Graduate BAM Backstage Seminar

Applications due December 16!

Backstage Seminar

Every Wednesday in February, from 3:30pm-5:00pm
Harvey Theater Lobby

For graduate students and young theater professionals, by application only.
All participants will receive one ticket for the Feb 1 performance of Richard III.

A series of five workshops with BAM’s extraordinary production crew and select members of the creative team behind the Bridge Project’s Richard III, the Backstage Seminar gives an in-depth, hands-on look at how a play gets mounted on stage, from set building to lighting and sound design to touring, and more. Each session will conclude with a Q&A.

BAM Production Manager Neil Kutner and BAM Production Supervisor Audrey Hoo will be leading each session. Guest speakers from BAM include Executive Producer, Joseph Melillo on February 1; Executive Vice President, Alice Bernstein on February 1; Project Line Producer, Nick Schwartz-Hall on February 29; joined by The Bridge Project Associate Director, Composer, Musical Coordinator and Director, Stage Manager, and more to be announced. Each session will conclude with a Q&A.

Price: $150, includes cost of a ticket to Richard III, five workshops, and workshop materials.

Click here to download an application. Please email completed application by December 16th.

Session # 1: Overview with Executive Producer Joe Melillo and Executive VP Alice Bernstein
Feb 1

Learn about how the Bridge Project was conceived and taken from an idea to completion. This session includes a tour of the stage at the BAM Harvey Theater.

Session # 2: Set Design/Scenery
Feb 8

Using images, including photographs and plans of Bridge Project productions, participants will examine the evolution and development of the show to understand how the set was brought to life.

Session # 3: Lighting/Sound/Music Composition
Feb 15

While looking at drawings and schematics of the light plot and sound design, lighting and sound designers will discuss how to create a design based on a director’s vision.

Session # 4: Stage Management & Costumes
Feb 22

Looking at challenges of stage management for a transatlantic partnership, stage managers will explain their roles in the production. The session will also include a look at costume designs with sketches and tracking sheets from costumes used in the production.

Session #5: Touring
Feb 29

The final session addresses how the production is designed to tour as a global project. This session will include a look at tour schedules, how to identify tour partners, and navigating contract negotiations.

Business Cards for DA Students

Alright DA students, I know this is perhaps not the highest thing on your list right now what with all your seminar papers due this week, but I know at the back of your mind, you are always thinking about those future job prospects. Just in case this little tool has slipped through your mental cracks, I'm here to remind you about the indispensable business card.

St. John's is offering doctoral students the opportunity to purchase official business cards through the university. The rate is $37 for 500 cards. Here's a link to the form. Or paste this into your browser:
http://www.stjohns.edu/academics/graduate/liberalarts/about/business_cards.stj

I designed my own business cards last semester using Vistaprint, which always has good deals. I ordered two different designs, one of which was free and the other I recall spending only $5-10 for 500 cards. The free cards do say "Vistaprint" on the back.

Whichever route you choose, I highly recommend ordering some. I handed several cards at the Blackfriars Conference this year. And we have the NEWCA conference coming up on campus this spring. It's handy to just pull out a card when chatting with a new colleague.

Best of luck with the end of the semester, folks!

Working on personal statements?

Karl Steel from In the Middle just posted a really insightful piece on "How to write a cover letter for a humanities PhD program." I know we have some BA/MA and MA students who are thinking about applying for PhD programs, whether this year or in future years. This post might be work sticking into your Bookmarks.

Enjoy!

Finals week is here again

Hang in there, folks. The end of the semester is nigh. Hopefully you were able to get in a little bit of relaxing at the Department Holiday Party last Tuesday.

As you are hard at work with those final papers, don't forget that the Writing Center is here as a resource. If you're on campus, make a face-to-face appointment with a consultant. Talk through the snags in your ideas and get those papers flowing. If you can't make it to campus, there are online options available to you as well. You can sign up for an Online Tutoring Session, which is basically an online chat session live with a consultant. Or you can also submit a paper for E-Tutoring, which will be emailed back to you within 24 hours with comments from a consultant.

I've already signed up for an appointment! Hurry before the slots get filled up this week.

Writing Center Hours are:

Sunday 1:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Monday - Thursday 8:00 am - 10:00 pm
Friday 8:00 am - 6:00 pm

Don't forget, appointments last for an hour so our last appointments begin an hour before the closing time listed. Make an appointment online, as times are getting booked fast. Don't just count on getting a walk-in appointment.

Summer Teaching Opportunities

I know what each of you must be dreaming about as you are currently hunkered down in your freezing cold apartments or dorm rooms typing away at your final papers ... summer!


