate Performance” will be in the forthcoming issue of Youth Theatre Journal (vol. 22). She’d like to thank everyone for nominating/voting for the Booth Award and looks forward to the big event in the spring.

Jake Hooker is still mildly shocked that he’s even here. “Here” being, primarily, the first year of a PhD program, but larger applications of the term also apply. Appropriately enough, just prior to beginning the program he was an artist-in-residence at the Ontological-Hysteric theatre, where he presented a solo low-fi multi-media performance lecture in August. Previous to that, he developed and directed a (quite free) adaptation of Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae at HERE itself.  He is currently very, very, very slowly developing a new ensemble show, as well as ruminating on a new solo. Both projects will be further developed, workshopped, and presented during a summer-long residency in Berlin. His academic interests are varied, and in need of honing, but include, most prominently, simply making it through the semester.

Stephen Huff is re-adjusting to life in the southern U.S. (the very red part) but misses NYC and the GC terribly!  He enjoyed seeing familiar faces and hearing the wonderful work of GC colleagues at the ATHE conference in Denver in August, where he presented on the Theatre History Debut Panel. His paper, “Reading the Discourse of Stereotype in Early American Performance: Royall Tyler’s The Contrast,” which he presented at Cardiff University in Wales, will be published in an online conference volume in the very near future.  Stephen continues to work on his dissertation proposal on theatre and performance in the antebellum South, and will be teaching a course entitled “Performing Southern Cultures,” based in part on his research, at Rhodes College in the spring.  He will also be teaching Intro to Theatre at the University of Memphis.

Sascha Just very much enjoys her first semester at the Grad Center, where she finally gets to talk as much about Eisenstein and Mayakovsky as she always wanted to. A note on other activities: At the beginning of the semester, she completed her latest film entitled Three. It will be screened at The Anthology Film Archive in early Spring.

Eero Laine is studying for the first exam. Over the summer he presented a paper at the “Take up the Bodies” conference at the University of Mainz on the language of physicality and violence in professional wrestling. He also passed the German language translation exam, presented a paper at IFTR, and got married. More recently, Eero started teaching Introduction to Theatre at the College of Staten Island where he was the fight choreographer for Maurya Wickstrom’s production of The Pearlfisher by Iain MacLeod. He is attending an upcoming workshop on fight choreography for film and is shopping around for a new broadsword.

Donny Levit continues to work on his play, kempt and shevelled, which was shown at The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center this past summer. He recently directed Gao Xingjian’s The Other Shore at City College this past October. He currently teaches at both City College and Marymount Manhattan College. This spring, he will be working with Professor Jean Graham-Jones on the first English language translation of Griselda Gambaro’s La señora Macbeth. He has enjoyed his first semester as DTSA President, and is always looking for feedback and ideas from our community.

Ana Martinez has been studying for the second exam. Site-specific performance, theatre architecture, scenography, and performance in Mexico City (her fields) have kept her busy in 2008. She is looking forward to her upcoming publication on John Rich’s 1774 Inventory of Covent Garden.

Hillary Miller has celebratory green room news, as she passed the first exam in August and the Spanish translation exam last Spring. This semester’s work includes an independent study on ecocriticism with Prof. Dan Gerould, and, as part of Prof. Jim Wilson’s Queer Theatre course she recently interviewed performance artist Annie Lanzillotto in preparation for a paper on Lanzillotto’s work. She enjoys teaching Introduction to Communication Studies at Baruch College and has also had an eventful semester in her role as a Communication Fellow at Baruch’s Communication Institute, where she’s been coaching students in their rehearsals for Business Policy capstone presentations.

Jason Ramirez (Level III) is finishing up his dissertation entitled “Carmen Rivera: Theatre of Latinidad.” He continues to serve on the faculty of Bronx Community College where he has met many wonderful GC Theatre students over the years. Jason continues to write for the Professional Playwright’s Unit of the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre and received two commissions this past year from INTAR Theatre (NYC). The second, Off The Deuce, a one-act adaptation of Inge’s Bus Stop, will be performed in mid-December. Jason will be directing the staged reading of Hurricane in A Glass at Repertorio Espanol on December 10th. Come out and support Kimberly and this wonderful play.

Kimberly Ramírez has joined the full-time faculty at LaGuardia CC-CUNY where she teaches Composition, Drama, and Latino Literature. In early October she was named the First Prize winner of the Breath of Fire Latino Theatre Ensemble’s New Works Festival (Los Angeles).  Currently, she is a finalist in Repertorio Español’s Met Life National Playwriting Competition [her play is featured at Repertorio (E 27th & Lex) Dec 10th @ 6:30--please come!]. She is completing her dissertation after great support & recognition from Centro de los Estudios Puertoriqueños, a generous Marty Tackl travel grant, a Monroe Carell Dissertation Fellowship, and the Elly Chovel award from Operation Pedro Pan, Inc.  A preview of her dissertation is published in Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature: Teatro en Nuestra America (forthcoming). She also has a book review coming out in Cuban Studies Journal.  Jason & Kimberly celebrate their beautiful 2-year wedding anniversary in January, when they also each turn another year older. What better way to celebrate than finishing the dissertations?! Happy holidays, everyone.

