Directions to The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Presenters
Keynote: Performing Shakespeare in 2011 — Why? How? For Whom?
Photo: Brigitte Lacombe
Oskar Eustis is the Artistic Director of The Public Theater and has worked as a director, dramaturg, and artistic director for theaters around the country. From 1981 through 1986 he was resident director and dramaturg at the Eureka Theatre Company in San Francisco, and Artistic Director until 1989, when he moved to the L.A.’s Mark Taper Forum as Associate Artistic Director until 1994. Mr. Eustis then served as Artistic Director at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island for eleven years. In 2005 he took the helm at New York’s Public Theater. Throughout his career, Mr. Eustis has been dedicated to the development of new plays as both a director and a producer. At The Public he directed the New York premiere of Rinne Groff’s The Ruby Sunrise and Hamlet. At Trinity Rep, he directed the world premiere of Paula Vogel’s The Long Christmas Ride Home (Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production); Homebody/Kabul (Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production); the world premiere of Rinne Groff’s The Ruby Sunrise; Angels in America, Part I: Millennium Approaches (Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director); Angels in America, Part II: Perestroika; as well as world premieres of plays by Philip Kan Gotanda, David Henry Hwang, Emily Mann, Suzan-Lori Parks, Ellen McLaughlin, and Eduardo Machado. He commissioned Tony Kushner’s Angels in America at the Eureka Theatre Company in San Francisco and directed its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum. He was a professor of Theatre, Speech and Dance at Brown University, where he founded and chaired the Trinity Rep/Brown University Consortium for professional theater training. He received an honorary doctorate from Brown in 2001 and currently serves as Professor of Dramatic Writing and Arts and Public Policy at New York University. Oskar was the lead producer on the Tony award winning revival of Hair on Broadway.
A Mirror of Our Times: Uncovering Connections Between Shakespeare and Our World
Photo: Henry Grossman
Jeffrey Horowitz, the Founding Artistic Director of Theatre for a New Audience, began his career in theatre as an actor and appeared on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and in regional theatre. In 1979, he founded Theatre for a New Audience. Horowitz has served on the Panel of the New York State Council on the Arts and on the Board of Directors of Theatre Communications Group. He is currently on the Advisory Board of The Shakespeare Society and the Artistic Directorate of London’s Globe Theatre. He received the John Houseman Award in 2003 and The Breukelein Institute’s 2004 Gaudium Award.
Arin Arbus is the Associate Artistic Director at Theatre for a New Audience for whom she is currently directing Macbeth. She also directed Measure for Measure and Othello (Lortel Nomination) at Theatre for a New Audience. She was a Playwrights Horizons Directing Resident, a Williamstown Workshop Directing Corps Member, a member of Soho Rep.’s Writer/Director Lab, is a Drama League Directing Fellow, and a Princess Grace Award Recipient. She has directed at The Intiman Theatre, The Hangar Theatre, Theatre Outlet, FringeNYC, Storm Theatre, HERE Arts Center, Juilliard and Williamstown Workshop. In association with Rehabilitation through the Arts, Arbus also leads a theatre company of inmates at Woodbourne Correctional Facility – a medium security prison in upstate New York.
Marcus Doshi designs for theatre, opera & dance worldwide as well as collaborating with artists & architects on a wide array of non-theatrical ventures. With TFANA: lighting for Othello (Lortel Nomination), Hamlet (Drama Desk & Henry Hewes Nominations), Measure for Measure. Regionally with Seattle Opera, Florentine Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Greenwich Music Festival, Intiman, Seattle Rep, Portland Stage, Steppenwolf, Chicago Shakespeare, Court, Dallas Theatre Center, Pittsburgh Public, Williamstown, Hartford Stage, TheaterWorks, Yale Rep, among others. Internationally in Edinburgh, London, Amsterdam, Castres, Venice, Vienna, Mumbai, New Delhi, Phnom Penh, Jakarta. Education: Wabash College, Yale School of Drama. More information at www.marcusdoshi.com.
