Theatre Parallax takes “KATA” to Cardiff

July 21, 2013

Theatre Parallax takes “KATA” to Cardiff

KATA by Theatre Paralax KATA by Theatre Parallax

 

 

 

Elyssia Sasaki fills us in on KATA, an exciting project that a group of York Devised Theatre students and alumni are taking to the World Stage Design Festival's Scenofest this September.

KATA began in the third-year devised theatre class under the direction of Michael Greyeyes and Moynan King during the Soundscape projects. The original collaborators were Veronika Brylinska, Sarah Hyatt, Emilyann Fullerton, Anthony Di Feo, Thomas McDevitt, Dylan Shumka-White and Wesley Reibeling, who took inspiration from Antonin Artaud’s To Have Done With the Judgement of God, a 1944 radio play. The piece used elements of viewpoints training such as Kinesthetic Response, and exhaustive performance art elements like durational exercise and repetitive tasks to explore masculinity through the trials and tribulations of war. In its inaugural performance in 3050 Devised Theatre, the piece was praised for its informative sound design and its visceral content.  Anthony, Thomas and Dylan remain, and Eric Rich, Maite Jacobson, Elyssia Sasaki and Garrett Levine have been brought on board to expand the piece before bringing it to the World Stage Design Festival in Cardiff this fall.

Originally, we submitted an application to the 2013 Rhubarb Festival. Still being students, not being accepted to the festival was a blessing in disguise. Over the course of our fall semester, five of our group members worked with Ian Garrett in Sustainable Theatre, learning more about OISTAT and World Stage Design in general. When the Design as Performance applications came available, the piece, with its explorative nature in the areas of sound and visual stimuli, seemed like a good fit for the festival.

In developing the show, we have been rehearsing two days a week plus doing one workout/training session each  week so the boys can keep up with the physical demand of the piece. We have had to expand the piece from 20 to 40 minutes, so more exploration was needed into the ideas of masculinity and war.

We are very lucky to have received a grant from CASA, and we have submitted applications to the Winters College Council and the Office of the Master which we are waiting to hear from. The Faculty of Fine Arts international program coordinator Ina Agastra has been incredibly helpful, having done all in her power to find us funding as York students – but again, a lot of waiting. We have an Indiegogo campaign  and we will likely host a performance before we go for our Toronto-based donors.

Support from the Faculty of Fine Arts has been very helpful. Ian Garrett has helped us procure rehearsal and performance space. It is a huge help to have a rehearsal space provided because these are expenses that we can’t afford right now. Every member has agreed to chip in for their own flight, and accommodations for the performers are provided by the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. We are very excited to represent not just Theatre at York but Canada onstage in Cardiff.

We leave September 6th and most of us return on the 16th. From the 7th to the 15th, we will be in Cardiff at the festival, taking in shows and workshops and meeting other artists. Four of our number will miss the first two weeks back in the 2013-2014 year; the rest of us are finished at York.

We are in talks about bringing KATA to Winters College and doing a talk about taking a show internationally. At this point in time, our focus is solely on Scenofest, but the future could bring anything. Its emphasis on the design of the body of the performer, coupled with its driving sound and set, make it a good candidate for Scenofest!

 

“Taming of the Shrew” Image Gallery

July 21, 2013

“Taming of the Shrew” Image Gallery

Photos from MFA Director Ted Witzel's production of Taming of the Shrew at Canadian Stage's Shakespeare in High Park 2013, with sets by Lindsay Walker (MFA Stage Design 2013), and featuring alumni actors Tiana Asperjan (BFA 2013) and Marvin Ishmael (MFA 2011). Many York people were involved backstage, too—see our stories about our new and exciting collaboration between York and Canadian Stage!

 

Spotlight on Faculty: Ines Buchli

June 29, 2013

Spotlight on Faculty: Ines Buchli

Ines Buchli Ines Buchli

Professor Ines Buchli is busy in Vancouver, directing a new play—The Secret Doctrine by Vancouver playwright and Simon Fraser University prof Patricia Gruben. After a workshop in 2012, Buchli has returned to British Columbia to bring the play to life in its first staging, at SFU’s Woodward’s Theatre.

The play is getting quite a bit of press. The Georgia Strait in their preview of the play, focused on its telling of “a skeptic’s investigations into controversial 19th-century occultist and proto-New-Ager Helena Blavatsky,” played by Canadian actor Gabrielle Rose, who has worked in a broad range of roles in films by celebrated Canadian directors like Atom Egoyan, Bruce Sweeney, and Carl Bessai.

