Alumni Revue Ph.D. Program in Theatre and Performance Vol. 14 Spring 2017 Alumni Revue Ph.D. Program in Theatre and Performance The Graduate Center City University of New York Volume 14 Spring 2017 elcome to the fourteenth edition of our Alumni Revue! This issue once again expands our numbers and updates existing entries. W Thanks to all of you who returned the forms that provided us with this information; please continue to urge your fellow alums to do the same so that the following editions will be even larger and more complete. The last twelve months have been busy and productive. I am pleased to say that our students are engaged in a diversity of research, teaching, and artistic activities. Many of you have supported our students at conferences, theatre events, and in the field for which we are most grateful. Thank you also to Professor Emeritus Elinor Fuchs for her moving and inspirational lecture by one of our most distinguished alums on the occasion of the Alumni Party in December 2016. For copies of the Alumni Information Questionnaire form, please contact the editor of this revue, Lynette Gibson, Assistant Program Officer/Academic Program Coordinator, Ph.D. Program in Theatre and Performance, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016-4309. You may also email her at [email protected]. You are always welcome to drop by the program when you are in NYC, and don't forget to come to our alumni events at annual conferences. Thank you again for staying in touch with us. We’re always delighted to hear from you. Peter Eckersall Executive Officer Hello Everyone: elcome back to the Alumni Revue. We took last year off to decide where we wanted to take this publication. With advancements in W technology, including everything being digitized; most people’s access to computers; and major budget cuts threatening the institution, we decided that the time had come to make this an online publication. As always, I would like to thank our faithful alumni for their contributions to the field and for their generosity to the Theatre and Performance Program, our students, and, most importantly, to the Alumni Revue. I am also always grateful to the Administrative Assistants, who work tirelessly to get up-to-date and relative information. While you were gone, we hosted two events: a High Tea Party replete with clotted cream and jam on April 7, 2016, and an Alumni Cocktail Party on Thursday, December 4, 2016. Take a look at the back of this publication for all the fun and exciting comments people had to say about the events. It is truly an honor to see the dedication, love, and labor of the members of our growing community. The fourteenth edition of the Alumni Revue is yet another opportunity for all of us to take pride in the Graduate Center Theatre and Performance Program’s contributions to academia and society. We hope you enjoy this latest edition. Best regards. Lynette C. Gibson Editor From the Editorial and Graphic Arts Assistants Fidan Eylül Akinci I felt very inspired while I worked on the Alumni Revue and learned about our colleagues’ accomplishments and interests. It is wonderful to be part of this big and lively community of scholars, artists, and intellectuals. Joseph Paul Hill With past volumes of the Alumni Revue, my favorite part of the editing process has been getting the opportunity to read every entry’s final section on “what you would most want your GC colleagues to know.” With this edition, I’m particularly fond of the new section on current interests because it demonstrates the vast range of our alumni’s expertise both in and outside academia. Hansol Oh This was my first engagement with the Alumni Revue and it was a pleasure reaching out to so many accomplished and committed scholars and practitioners. I hope this year’s Alumni Revue helps sustain and strengthen this rich community, and I look forward to one day becoming part of our alumni community. Alison Walls What begins as a mere editing task always ends up being so much more as we work on the Alumni Revue. It is wonderful to get a sense of the interesting, diverse, and accomplished creative and academic community built over the years in the Graduate Center Theatre Program. It gives strength to those of us still working towards becoming alumni ourselves! About the Cover Images The Cover and Title Pages were designed by Joseph Paul Hill, one of our current students. The images are from the New York Public Library’s Digital Collections (https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/). The website is a continually expanding database of prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more. The images used in the Alumni Revue are early twentieth century costume design drawings by Will R. Barnes from the R. H. Burnside collection. From the Digital Collections website: Showman R.H. Burnside (1870-1952) was born in Glasgow to a theatrical family. His career began at London’s Savoy Theatre in the 1880’s where he worked backstage for the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company on its original productions of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. After