Articles by author: Brock University

  • Our Grad, Julia Course – break-a-leg!

    Saturday, April 20, 2013 | By

    shaw_ourbetters_webgallery_8DART Alumna Julia Course was recently given a nod by J. Kelly Nestruck in the The Globe and Mail for her role in one of “6 can’t-miss stage productions for spring”.

    from the Globe and Mail, Wednesday, Apr. 17 2013:

    Our Betters, Shaw Festival

    The Shaw Festival is hoping some of the smell of Downton Abbey rubs off on its production of W. Somerset Maugham’s Our Betters, a 1923 comedy about rich American women trying to snag a British noble. Julia Course, a young company member who has turned heads in smaller parts in recent seasons, gets her first starring role in this production from acclaimed director/designer team Morris Panych and Ken MacDonald.

    Royal George Theatre, April 3-Oct. 27, www.shawfest.com

    You can see Julia interviewed and on stage in this short video available from PBS.

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    Categories: Alumni, News

  • Dramatic Arts Professor Karen Fricker receives Excellence in Teaching Award at McGill University

    Friday, April 05, 2013 | By

    The Department of Dramatic Arts at Brock University congratulates Professor Karen Fricker for her recent Award for Excellence in Teaching at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec.  Professor Fricker is the first recipient of The Charles Bronfman and Rita Mayo Award for Excellence in Teaching at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. This is based on evaluations of her Fall, 2013 course, Performing Québec in the Global Age. The award was granted by a jury consisting of Professors Robert Leckey and Nathalie Cooke, and MISC Director Will Straw.

    The Award was established in 2012 with a gift from Heather Munro-Blum and Leonard Solomon-Blum. The Award recognizes outstanding teaching at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada in the Faculty of Arts, with special emphasis on advancing the interest of students in the study of Canada. All faculty in the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada are eligible for the Award, which has a total value of $1,000.

    The MISC congratulates Professor Fricker on this Award and thanks her for her excellent contributions to their teaching program.
    See the original news posting on the website of the MISC at McGill University.

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    Categories: Faculty & Instructors, News

  • Dramatic Arts sponsors the Arts in Education Award for 2013

    Friday, March 22, 2013 | By

    arts-awards-web

    The Department of Dramatic Arts is pleased to sponsor the Arts in Education Award for 2013. Nominate a deserving artist now!

    The St. Catharines Arts Awards recognize and celebrate excellence in all areas of artistic creation. The Arts Awards seek to increase the visibility of St. Catharines’ artists and cultural industries, honour cultural leaders and their achievements, and cultivate financial and volunteer support for the arts sector. Each award winner will be presented with a civic certificate of appreciation and a cash prize of $300.

    Nominations are now being accepted!

    Six Arts Awards categories are open for nominations this year. Nominations can be submitted using the forms below.

    Nomination Deadline April 15, 2013 at 4:30 p.m.

    The recipients of the City of St. Catharines Arts Awards will be announced on Saturday June 8, 2013 at the St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre. All nominees will be provided with advance tickets to the event.

    Save the Date! Tickets for the Arts Awards are $10 and will go on sale in March.

    Connect with St. Catharines Cultural Services on Facebook

    Looking for inspiration? View a list of past winners

    Arts in Education Award

    The Arts in Education Award celebrates an individual, collective or organization that has demonstrated an outstanding commitment to engaging St. Catharines residents through arts education activities.

    View the Arts in Education Award Nomination Form

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    Categories: Announcements, News

  • DART graduate to receive the President’s Surgite Award

    Thursday, March 21, 2013 | By

    DART alumna Roxolana (Rox) Chwaluk was recently selected to receive the President’s Surgite Award at her Masters degree convocation in the autumn of 2013.

    The President’s Surgite Award recognizes those students who have been outstanding in one or more of the following areas:

    • Demonstrated exemplary leadership in a student club, organization, association or team.
    • Did something exceptional that helped to advance Brock’s academic reputation.
    • Made a significant contribution to student life at Brock.
    • Provided a valuable service to Brock or the broader community.

    Rox remarked that “the foundation that I had as a DART (Dramatic Arts) student was essential to my success. I have always been grateful for the opportunities I was provided to engage with my peers and the community. The professors who inspired me also grounded my work.”