Set in India in 1885, the play follows the exploits of Blavatsky—co-founder of the Theosophical Society—as she beguiles intellectuals, artists and socialites.

The Company of The Secret Doctrine The Company of The Secret Doctrine

 

Ines Buchli describes the themes within the play this way:

We have a deep and meaningful need to understand the world around us, whether that understanding comes from faith in science and the scientific method or whether it comes from belief in the occult or religion. The play is about how the need for absolute proof destroys faith.  And how this quest can decimate hope and the mystery of life.  This thing that Helena Blavatsky refers to as ‘putting yourself in the experiment’ harkens to something we freely discuss in 2013—the beginner’s mind of ‘I don’t know.’   Helena Blavatsky is smart, funny, outrageous, surprising, highly intuitive and prescient. I hope that the audience will be involved in the experiment and directly experience firsthand some of the inexplicable in The Secret Doctrine.

Frank Zotter and Gabrielle Rose in The Secret Garden Frank Zotter and Gabrielle Rose in The Secret Garden

The Vancouver Sun‘s story says that the play’s “themes of passion, power, loyalty, scientific exploration and the supernatural merge in a story seen through the eyes of young investigator Richard Hodgson in his journey to discover whether she’s a charlatan or a sage. […] Exploring history, the New Age movement, Eastern philosophy, political intrigue, and the very laws of time and space, The Secret Doctrine is mysterious, captivating and provocative. The Secret Doctrine is at once a character study, a critique of colonialism, an interrogation of belief, and a fantastic spectacle.”

The play also includes impressive visual and lighting effects by Robert Gardiner and a multichannel audio environment with music by Martin Gotfrit to support the “miracles” that are a part of the play.

A New Name: The Graduate Program in Theatre and Performance Studies.

May 30, 2013

A New Name: The Graduate Program in Theatre and Performance Studies.

Zita Nyarady in character for Bird Brains City Hearts,
developed for Theatre Passe Muraille's TPM Everywhere.

We are pleased to announce that the Graduate Program in Theatre Studies at York is now the Graduate Program in Theatre and Performance Studies.

The change in program and degree name to Theatre and Performance Studies represents the culmination of a multi-year review process that has included the revision of our program sub-fields of specialization, changes to degree requirements, the arrival of new faculty, and the expansion of the graduate program membership to include colleagues from numerous departments across the university. We encourage our students to develop an interdisciplinary understanding of theatre and performance by taking courses, and working closely with, supervisory faculty who come from diverse backgrounds in a range of fields.

The Graduate Program in Theatre and Performance Studies offers two degrees, an MA and PhD, both of which emphasize our collective interest in theatre, performance, and cultural politics. For us, this means teaching classes that explore performance both onstage and in everyday life in order to highlight the cultural, political, material, and ideological dimensions of performance practices, both past and present. Studying performances across a broad range of cultural contexts—in theatres, galleries, rituals, the media, the streets, the political arena, mass spectacles, interpersonal interactions, etc.—helps to capture performance's potential to frame critically nuanced responses to public events, and thus to model politically and ethically engaged forms of public life.

Our areas of program specialization, which structure our curriculum and degree requirements, reflect this focus. They include:

  • Canadian Theatre and Cultural Politics
  • Postcolonialism and Globalization
  • Cultural Policy and Theatrical Economies
  • Gender and Sexuality
  • Embodiment and Cultural Memory
  • Environment and Cultural Geography
  • Critical Pedagogy and Community Engagement
  • Intermediality and Technology

These areas foreground the spirit of political inquiry and practice-based experimentation central to the particular faculty research projects and centres that are connected to our program, including the Centre for Imaginative Ethnography; Sensorium: Digital Arts and Technology Research; Future Cinema Lab, InTensions; and the Performance Studies (Canada) Project.

We take seriously York’s commitment to forging a just and sustainable world through critical and artistic inquiry and encourage our students to do the same.

For more information, please visit our program website.

 

Playwriting Alumni Gather to Read Their Work

April 29, 2013

Playwriting Alumni Gather to Read Their Work

Playwrighting alumni meet to read their work Photo: Judith Rudakoff

Playwrights from the 2011-2012 THEA 4290 Playwriting and Developmental Dramaturgy class have been having ongoing meetings to read their developing playwriting work. They continue to meet under the name “5290” on a regular basis. The works that were read at this meeting included a new piece by class members Tyler Graham, Spencer Schunk, Thomas McDevitt, Dan Bagg (and two other contributors) entitled Invisible City which will be presented at the Toronto Fringe Festival in July 2013; new material from Suzanna Derewicz' play Solidarity which she began during her time in 4290; and new work from Spencer Schunk and Laura McKay.