News

  • Douglas Kneale on Brock’s new performing arts centre

    Douglas Kneale, Dean, Faculty of Humanities discusses how Brock University’s expansion in the heart of St. Catharines will benefit both students and the local community

    please see the video here

    Video: Published Saturday, Nov. 19, 2011 1:27PM EST in the Globe and Mail website

     

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  • DART Alumnus on the stage of The Grand Theatre

    Eric Frank (DART 2011) was recently seen on stage in a production of To Master the Art at the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario. It’s the story of Julia Child and the writing of her famous cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The play opens with Julia and her husband Paul’s arrival in France in 1948. Paul introduces her to fine French cuisine and she is completely smitten.

    Professor Virginia Reh, who directed Eric in two mainstage productions at Brock,  journeyed to London to see him in his professional debut and remarked, ‘In a production with 24 roles played by 10 actors, Eric proved a veritable chameleon, creating four very different vibrant characters. He was clearly comfortable in this professional milieu and his colleagues are enthusiastic about working with him.’"

    Break-a-leg, Eric!

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  • Leading scholar in Roman religion will lecture at Brock

    Rome, ‘the Eternal City’, has inspired more than two millennia of writers, thinkers, artists and architects.

    On Oct. 20, Brock will share that inspiration when it hosts Christopher Smith, an internationally renowned scholar and director of the British School at Rome, Britain’s leading humanities research institute abroad.

    Read the full story in The Brock News

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  • Read all about it! the cSTAC Newsletter for 2011-12

    The Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture (cSTAC) Newsletter for 2011-12 is now available for download.
    Contents include information about the interdisciplinary program and Concentrations – including the new Concentration in Cultural Management, a snapshot of some of our special courses, the lead faculty, alumni accomplishments, student awards, our community connections, and events and opportunities in the Niagara Region.

    Paper copies are available upon request from stac@brocku.ca

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  • Special performance: Which Way to the Bastille? at Rodman Hall

    MILUTIN GUBASH
    The Hotel Tito
    September 16 – December 30, 2011
    Opening Reception: September 15, 2011, 7 -9 pm
    Curated by Shirley Madill

    In collaboration with Musee d’art de Joliette

    Special performance:  Which Way to the Bastille?
    Following the premier on September 15 the second of eight short performances by students of the Department of Dramatic Arts (DART) occurs September 23, 2011 after 12 noon. Tanisha Minson and Dylan Mawson, senior students in the DART program have collaborated with the artist and faculty of DART to create a brief interpretation of the text during the course of the exhibition.  The performance will function as a dramatic evocation of the principal tenets of the artist’s and the curatorial program.

    Performance are scheduled for:
    Thursday, September 15, evening, at the opening reception.
    Friday, September 23, 12 noon, last day of the artist’s residency
    Thursday, September 29, 6:30 pm
    Saturday, October 15, 2:30 pm
    Thursday, October 27, 8 pm
    Sunday, November 6, 2:30 pm
    Friday, November 18, 11:30 am
    Saturday, December 3, 2:30 pm

    The exhibit in brief:
    Milutin Gubash has pursued a multidisciplinary practice revolving around video, photography and performance since 2002. This ten-year survey of work by Milutin Gubash includes a residency project with the Department of Dramatic Arts and the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock University. Beginning with the work titled, Re-Enacting Tragedies While My Parents Look On, the exhibition includes various works that focus on daily-life occurrences with historical and philosophical narratives. Gubash is interested in exploring how individuals and ideas can overwrite commonly held perceptions of landscape, politics and expectations of representation.
    www.milutingubash.com
    —-
    The exhibit in detail:
    Milutin Gubash has pursued a multidisciplinary art practice revolving around video, photography and performance since 2002. He first made a name for himself in 2003 with the webcast project Re-Enacting Tragedies While My Parents Look On, in which he “re-created,” with his parents, various tragic news stories reported in the Calgary Herald. Gubash plays the part of the victim, dressed in a dark suit that now has become a signature for the artist.

