With the 2018–2019 academic year and production season over, summer settles into the Winship Drama Building. No rest, however, for the artistic! Texas Theatre and Dance faculty, staff and students are making their way all around the globe for a range of creative and scholastic projects. In this two-part series, we give a brief glimpse into the whos, whats and wheres of Summer 2019. This installment: our notes for June.
Students
Jeffrey Gan (Ph.D. in Performance as Public Practice) will spend this summer in an Indonesian language immersion at the State University of Malang in East Java through the U.S. State Department’s Critical Language Scholarship program.
siri gurudev (Ph.D. in Performance as Public Practice) has won the Tinker Field Research Grant Summer 2019 through LLILAS to attend the Hemispheric Institute Encuentro in Mexico City and do research on contemporary performance art in the Americas.
Mackenzie Lawrence (B.F.A. in Dance) will be attending the Gibney Dance Summer Intensive.
After defending her thesis, Kristin Perkins (M.A. in Performance as Public Practice) will travel to Malaysia as the winner of a Fulbright English Teaching Award.
After defending his dissertation, Bart Pitchford (Ph.D. in Performance as Public Practice) will take up the post of Assistant Professor of Theatre History and Directing at the University of Montevallo in Alabama.
Mason Rosenthal (M.F.A. in Performance as Public Practice) was selected for a highly competitive two-week residency out at Berkeley Repertory Theatre as part of their Ground Floor Summer Residency Program. He is bringing several members of his company, Lightning Rod Special, to workshop a new piece of ensemble-devised theatre in collaboration with theatre artist/puppeteer Morgan FitzPatrick Andrews and playwright/videographer
kt shorb (Ph.D. in Performance as Public Practice) has won a prestigious Directing Fellowship from Wolf Trap Opera this summer. They will also direct Al Monts’s play black girl love at The VORTEX.
Faculty
Barbara Chisholm-Faires (Lecturer, Acting) will perform in Erma Bombeck: At Wit’s End at Rippowam Cisqua in Bedform, NY, directed by David Esbjornson. She will also serve as production manager for a one-man version of Shakespeare’s Henry V at the New Orleans Shakespeare Festival at Tulane.
Tina Curran (Assistant Professor of Practice, UTeach Dance) will teach “Dance Teacher as Artist,” a graduate
course for South Carolina certified dance educators, with leading author and dance teacher educator Brenda McCutchen at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts.
Katie Dawson (Assistant Professor, Drama and Theatre for Youth and Communities) will present a keynote at the Arts Express 2019 Conference at Brigham Young University. She will also travel to the United States Embassy in Sarajevo with three graduate students to teach 50 educators how to use the arts to teach English and increase civic engagement.
Kirk Lynn (Associate Professor, Playwriting and Directing) will be in Toronto for production of a short film based on his novel Rules for Werewolves, starring Finn Wolfhard from Stranger Things. His play Fixing the Last Henry will be performed at Crashbox by the Rude Mechs.
KJ Sanchez (Associate Professor, Playwriting and Directing) will be a guest lecturer at NYU Abu Dhabi where she will be directing a new play by Asyan Celik, founding member of Theatre Mitu. She will also work at Cara Mia Theatre Co. in Dallas writing and directing her play Grandma’s Empanadas.
Roxanne Schroeder-Arce (Associate Professor, Drama and Theatre for Youth and Communities) will be teaching at the Center for Educator Development in the Fine Arts “The Art of Fine Arts Teaching” Summit. At the Indigenous Cultures Institute in San Marcos, she will conduct research and advise on curriculum and assessment as well as oversee the work of UTeach Fine Arts interns.
Sara Simons (Assistant Professor of Instruction, Drama and Theatre for Youth and Communities) will serve as curriculum advisor for the EXPLO summer program, coaching college-age instructors on curriculum, pedagogy. and classroom management. Five current UTeach Theatre students will be working as instructors at EXPLO as well.