    Rox graduated with a BA Honours in Dramatic Arts First-Class Standing in 2009, her Bachelor of Education Preservice Education – Intermediate Senior in 2010, and will graduate with her Master of Education (Social and Cultural Contexts of Education) in the autumn of 2013.

    congratulations to you, Rox!

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    Categories: Alumni, News

  • Brock Musical Theatre presents the Broadway Hit Spring Awakening

    Monday, March 11, 2013 | By

    Brock Musical Theatre, the company that brought you GLEE CLUB and RENT! Is returning again this year with Broadway’s hit SPRING AWAKENING; by  Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater, winner of 8 Tony Awards including Best Musical. This rock musical explores the lives of adolescent students living in 19th century Germany as they journey through the confusing and frustrating world of teenager self-discovery.

    The show opens at the Seneca Queen Theatre in Niagara Falls on Thursday, March 21st at 7:30pm and runs until Saturday, March 23rd. Tickets are $15.00 in advance as well as at the door. Tickets may be purchased through the Centre for the Arts at Brock University in person during business hours, or on the website, or over the phone, call 905-688-5550 x3257 or toll-free 1-866-617-3257.

    FREE transportation has been arranged from Brock to the Seneca Queen Theatre as well as from the Theatre to St. Catharines (downtown), Brock University and the Thorold route.

    More information about show times and the company is available here.

    Brock Musical Theatre is a student run organization devoted to creating quality musical theatre for the Brock and St. Catharines/Niagara communities. Brock Musical Theatre is a ratified club under the Brock University Student’s Union. It is not affiliated with the Brock University Department of Dramatic Arts or with any University department, staff or faculty member.

    Brock Musical Theatre was created in 2005 to provide all Brock University students with the opportunity to participate in quality musical theatre. Today, the company is open to all Brock students no matter their major field of study. Brock Musical Theatre has become a showcase for the wide range of talents that the entire Brock University community possess in the musical field. Students from the Department of Dramatic Arts have developed new learning opportunities and honed their craft by participating in this club.  Brock Musical Theatre is devoted to a healthy, respectful and positive learning environment where students can learn and achieve hands on experience in all aspects of a musical theatre production.

    SHOW DATES & TIMES

    THURSDAY March 21st – 7:30pm
    FRIDAY March 22nd  – 7:30pm
    SATURDAY March 23rd 1:00pm & 7:30pm

    THEATRE
    Seneca Queen Theatre
    4624 Queen Street, Niagara Falls  L2R 2L7

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    Categories: Announcements, Current Students, Events, News

  • Khalida: a play for the Arab Spring, opens in St. Catharines at the Sullivan-Mahoney Theatre

    Thursday, February 28, 2013 | By

    khalida_12r15By Dr. Karen Fricker and staff

    The story told in Khalida, a new theatre production playing this week in St Catharines, might at first glance seem somewhat removed from the experience of many Canadians. Subtitled ‘a play for the Arab Spring’, it takes the form of the confession and testimony of Said, a man on the run from his native Middle Eastern country, which has become a battle zone.

    But the play’s origins couldn’t be more local: it springs from the friendship between author/director David Fancy, Associate Professor of Dramatic Arts at Brock, and the Iraqi actor Addil Hussain, who received a BA in Dramatic Arts degree from Brock in 2006.

    ‘Addil was Saddam Hussein’s favourite actor,’ Fancy explains. ‘He fled Iraq during the first Gulf War and, after living as a refugee in Jordan for six or seven years, finally ended up in Canada. He did a degree in the Drama in Education and Society stream at Brock and became a Canadian citizen’. Audiences might remember Hussain’s performances in two of the three plays performed in An Arabian Trilogy, a departmental Mainstage production in 2006. In the third play he performed the role of the father in Leila Tatadaffah Bil Rasass. Mun Youaniquha? (By the Warmth of the Bullet that Kills) set in modern-day Baghdad and written by another Brock graduate Abbas Aldilami.

    Fancy says he wrote the play ‘for the express purpose of continuing a conversation with Addil, having witnessed the challenges that he experienced as an individual and as an artist finding a voice as a new Canadian.’ The play is being produced by neXt Company Theatre, of which Fancy is co-artistic director.