Lisa Reinke is way excited about the National Popular Culture & American Culture Association conference she went to in the beginning of November.  She really thinks more people from this department should participate in the local or national conferences of this group.

Naomi Stubbs is working towards the second exam while finishing up with classes and teaching Introduction to Theatre at the College of Staten Island (which is really far away!). The rest of her time she spends chasing down details of those ever-elusive pleasure gardens by the name of Vauxhall across America and planning her next trip to England (which will be this Christmas).

Ben Spatz published an article in Theatre Topics and is working on a couple of others while studying for the first exam. Topics of interest now include drama therapy and the nature of studio space along with Grotowski, post-structuralism, performance research and ritual. The Urban Research Theater project will be having informal monthly showings throughout the spring.

Please visit www.urbanresearchtheater.com for details.

Dan Venning (Level II) is finishing his coursework in Fall 2008, with Prof. Savran’s course Critical Perspectives on American Musical Theatre. Dan continues to teach at Hunter College, where he served as a TA for three semesters; next semester he will be teaching Intro to Theatre and World Theatre II. He’s also busy studying German and beginning his reading for the Second Exam. In November, Dan participated in the Shakespearean Performance Research Group at ASTR, and he has forthcoming book reviews in Theatre Journal and Theatre Survey, as well as a performance review in Theatre Journal

Marina Volok is greatly enjoying her classes this semester. In addition to working full time at NYU, Marina welcomes her increasing involvement in GC life. She is thrilled to be an editorial assistant for SEEP and enjoys her secretarial duties on the DTSA board. She continues working on establishing a Russian-American Director’s Theatre, which would invite prominent Russian directors to bring their work to US.

Melissa WS Wong spent her summer starting French lessons and presenting at various conferences, including IFTR, ATHE and PSi. Paper topics ranged from the representation of migrant workers in Singapore and the negotiation of human rights in a neoliberal economy, analyzing the works of artist Alfredo Jaar, as well as re-debating the notion of interculturalism in transnational/transcultural actor training. She recently participated in a working session focused on the debates of neoliberalism, human rights and international law organized by Prof. Maurya Wickstrom at ASTR. Besides her course work, Melissa started teaching Introduction to Theatre and Introduction to Acting at Baruch College this fall. She is also vigorously studying for her first exams. She has stopped her French lessons for now.

Since 2007 Melissa has been serving as a member-at-large of the Performance Studies Focus group at ATHE. She recently completed her term as Chair of the Conference Assistance Committee of the Graduate Student Caucus at ASTR. She is currently the Co-Chair of the Graduate Students Committee at PSi.

Jennifer Worth (Level III) is keeping plenty busy. This fall, she traveled to Sackville, New Brunswick, to participate in an international conference/workshop for a book on motherhood and performance, and is revising her contribution (on motherhood in American musical theatre), when she isn’t working on her dissertation on Branson, Missouri, which has been shape-shifting a bit as of late. At ASTR, she participated on a panel on the Eastern European Diaspora after the Cold War, and flirted with the job market.  Somewhere in the midst of all this, she’s working at as a CUNY Writing Fellow at York College, where she’s been developing and implementing a “Writing in the Field” program for upper-level social work students with Professor Bonnie Oglensky.

Catherine Young spent the summer working at Channel Thirteen, studying for the first exam, and trying to turn her dog into a professional model. She participated in the Theatre for Young Audiences working group at ASTR and thinks teaching Introduction to Theatre to finance majors at Baruch is really fun.

Kayla Yuh is surviving through her first semester in New York and feeling New York isn’t so bad after all, although the thought that the end of semester is coming closer is a little bit scary… and relieving at the same time. Her current projects are on the musical Pacific Overtures, Asian American theatre, collaboration process in musicals, and pastoral plays and David Belasco; in other words, final papers for her three classes. She was glad and excited to present a paper at ASTR conference for the Asian American theatre working group. She plans to continue in that direction for a while, at least until she has a better idea about what Asian American theatre was, is and is to be. Oh, and YAY for the First-Years who survived through the semester together

DTSA Officers, 2008-2009

Donny Levit, President

Boris Daussà Pastor, First Vice President, editor of The Green Room

Bethany Holmstrom, Second Vice President, Booth Award

Marina Volok, Secretary

Joseph Heissan, Treasurer

Margaret Araneo, Curriculum Committee Representative

Linell Ajello, Admissions Committee Representative

Catherine Young, Tea Coordinator

Frank Episale, Representative to the DSC

Comments or questions about this issue of The Green Room?

Contact Boris Daussà-Pastor at boris@lacalba.com

11/25/2008