    By layering daily-life occurrences with historical and philosophical narratives, Gubash is interested in exploring how individuals and ideas can overwrite commonly held perceptions of landscape, politics and expectations of representation. His imagery portrays the same individuals (family and friends) living absurd situations or experiencing actual moments of psychological reflection. Together, the Gubash family and friends create a dreamscape of funny and sincere gestures while experimenting with their own relational identities. Gubash often insists on creating multiple contexts within which to engage his series of mini- narratives. By locating his own performative gestures at the scenes of such events, Gubash dares to heighten his personal psychological inquiry and that of his collaborators.

    This exhibition includes a selection of works produced over the past ten years with emphasis on the recent interconnected projects: Which Way to the Bastille?, These Paintings, and Hotel Tito.

    During a residency with the Department of Dramatic Arts, Brock University, Gubash worked with Associate Professor David Vivian, Associate Professor Dr. Natalie Alvarez, and a company of selected students to develop a "live animation" of Which Way to the Bastille? Situated as an ongoing and regular interpretation of the text during the course of the exhibition, the performance will function as a dramatic evocation of the principal tenets of the artist’s and the curatorial program. Associate Professor Catherine Parayre (Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures) of Brock University will lead an upper-level course in text and image based around this exhibition under the auspices of the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts.

    A version of this exhibition will also be seen at the Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge; and the Mus_e d’art de Joliette, Quebec.

    Milutin Gubash was born in Novi Sad (Serbia) and has been living in Montreal since 2005.

    Shirley Madill
    Exhibition Curator

     

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  • Hot off the presses: the DART Newsletter for 2011-12

    The Department of Dramatic Arts (DART) Newsletter for 2011-12 is now available for download.
    Contents include information about the programs and Concentrations, annual production and presentation activity, special invited guests, faculty and staff, alumni accomplishments, student awards and bursaries, the Invitational process, and DART at the Stratford and Shaw Festivals.

    Paper copies are available upon request from dramatic.arts@brocku.ca

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  • New research marries poetry with science

    When Adam Dickinson speaks of a body of writing, he’s talking about much more than words on a page.

    The associate professor of English Language and Literature marries creativity in poetry with scholarship on the genre by writing about the impact of the environment on the human body – specifically his own.

    Read the full story in The Brock News

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  • a new program from cSTAC and the Faculty of Business in 2011: Concentration in Cultural Management

    The Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture (cSTAC) will be offering a new program that brings together learning opportunities from two leading Faculties at Brock University – the Faculty of Business and the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts of the Faculty of Humanities.

    The Concentration in Cultural Management, a new collaboration with the highly-regarded Faculty of Business, will begin in the autumn of 2011.  This is the ideal program for students who seek to graduate with employable skills as Cultural Managers in diverse fields of arts and culture, including music, the visual arts and dramatic arts.  Together with their interdisciplinary or single-discipline studies in arts and culture students may pursue service-learning or practicum experiences with professionals and organizations in the Niagara Region.  Required upper-level courses taken at the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture include Arts Management; Arts, Heritage and Culture: Public Policy and Governance; Producing a Performance Event, or Creating social value from material culture. Courses taken within the Faculty of Business include: Introduction to Business,  Marketing Management, Organizational Behaviour and Design, Human Resources Management , Entrepreneurship, Personal Financial Planning and others related business topics.

    Read the information sheet for this exciting new Concentration for 2011.

    contact the Director of the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture for more information David Vivian: dvivian at brocku.ca
    or the Academic Advisor for the Faculty of Humanities, Alisa Cunnington: alisa.cunnington at brocku.ca

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  • The experience of a young actor’s lifetime

    Caitlin Popek, graduate of the Department of Dramatic Arts (DART), recently returned from Canada’s National Voice Intensive.  This renowned five-week professional training workshop in Vancouver is attended by professional artists from across North America and abroad.