The Mirror Image: Shakespeare in Authentic Style
Ralph Alan Cohen is a Co-founder of the American Shakespeare Center and Gonder Professor Shakespeare in Performance at Mary Baldwin College. Since 1983 he has been directing professional and university productions of plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Recent ASC productions include Macbeth, Richard II, Henry IV Part 1 and the upcoming season's production of Henry IV, Part 2. He was the project director for the building of the Blackfriars Playhouse and the originator of the Mary Baldwin College Master of Letters and Fine Arts Program in Shakespeare in Performance. In 1990 and 1995 Ralph was guest editor of the Shakespeare Quarterly for its special editions on teaching and he is the co-editor of Your Five Gallants in Oxford's Complete Works of Thomas Middleton. He designed and directed the American Shakespeare Center's four National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institutes for university teachers of Shakespeare and theatre. He is the author of numerous articles on English Renaissance drama—most recently the chapter on the Second Blackfriars Playhouse in The Oxford Handbook to Early Modern Theatre—and his book, ShakesFear and How to Cure It, was the 2007 winner of the Educational Publishers Professional Achievement Award. In 1987 he won Virginia's Outstanding Faculty Award, in 2008 he was co-recipient of Virginia's Governor's Arts Award, and in 2009 he was named the Theo Crosby Fellow at Shakespeare's Globe. He did his undergraduate work at Dartmouth College and earned his doctoral degree from Duke University.
Colleen Kelly is the Director of Training at the American Shakespeare Center and serves on the graduate faculty of Mary Baldwin College's MLitt/MFA in Shakespeare and Renaissance Performance. For the ASC, Colleen has directed Julius Caesar (2006/2007), co-directed The Taming of the Shrew (2002/2003), and will perform in the 2010 Actors' Renaissance Season. She has taught at the University of San Diego/Old Globe Theatre, the University of Virginia and served as head of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival's MFA/Professional Actor Training Program. Colleen holds BS and MA degrees from Eastern Michigan University and an MFA from Ohio University. She is a member of Actor's Equity, a Founding Board Member of the Association of Theatre Movement Educators, and a Past-vice president of the Society of American Fight Directors. Colleen has worked as an actor, director, fight director, and dance choreographer. She has worked at professional theatres such as the American Shakespeare Center, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Denver Center Theatre, Dallas Theatre Center, the Old Globe, La Jolla Playhouse, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Clarence Brown Theatre, and Heritage Repertory Theatre. Film and TV credits include dance choreography for Sommersby and fight direction for the PBS series Tell About the South. Publications include articles in Theatre Symposium and The Fight Master. Colleen has presented lectures and workshops in performing Shakespeare at the Folger Library and several international conferences. She has been a Master Teacher in projects supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Paul Menzer is Associate Professor of English and Director of the MLitt/MFA in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature in Performance at Mary Baldwin College. He is author of the book The Hamlets: Cues, Qs, and Remembered Texts (2008), editor of the collection Inside Shakespeare: Essays from the Blackfriars Stage (2006), and has contributed essays on text, performance, and theater history to journals such as Shakespeare Quarterly, Renaissance Drama, Shakespeare Bulletin, and The Ben Jonson Journal. Forthcoming work includes over fifty entries on early modern theater history in the million-word Shakespeare Encyclopedia and six essays in collections including New Directions for Renaissance Drama and Performance Studies (Palgrave), Christopher Marlowe the Craftsman: Lives, Stage, and Page (Ashgate), and A Midsummer Night's Dream: Critical Guide (Continuum). He is currently working on a book-length study entitled Apes: Early Modern Acting and the Culture of Imitation. His plays The Brats of Clarence, Anonymous, and Shakespeare on Ice have appeared on the Blackfriars stage and elsewhere, including the Salvage Vanguard Theatre in Austin, TX. Paul's degrees include BA, University of Maryland; AM, Georgetown University; PhD, University of Virginia.
Through the Looking Glass: Shakespeare in Contemporary Adaptation
Diane Paulus is the Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theater. Her A.R.T. credits include Johnny Baseball, Best of Both Worlds, The Donkey Show (also six years Off-Broadway, tours to London, Edinburgh, Madrid, Evian, France). Other theater includes HAIR (Gielgud Theater, London, Al Hirschfield Theater, Tony Award, Best Revival for of a Musical, Tony Award Nomination, Best Direction of a Musical), Lost Highway (Young Vic/English National Opera), Kiss Me Kate (Glimmerglass Opera), Another Country (Columbia Stages), Turandot: Rumble for the Ring (Bay Street Theater), Swimming with Watermelons (Vineyard Theater and Music-Theatre Group), Eli’s Comin,’ (Obie Award), Brutal Imagination (Vineyard Theater), The Golden Mickeys (Disney Creative Entertainment), The Karaoke Show (Jordan Roth Productions), Running Man (Pulitzer Prize Finalist, (Music-Theatre Group). Opera: The Magic Flute (Canadian Opera Company), Il mondo della luna (Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History, Gotham Chamber Opera), Don Giovanni, Le nozze di Figaro, Turn Of The Screw, Cosi fan tutte, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, L’incoronazione di Poppea, and Orfeo (Chicago Opera Theater). Upcoming at the A.R.T.: Death and the Powers: The Robots’ Opera (premiered in Monaco last summer), and Porgy and Bess. Ms. Paulus was named one of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Boston by Boston Magazine this year.