    While his friendship with Hussain offers fascinating insight into Khalida’s origins, Fancy believes an appreciation of the production does not rely on this backstory. ‘This is about a person somewhere in the world who has experienced difficulty and is using creativity to frame that and move beyond it,’ he explains.

    The role of Said is being played by Toronto-based actor Jason Jazrawy, whose father is from Iraq. Jazrawy calls Said ‘an Arabic Everyman who whom all ethnicities can relate’ and says he welcomes the opportunity to ‘portray an Arab as a positive role model for a change,’ having found himself often cast as a terrorist jihadi because of his heritage.

    Alongside Khalida, neXt Company Theatre has facilitated a community engagement project, The Arab Spring Monologues, which features 9-10 Niagarans, including four Brock students and recent graduates, writing about how the Arab Spring connects with their own experience or with the region.

    Students from across the DART concentrations – Applied Theatre and Drama in Education, Theatre Praxis, Performance, and Production and Design – will be attending the production. The production presents an excellent model for the Brock students’ creative investigations in writing and dramaturgy, performance, and production, as well as personal and social identities and citizenship, remarks the Chair or the Department, David Vivian.

    As for Addil Hussain, he returned to the Middle East in 2010, and is now working as an actor in Baghdad. Despite being half a world away, this production of Khalida is very much on his radar. Via Facebook, he sent this message to Fancy and his collaborators: ‘Khalida was just a wish, and an idea, then became reality… I’m fully confident that Khalida is in great hands, hands with a great level of professionalism. Break a leg!’
    ———-
    Khalida plays at the Sullivan Mahoney Courthouse Theatre from 26 February-2 March. Tickets are available here. The Arab Spring Monologues play 5-7 pm on Saturday, March 2 at Robertson Hall, 85 Church Street, St. Catharines. Admission free; groups are requested to contact the company in advance here.

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    Categories: Alumni, Events, Faculty & Instructors, News, Plays

  • DART Professor at 2013 Congress in Victoria, British Columbia

    Friday, February 15, 2013 | By

    Associate Professor Natalie Alvarez will be serving on the Program Committee for the Canadian Association for Theatre Research’s (CATR) 2013 meeting at Congress 2013 of the Humanities and Social Sciences. In 2014 DART will be hosting the annual meeting of the CATR as part of the complete Congress event to be held at the St. Catharines campus.

    In addition to participating in a seminar on performance studies and sport, her two edited books on Latina/o Canadian theatre and performance will be launched during a conference lunch in Victoria.

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    Categories: Faculty & Instructors, News

  • Dramatic arts prof interviewed on national radio

    Monday, January 21, 2013 | By

    Karen Fricker, assistant professor of Dramatic Arts, was inteviewed on CBC Radio's Q Monday morning.

    Karen Fricker, assistant professor of Dramatic Arts, was inteviewed on CBC Radio’s Q Monday morning.

    (Source: The Brock News, Monday, January 21, 2013 | by )

    A Brock University dramatic arts professor was interviewed on national radio about the current state of affairs of entertainment giant Cirque du Soleil.

    Karen Fricker was a guest Monday on CBC Radio’s Q, a daily arts and culture magazine. The assistant professor talked about the implications of Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil’s recent announcement that it was laying off 400 people.

    “This is significant because Cirque du Soleil is a very strong brand and usually the coverage around it is positive,” Fricker said.

    The segment of the show, hosted by Jian Ghomeshi, looked at whether the company was in crisis and if the layoffs meant the end of a Canadian success story made world famous for its performances that incorporate gravity-defying acrobatics and stunning choreography.

    From Fricker’s perspective, Cirque du Soleil isn’t going anywhere but it has grown at an unsustainable rate.

    The company has even admitted to not having appropriate control over its spending.

    “That’s an important admission,” Fricker said. “They’re making money but they’re spending too much and (cutting jobs) is a line in the sand, a signal their practices need to change .”

    Fricker was joined by J. Kelly Nestruck, a theatre critic for the Globe and Mail, on the show.

    The segment will air again Monday night on CBC Radio One at 10 p.m. and can be heard online or as a podcast.

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    Categories: Faculty & Instructors, News

  • Brock actress scores top honour at Spanish international film festival

    Friday, October 05, 2012 | By

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    Katie Coseni with her Silver Shell Award for best actress from the San Sebastián Film Festival in Spain

    (Source: The Brock News, Friday, October 5, 2012)

    It was a callback Katie Coseni won’t soon forget.

