News

  • Dramatic Arts students engaging in new challenges at the Shaw Festival

    Kevin Chew and a bust of George Bernard Shaw

    Kevin Chew and a bust of George Bernard Shaw

    Every year Brock’s emerging theatre artists have an opportunity to intern for a six-week intensive learning experience at one of Canada’s most renowned theatre organizations, the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

    Kevin Chew, a Concurrent Education student studying Dramatic Arts at Brock University, is the successful Intern candidate for 2013. Kevin was recently seen performing on the stage of the Sean O’Sullivan Theatre of the Centre for the Arts at Brock University in the Department’s February Mainstage The Blue Room by David Hare, directed by Virginia Reh. For his upper year thesis project Kevin conceived and directed the innovative investigation of restaurant service industry in the immersive dinner theatre event entitled Table 99, self-produced at Isaac’s Bar and Grill at Brock University.

    Students of the Department of Dramatic Arts are eligible to apply for this intensive residency following the successful completion of DART 4P92 Voice and Text of Bernard Shaw. Their academic studies in the Department come alive in the festival milieu of Shaw company professionals producing at the top of their game.

    During his six weeks in Niagara-on-the-Lake Kevin will be working with Shaw’s Director of Audience and Community Engagement, Norm Bradshaw (former Senior Major Gifts Officer for Brock’s Faculty of Humanities), Shaw Intern directors Paul Van Dyke and Rose Plotek, Festival Co-Artistic Director Eda Holmes (directing Arcadia by Tom Stoppard), and Festival Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell (directing Enchanted April by Matthew Barber).

    Following the development of world-class theatre productions from rehearsal studio through to opening night Kevin is also involved with projects such as cataloguing, appraising and photographing pieces in the art collection of the Shaw Festival, developing templates for potential community outreach/ engagement programs, education and engagement research, and assisting in the Festival’s Stage Properties shop in Virgil, Ontario.

    Through participation in singing and Alexander technique workshops, scheduled lunches and casual conversations with his new peers and mentors, Kevin is discovering what it means to contribute to the wealth of creative talent in the Festival company of theatre artists, production staff and administrators.

    For original insight into theatre production at Canada’s second largest repertory theatre company, follow Kevin’s Facebook group Brock-Shaw Internship.

    The DART Shaw Festival Internship program is generously supported for three years by proceeds from the annual General Brock’s October Soiree. DART graduates who have completed the internship include Robyn Cunningham (2012) and Jacqueline Costa (2011).

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    Categories: Current Students, News

  • Dramatic Arts graduate speaks to future theatre makers

    spencer-spoonAt the second Dramatic Arts Invitational for 2013 graduate Spencer Charles Smith inspired the 60 applicants with a short presentation about his professional development since he first enrolled at Brock in 2007. After graduating from Brock University’s Dramatic Arts program in 2011, he went on to complete a MA in Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies (specializing in queer performance) at the Center for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. Spencer is now a playwright, performer, dramaturge and Artistic Director of the queer theatre company, Straight Camp. Theatre credits include: Breath in Between (Crow’s Theatre/SummerWorks 2012), Spoon: A Queer Play (Straight Camp), Still Life (lemonTree creations/SummerWorks 2011), among others. Spencer is also co-owner of the famous Glad Day Bookshop in Toronto.

    Spencer concluded his presentation with inspiring advice for the new Brock students:

    1. Always say ‘Yes.’
    You never know what will come from a job. You never know who’s watching and who’s looking for someone new to collaborate with on future projects. One job almost always leads to the next. Keep busy.

    2. Take advantage of your resources and fail.
    Theatre school offers you free rehearsal space, a free theatre and a team of people who all want you to learn and grow. Take risks, play and don’t be afraid to fail. This is where you will discover your strengths, your weaknesses and your obsessions.

    3. See theatre.
    The only way you will ever realize theatre’s emotional, intellectual and creative potential is if you experience it first hand. Let it expand your imagination and inspire you to recreate it, deconstruct it, or refine it.

    4. Don’t burn bridges.
    The theatre community is very small and we need to support each other. We need to keep the dialogue going because art is meant to spark conversation. Find at least one positive in everything you see. Plus, you never know who will be on the other side of that audition table.

    5. Make your own opportunities.
    Don’t wait around for someone to offer you a job. Keep writing. Keep creating. Maintain your momentum. People respect passion, ambition and drive. I repeat: Keep busy.

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    Categories: Alumni, News

  • The Art of the Clown Doctor at the Department of Dramatic Arts: Register today!

    bernie-new-photo-2_10

    Dr. Bernie Warren

    There’s a great new course taught by a world specialist in Clown Doctoring, Dr. Bernie Warren, being offered by the Department of Dramatic Arts in Spring 2013.