    An ambitious, dedicated and focused student in her academic studies, Caitlin excelled on the stage when she played the lead character Desiree Armfeldt in the DART 2009 production of the Stephen Sondheim musical A Little Night Music.  More recently she honed her skills as the Teaching Assistant for DART 3P54 Directing and she has just begun production managing for Showboat Festival Theatre in Port Colborne.

    “My experience at the Voice Intensive was absolutely amazing! . . . One of the first things they told us was, ‘You will be confused and that’s exactly where we want you to be.’  Even with that statement I was confused!” she says, “You mean, we’re not here to get answers?”  After experiencing 5 weeks of intense vocal, physical, emotional, and mental work that first statement made complete sense. “I did leave with a lot of confusion, but it was the kind of confusion that drives me to keep digging and discovering and investigating in my work.”

    Caitlin adds, “There were things that I understood already about my voice from classes experienced at Brock and the Intensive just pumped up the volume on all those things. . .   For example, I knew that my voice reveals who I am but I did not really understand how much my voice reveals, AND that that is the only thing it can do.  As a speaker, all you can do is allow what is inside you to be revealed and the response is out of your control!  To allow myself to be fully revealed is a very scary thing but when I achieved this feat it was the most wonderful feeling I have ever experienced.  To allow myself to be whoever I am inside, at any given moment, became an amazingly freeing thing.”

    Caitlin graduated in 2010 with First-Class Standing in the Performance Concentration of the Honours Dramatic Arts program. Working with some of the best emerging actors and trainers in Canada in 2011 Caitlin has already achieved an experience of an actor’s lifetime.

    “Without the help and guidance from many professors at Brock I would not have been able, or ready, to experience what I did at the Voice Intensive.  It was such a wonderful experience and I want to thank everyone who helped me to get there!!”

    Congratulations on your success, Caitlin!

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  • DART alumni at the Toronto Fringe

    Once again DART alumni are taking the stage and making scenes at the Toronto 2011 Fringe Festival.  Some of the productions were first work-shopped or developed during our students’ academic year at Brock.  Shows include:

    “Circus”
    by Nathan Tanner Mac Donald
    presented by Moment by Moment from St Catharines, ON

    http://fringetoronto.com/fringefest/indoorBYOV_listings.html#C

    Come one, come all! Enter the Big Tent! Witness everything from a baby’s first steps to the dart board of death! BING, BAM, POW! Ever feel like your mind is the centre ring of a circus? Well, John does.

    Director: Nathan Tanner Mac Donald
    Genre: Play, Drama
    Warning: Mature Language
    Venue 12 Factory Theatre Mainspace

    50 min.
    Wed, July 6 10:30 PM 1203
    Fri, July 8 5:15 PM 1209
    Sun, July 10 3:00 PM 1221
    Tue, July 12 8:45 PM 1236
    Thu, July 14 4:00 PM 1247
    Fri, July 15 7:30 PM 1256
    Sun, July 17 Noon 1266

    “Visa Called this Morning”
    by Jen Gallant
    (www.jjmoneyproductions.ca)
    presented by JJ Money Productions from Toronto, ON

    Her creditors are calling. Her bank accounts are freezing. Jen finds herself feeling more like a criminal than a valued customer. she is forced to reconcile her toxic relationship with debt. Jen’s struggle to survive her maxed out reality leaves her realizing that, the banks don’t love you like your parents.

    Cast: Jen Gallant
    Genre: Play, Comedy
    Venue 11 Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace

    60 min.
    Wed, July 6 10:00 PM 1103
    Fri, July 8 4:45 PM 1109
    Sat, July 9 6:45 PM 1116
    Mon, July 11 5:45 PM 1127
    Tue, July 12 8:30 PM 1135
    Wed, July 13 3:00 PM 1138
    Thu, July 14 9:45 PM 1148
    Sun, July 17 4:00 PM 1163

     

     

     

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