Spotlight on Faculty

Faculty members Teresa Przybylski and Shawn Kerwin met with Eric Armstrong to record an audio interview about their design work for The Stratford Festival’s 2017 season. Kerwin is designing Euripides The Bakkhai, directed by York aluma Jillian Keiley, while Przybylski is designing The Madwoman of Chaillot, by French playwright Jean Giraudoux, directed by Donna Feore.

Gwenyth Dobie is an Associate Professor at the Department of Theatre. She teaches movement for actors and devised theatre. Last year, she directed the Theatre @ York production of The Beggar’s Opera. This year, she is on sabbatical and working on “Butterfly: a study interactive” and her next complete work “Rallentando- a restoration”

Don Rubin, whose specialization is Theatre Studies—in particular aesthetics, criticism, Canadian theatre, and modern drama—has been teaching in the Dept. of Theatre since it’s very first days. He sat down to discuss his work, how he came to York, and the response to the conference on the Shakespeare Authorship Question that he hosted this Fall.

Designer, producer, administrator and York Theatre professor Ian Garrett discusses sustainability and his work this summer in Cardiff, Wales and Edinburgh, Scotland, and the impact his research is having on the practice of sustainable theatre, and the thought that “Going to the theatre IS good for the environment!”

Acting-Directing Professor Ines Buchli’s production of Patricia Gruben’s new play The Secret Doctrine is being mounted from Tuesday to Saturday (July 2 to 6) at Simon Fraser University Woodward’s Theatre in Vancouver, BC. The play deals with an investigation into 19th-century occultist Helena Blavatsky, played by Vancouver actor Gabrielle Rose (pictured).

Eric Armstrong, who teaches voice, speech, accents and text in the BFA and MFA Acting programs, works in the field of accent and dialect design for Theatre, Film and Television. He shares his process on Buddies in Bad Times current production of Daniel MacIvor’s new play, Arigato, Tokyo.

Judith has worked as a dramaturg for conventional forms of theatre as well as genre-defying performance events. In this article, she discusses what a dramaturg does and gives some insight into her recent work with transgender performance artist Nina Arsenault.

Faculty member and movement specialist Erika Batdorf updates us on her sabbatical experiences in Bali, where this month she’s been studying a dance form called Topeng.