moving to America, Burnside staged over 200 shows during his career, including many musicals for which he wrote music, libretti and lyrics. He was most closely identified with his direction of the popular musical extravaganzas at N.Y.’s Hippodrome Theatre between 1908-1923. Burnside possessed a treasure trove of memorabilia from the Hippodrome: full color designs and production files from the musical spectacles highlight and comprise the bulk of the collection. The designers whose artistry is featured are Will R. Barnes, Marguerite O’Kane Conwell, Marie Cook, Mark Lawson, Katharine Lovell, Cora MacGeachy, Robert McQuinn, William Henry Matthews, Gladys Monkhouse and Carl Wilhelm. The collection includes choreographic notes and diagrams, promptbooks, production files and portions of Burnside’s dramatic writings. The images chosen are from a sub-collection titled “Ensemble: Theatre Genres.” The Title Page features Barnes’s drawing of Tragedy. The genres represented on the Cover Page are, from left to right, Grand Opera, Musical Comedy, Minstrelsy, Review, and Vaudeville. You’ll also find Revue and Melodrama in the back pages of the Alumni Revue. Dr. ABBOTT, Erik email: [email protected] 4, Place Léon XIII L-1929 LUXEMBOURG Graduated: October 2014 Professional life: Founder and Artistic Director, Actors Repertory Theatre Luxembourg Actors Rep is a professional English-language theatre company in Luxembourg. Founded in 2012, we have presented six productions since 2013, with a seventh opening in December 2016. (www.ActorsRep.lu) Theatre Critic, Wort.lu/en I write theatre articles about reviews of local and touring productions for the online English version of the national newspaper, the Luxembourger Wort. Professional Director and Actor, Various Direct and act professionally for Actors Rep and others. Independent Scholar Current fields of interest/research: Contemporary European Theatre and Performance: Carnival Recent publications/papers: “Shouting at the Devil (and Everyone Else): Yaël Farber’s Production of The Crucible at The Old Vic,” European Stages 3 (Summer 2015); Numerous articles and reviews for Wort.lu/en. Family: Spouse/Partner: Dena Child(ren): none listed Grandchild(ren): none listed Hobbies, Community Service, Volunteer: I regularly work on a voluntary basis with a non-profit in York, England, and in various places on the Continent. What you would most want your GC colleagues to know: nothing listed =============================================================================== Dr. ABRAMS, Joshua email: [email protected] 126 Casewick Road West Norwood, London SE27 0SZ UNITED KINGDOM Graduated: September 2008 Professional life: Deputy Dean, Academic The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London Eton Avenue, London NW3 3HY UNITED KINGDOM Current fields of interest/research: Contemporary Performance, Food Studies, Immersive Performance Recent publications/papers: “Sriracha and the Performance of Identity,” in Fonds of Food: Sauces and Identity in the Western World, ed. Andrew Donnelly, Beth Forrest, and Deirdre Murphy (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2017); “Design and Décor of Restaurants,” in Sage Encyclopedia of Food Issues, ed. Ken Albala (Sage Publications, 2015); “Performing the Ephemeral: On Ice Cream and the Theatre,” in “On Ice,” Performance Research 18, no. 6 (December 2013); “Mise en Plate: The Scenographic Imagination and the Contemporary Restaurant,” in “On Scenography,” Performance Research 18, no. 2 (September 2013); “Affective Presents/ Effective Presence: Intensity, Futurity, and the Theatrical Politics of the Child,” in Performance, Identity and the Neo-Political Subject, ed. Matthew Causey and Fintan Walsh (Routledge, 2013). Family: Spouse/Partner: Jennifer Parker-Starbuck (‘03) Child(ren): 1 Grandchild(ren): none listed Spring 2017 Hobbies, Community Service, Volunteer: none listed What you would most want your GC colleagues to know: During the past year, I began a new post, as Deputy Dean at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (still in London) and I’m enjoying that a great deal; it’s a research and administration post, so I’m not in the classroom at the moment (other than PhD supervisions). As well, Jen and I ran the ASTR conference in Minneapolis this year, which was apparently the largest ASTR conference to date. We were very happy with it and it was great to see so many alumni and CUNY colleagues there. I’m still writing on food and performance, hoping to finish the book in the near future. =============================================================================== Dr. AJELLO, Linell email: [email protected] 1621 Fern Street [email protected] New Orleans, LA 70118 Graduated: May 2012 Professional life: Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow Tulane University, School of Liberal Arts Department of Communication 219 Newcomb Hall New Orleans, LA 70118 Current fields of interest/research: nothing listed Recent publications/papers: “A Game of Poverty and Tragic Deliberation,” Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory 21, no.