Marjorie Garber is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of English and of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University, where she is also Chair of the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies and Director of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. She is senior Trustee of the English Institute, a member of the Board of Directors of the American Council of Learned Societies, and served until recently as the President of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes. A graduate of Swarthmore College (B.A. 1966; hon. D. 2004) and of Yale University (Ph.D. 1969), she has taught at Yale, at Haverford, and—since 1981—at Harvard. Garber has published fifteen books and has edited seven collections of essays. The scope of her work is both broad and deep—her topics range from animal studies to literary theory, but her work has mostly been centered on Shakespeare. Garber has written five widely admired books on the playwright, including her most recent, Shakespeare and Modern Culture (Pantheon, 2008); Profiling Shakespeare (Routledge, 2008); and Shakespeare After All (Pantheon, 2004), which received the 2005 Christian Gauss Book Award from Phi Beta Kappa. Garber is also currently at work on a collection of essays about the humanities, and on a new book about literature and its place in life.
Careena Melia was born in Galway, Ireland and moved to the U.S. when she was 5. She grew up studying dance, primarily ballet, and went on to train at Walnut Hill School for the Performing Arts, Boston Ballet, Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet and at Centre de Danse International in France. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and Trinity College in Dublin as a Theater and English major, and received an MFA from the American Repertory Theater/Moscow Art Theater Institute at Harvard University. In New York, she performed with Theater for a New Audience (Macbeth), the American Jewish Theater (Anne Frank and Me) and at the Irish Repertory Theater's new plays series. Her film and television credits include Moonlight Mile, Songs in Ordinary Time, JAG, Shakespeare in America, 18 Wheels of Justice, Touched by an Angel, and Under Hellgate Bridge. For the past few years Ms. Melia has been primarily performing on stage at the American Repertory Theater, Moscow Art Theater and with Punchdrunk, the British immersive theater company.
Ryan McKittrick is the Dramaturg at the American Repertory Theater and the Co-Head of Dramaturgy at the A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University. He received his M.F.A. in Dramaturgy from the A.R.T. Institute and his B.A. in History and Literature from Harvard University. His articles on theatre have appeared in The Boston Globe, Correspondence, Theatre, and The Boston Phoenix. He is a recipient of the TCG New Generations Award and the NTC Scholarship Award. His co-translations include Anton Chekhov’s Lady with a Lapdog, Rezo Gabriadze’s Forbidden Christmas, and The Selected Letters of Olga Bokshanskaya.
Closing Remarks
Photo: Krista Dodson
Dr. Francesca Marini is Archives Director at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival since July 2010. Prior to this position, she was Assistant Professor at the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver. She has a Ph.D. in Library and Information Science from the University of California, Los Angeles, and has studied as an archivist in Italy. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Theatre Studies from the University of Bologna, Italy. Her main work and research interests focus on performing arts archiving. She has been engaged in several research projects, including Present Memory: Knowledge Requirements for Archivists Preserving Live Theatre, funded through the UBC Hampton Research Fund. She is a University of Glasgow Honorary Research Fellow and Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS)-Performing Arts Visiting Fellow. She presents widely at national and international conferences, and publishes in archival and performing arts journals. She is a member of several scholarly and professional associations, including the Association of Canadian Archivists (ACA; also editor of the ACA Bulletin, as of January 2011); the Canadian Association for Theatre Research (CATR); the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR); the International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing Arts (SIBMAS); and the New York-based Theatre Library Association (TLA; also Board member). Her new position as Archives Director is Dr. Marini’s dream job, and she has been walking on air since moving to Stratford.
Last updated: April 12, 2011