To aid you in your visions of summer, check out this opportunity for summer teaching:



The Institute of Reading Development is seeking candidates for summer 2012 teaching positions. We seek applicants with an undergraduate degree or higher from any discipline. We provide a paid training program and comprehensive on-going support.


Summer teaching positions with the Institute offer the opportunity to:

• Earn more than $6,000 during the summer. Teachers typically earn between $500 and $700 per week while teaching.
• Gain over 300 hours of teacher-training and teaching experience with a variety of age groups.
• Help students of all ages develop their reading skills and ability to become imaginatively absorbed in books.

The Institute is an educational service provider that teaches developmental reading programs in partnership with the continuing education departments of more than 100 colleges and universities across the United States. Our classes for students of all ages improve their reading skills and teach them to experience absorption in literature.


We hire people who:

• Have strong reading skills and read for pleasure
• Have a Bachelor's Degree in any discipline
• Are responsible and hard working
• Have good communication and organizational skills
• Will be patient and supportive with students
• Have regular access to a reliable car

We invite you to submit an online application and learn more about teaching for the Institute at our website:

http://instituteofreadingdevelopmentteachingjobs.com/

Titus at PublicLab

(cross posted from The Bookfish)


An intense, high-spirited night last night at the Public.  Michael Sexton’s production of “Titus” was bloody bloody and lots of fun.  They really nailed the play’s strange combination of hyper-melodrama and almost-playfulness, leading up to an over-the-top finale at the final banquet, complete with (actual) buckets of blood, cartoon post-it notes, and a food-fight between Titus and Tamora with mushy pieces of pie.
In the chaos, Titus’s recipe almost sounded simple, a straightforward and literal way of making sense out of disorder –

Let me grind their bones to powder small,
And with this hateful liquor temper it,
And in that paste let their vile heads be bak’d.  (5.2.197-200)

Several performances stood out in a strong cast.  Jacob Fishel as Saturninus and Jennifer Ikeda as Lavina were both veterans of Red Bull’s brilliant Women beware Women in 2009, a production that gets better each time I remember it.  (I think about the old joke about Juan Rulfo, author of Pedro Paramo, whose reputation supposedly grew with each new novel he didn’t write.)  Fishe’ls fey Saturninus made me want a bigger part for him next time. Ikeda’s mute presence during Marcus’s interminable Ovidian lament upon discovering her maimed (“Alas, a crimson river of warm blood, / Like to a bubbling fountain…” 2.4.11-57) made a devastating critique of poetic fancies.
Ron Cephas Jones, who I thought did a decidedly mixed job as Caliban and Charles the wrestler in the Bridge Project’s As You Like It / Tempest double bill a few years ago, was a great Aaron: smart, sexy, charismatic , and powerful.  Strung up by Lucius and awaiting execution, he rained brags down on his captors’ heads –

Even now I curse the day — and yet I think
Few come within compass of my curse –
Wherein I did not do some notorious ill… (5.1.125-7)

Rob Campbell’s Lucius and Stephanie Roth Haberle’s Tamora were also strong, but I’m ambivalent about Jay O. Sanders as Titus.  He’s big and imposing, with a bear-ish presence that filled up the stage in army camo during the first scene — but too often, esp in the opening parts of the play, his bear was more teddy than grizzly.    He hit his stride after losing his mind, and in some ways the part felt more Lear-like and aged than I might have liked.  He made a compelling mad father, but less of a conquering general.  “I am the sea,” he claims when trumpeting his grief — but he didn’t quite get there, at least not for me.  The bad guys — Aaron, Saturninus, Tamora — had the flash in this production.
The lab-budget staging was great: a stack of maybe 3 dozen 8 x 4 plyboard sheets were moved, illustrated, and shuffled around to create almost everything — late in the action they were tables, kitchen counters, and an executioner’s board, earlier they had been thrones and gravestones and pits and caves.  I especially loved watching Frank Dolce, who played the boys’ parts, draw symbolic cartoons — birds, crowns, swords — on wood and on post-it notes, and Lavina’s mouth-held drawings in act 5 extended this conceit.
I also had the strange experience of slightly mis-hearing Aaron’s line about surprising Lavinia in the woods — I heard “The woods are roofless, dreadful, deaf, and dull,” but the line reads “ruthless” — and thinking Robert Frost.  Not sure what to make of that.

Graduate Assistantship

Graduate Students:

The coach of the speech and debate team, Steve Llano, has been allocated funds for a graduate assistant. He has posted details on his office door, St. John Hall B20-11, which is just around the corner from the English Dept Office.

Stop by, check out the info, and ask some questions if you're interested!