    The second-year dramatic arts student had just returned from six days at the San Sebastián International Film Festival in Spain, where the film in which she plays one of the lead roles, Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang, was given the red carpet treatment.

    It was her second stop on the international film festival circuit, after the film’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in early September.

    She was alone in her room when she got the call.

    “I looked at the number and it was from France,” says Coseni. “I was like that’s really weird, why is someone from France calling me?”

    It was one of the producers from the film on the other end of the line notifying her that the festival wanted her to come back so that she could accept her award.

    foxfire6-267x299_dvI was like, what award?” Coseni remembers.

    The award in question was the Silver Shell for Best Actress.

    “I made her repeat it six times because I thought she was joking,” says Coseni. “It was really incredible.”

    Coseni was given the honour along with Spanish actor Marcarena García for her turn in Blancanieves, a silent black-and-white reinterpretation of Snow White set in 1920s Spain.

    “It’s kind of like ‘did that actually happen?’” says Coseni about receiving the award. “I still can’t believe it.”

    “I see the box that the award came in on my desk and I forget what it is for a second, and then I remember ‘Oh yeah, I got this really awesome prestigious award,’” she says. “It’s just incredible.”

    Created in 1953, this year is the 60th anniversary of the San Sebastián International Film Festival, one of the most important cinema festivals in the world.

    “San Sebastien was just a whole otherworldly experience,” says Coseni. “It was all just a huge whirlwind.”

    “I would wake up in the morning and then I would go to hair and make-up and then I’d go to a photo shoot and then a press conference and then interviews and then I’d have an hour for lunch, and then I’d have to go get ready for the red carpet, and then I’d have to do this and this and this,” she says. “But it was really fun.”

    foxfire71_dv

    above, Katie Coseni in the film Foxfire

    When asked about her future in acting in light of her recent accolades, the first-time film actor is looking to take advantage of her recent success.

    “I’m taking steps now towards getting agents,” she says. “Hopefully that will lead to more auditions because I really do want to do this for as long as I can because I love it.”

    After a busy few months of publicizing Foxfire, Coseni is ready to switch gears and get back to her studies.

    “For right now, it’s just school and trying to get back to normal,” she says.

    foxfire06_dv

    A film still from the movie Foxfire featuring Brock-student Katie Coseni (right)

    But that all depends on what you consider normal. Coseni received her callback on a Friday morning, hopped on a plane later that night, arrived in Spain Saturday night one hour before she was to receive the Silver Shell at the awards gala, woke up Sunday morning to fly back home, arrived home Sunday night and was back in class Monday morning.

    “It feels like it happened so long ago, it’s really weird,” she says laughing. “It took like a day or so getting back to my regular sleeping pattern. It feels like I just got back from summer vacation.”

    Foxfire is slated for theatrical release in France in January 2013 and plans are in the works for a Canadian release in Spring 2013.

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    Categories: Current Students, News

  • Brock student hits the international red carpet 

    Wednesday, September 26, 2012 | By

    Katie Coseni

    Coseni on the red carpet at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

    DART student Katie Coseni was recently featured in an article in The Brock News:

    “Katie Coseni’s first experience at the Toronto International Film Festival was not typical.

    Rather than chasing celebrities for autographs and crowding the edges of red carpets in hopes of catching a glimpse of movie stars, the second-year dramatic arts student found herself on the red carpet soaking up the limelight.

    Coseni plays one of the lead roles in the film Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang, which premiered at this year’s festival on Sept. 10.”

    The article continues: “. . . . Coseni’s long journey to the red carpet in Toronto all started when she responded to an open casting call in 2010.

    “A friend and I went to a drama camp when I was in middle school,” she says. “I guess we stayed on their mailing list and they sent out a flyer about this audition.”

    . . . Coseni credits her fellow students and professors in the dramatic arts program at Brock for being extremely supportive of her foray into film. Students would share their notes with her when she missed classes and professors were accommodating when it came to handing in assignments.

    “Because I was going to school for drama and I was missing school because of a movie, they understood,” she said. “It’s a very supportive and friendly environment.””

    From the article by Jeffrey Sinibaldi in the Brock News.  Read more of the article here.

    congratulations to Katie!

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    Categories: Current Students, News

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