    Current students in Dramatic Arts, New students with some relevant experience and specialists in the field (who are not students registered at Brock) are invited to apply!

    DART 3V91: The Art of the Clown Doctor
    D27: 2013/05/08 to 2013/05/14 MTWRF 900 -1600 TH 141 (running May 08-10 and 12-14, 6 days only)

    This course is a unique opportunity to learn about the practice of clown-doctoring in lifespan maintenance and therapeutic environments. Involving lectures, lab, and running 7 hours per day, this course will be of particular interest to students interested in Drama in Education and Applied Theatre.

    Dr Bernie Warren of the University of Windsor will be returning from his travels abroad to lead this very special opportunity for students and professionals in the field. See the article in the Brock News about Dr. Warren and the profession of Clown Doctoring. Did you see the banner picture on the homepage of University website brocku.ca? this is a big deal. Don’t miss out!

    The course is open to DART (single or combined) and DART (Honours)/BEd (Intermediate/Senior) majors AND OTHERS with permission of the Department. The only prerequisite is DART 1F95 or permission of the Department.

    for more information contact dramatic.arts@brocku.ca
    and see the story: “Clown doctor in the house this summer at Brock” in the Brock News.

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    Categories: Announcements, Current Students, News

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

    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

    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

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    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

    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

    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

  • An Acre of Time by Jason Sherman (DART 4F56)

    anacreoftimeApril 11, 12 & 13, 2013 at 7:30 p.m.
    A government land surveyor (Julia) uncovers the history of an acre of land near the Ottawa River, a barren rectangle that contains the memories of all who passed through it, from the last native hunter to the first white settler. Somehow, the layers of loss, land and remembrance enable Julia to grasp what she needs in order to let go.
    Location: Room ST107 (Studio Theatre) Schmon Tower, Brock Campus
    Admission: Donations accepted

    This is part of the Industrial Fabric 3 program. (Click the link for more information.)


    BROCK UNIVERSITY
    MEDIA RELEASE
    April 2, 2013
    Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts
    905.688.5550 x4765

    An Acre of Time by Jason Sherman, presented on stage at the Studio Theatre, Brock University Inspired by the book of the same title by Phil Jenkins.
    Graduating Dramatic Arts students enrolled in Advanced Studies in Theatre (DART 4F56) at Brock University, will perform An Acre of Time by Canadian award-winning playwright Jason Sherman, held at the Studio Theatre at Brock University, from April 11 – 13, 2013 at 7:30 p.m.

    An Acre of Time tells the story of government land surveyor (Julia) who uncovers the history of an acre of land on the LeBreton Flats near the Ottawa River. This barren rectangle contains the memories of all who passed through it, from the last native hunter to the first white settler. Somehow, the layers of loss, land and remembrance enable Julia to grasp what she needs in order to let go.
    The LeBreton Flats is a blank urban space that has been in limbo for decades. In 1962, the government expropriated it and knocked down its community. The Flats represent not only a government’s abdication of responsibility, but also an emotional void that can only be filled by recognizing and honouring the ghosts who still live there.

    Julia, played in different time periods by three actors: Kaitlin Race, Cassandra van Wyck, and Olivia Jackson, learns that there are different kinds of mapping processes, and that the most important survey brings our own lives to light. Julia’s government work crew colleagues, played by Kanthan Annalingam, Karyn Lorence, Shauna James and Emma Strong, become guides on Julia’s journey as she encounters the ghosts of Samuel de Champlain, played by Erica Charles, and surveyor John Stegmann, played by Jessi Robinson. The speculator John LeBreton is played by Stephanie Neale. Tom, a first nations artist played by James Lowe, conjures the spirit of Constant Penency, an Algonquin hunter who has joined the spirit of Julia’s daughter, Louise, played by Grace Ruppenthal. Evan Mulroney plays Bill, Julia’s husband who lost their daughter Louise to a river drowning.

    The set, lighting and video design, by Dylan O’Connor, James McCoy and Nathan Heuchan, is a meditation on mapping and memory that pulls the layers of story into a unified whole with props and costumes designed by Jo Pacinda and John McGowan. The production, in its complex entirety, is stage managed by Kate Hardy and directed by professor Gyllian Raby.

    An Acre of Time performances run: Thursday, April 11, Friday, April 12, and Saturday, April 13, 2013, at 7:30 p.m., and will be held at the Studio Theatre (Rm. ST107) Schmon Tower, Brock University. Admission is by donation.

    For more information about this production, e-mail dramatic.arts@brocku.ca

    Such productions from the Department of Dramatic Arts are an integral part of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts’ mandate in building connections between the community and the breadth of creative talent that defines our academic programs at Brock University.
    -30-

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

    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