Faculty Activities for Fall 2006

Leslie Felbain (assistant professor of performance) received a CAPA grant from the Graduate School at The University of Maryland and successfully produced Site-Seeing, a performance and installation art piece about immigration and the American Dream at the Inaugural Capital Fringe and The New York International Fringe Festival this summer. In October, she will be an artist-in-residence in the Theatre Department at Colgate University.

Franklin J. Hildy (Professor and Director of Graduate Studies) had a new book, The History of Theatre, Foundation Edition , come out in September 2006. He has also published articles on  the architecture of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, London, on the contract for the building of London's Fortune playhouse (1600), and an obituary for the great Elizabethan playhouse scholar C. Walter Hodges. In August he was invited to present a paper at the Shakespeare Institute at Stratford-upon-Avon (England) covering five Globe theatre reconstruction's built at world fairs in the 1930s, and also presented a paper on a Spanish theater of 1601 in Helsinki, Finland. Over the summer he did on-sight research at 19 theatres in Italy and 2 theatre in Sweden and also investigated two Roman theatres in Israel and one in Jordan. He serves on two international architecture commissions and on the executive committee of the International Federation for Theatre Research.

Scot Reese (Associate Professor in Performance) recently directed J's Juke Joint for the African Continuum Theatre Company and is looking forward to directing the world premiere of Blues Journey at The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in February 2007.

Faedra C. Carpenter (Assistant Professor, History Theory Program) was the dramaturg for the African Continuum Theatre Company's Fresh Flavas 2006 summer retreat (a play development workshop), focusing on new works by local playwrights Caleen Sinette Jennings, David Emerson Toney, and Steven Langley. Her article "Reading Between the Lines: Intertextuality and the Documentation of African American Theatre History," was published in the August 2006 issue of Blackstream.   In addition, her article "(L)activist and Lattes:   Breastfeeding Advocacy as Domestic Performance," will be published in the November 2006 issue of Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory , and this fall her series of   "Hip-Hop Interviews" (with Joan Morgan, Gwendolyn Pough, and Moya Bailey) will published in Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters .

Catherine Schuler (Associate Professor, Theatre History and Theory) presented an invited paper at the Congress for the Federation for International Theatre Research in Helsinki, Finland in August. The paper, entitled "The Motivated Witness:  Ekaterina Semenova and the teatraly ," was well received by an audience of international theatre scholars.

Leigh Smiley   (Assistant professor, Performance Program) created, directed and acted the multi-disciplinary performance peice The Cassandra Project - Speaking the Unspeakable for the First Inaugural Capital Fringe Festival.  She would like to especially thank the Creative and Performing Arts committee of the University of Maryland and the Department of Theatre for the support they generously gave for this endeavor.  She recently appeared with Jerry Whiddon and Sarah Marshall in a variety of roles at Theatre J in the staged reading for the Jewish Literary Festival, directed by Derek Goldman, PhD.

Daniel MacLean Wagner (Professor and Chair) has recently designed lighting for: Jacques Brel is Alive and Well..., Hedda Gabler , and Enemy of the People , all at Olney Theatre Center; as well as A Body of Water' and A Prayer for Owen Meany at Round House Theatre.  Upcoming design projects include:  Orson's Shadow' and Summer of 42 at Round House Theatre.

Graduate Students' Activities for Fall 2006

Casey Kaleba (PhD Student) arranged fights for Dog Sees God at the Studio Theatre Secondstage and Othello with the National Players, in addition to serving as fight coordinator for the documentary A Prince Among Slaves .  This summer Casey traveled to California to study Grand Guignol at the Dell'Arte School with fellow Ph.D. students Kris Messer and Lindsey Snyder.

Elizabeth Long (PhD student and International Shakespeare Globe Center Fellow) recently returned from London where she spent two weeks conducting research on performance practices at Shakespeare's Globe.   In November, she will co-present the paper, Research Through Practice: The New Globe Project at the American Society for Theatre Research Conference with Ildiko Solti, Ph. D. Candidate, Middlesex University, London. During the summer she continued her work as an Affiliated Teaching Artist at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, directing and teaching for their Educational Programs: Master Acting Classes for Adults and Camp Shakespeare. Also during the summer she led a number of Performance Workshops for Interpreters at the Office of Language Services, State Department. She is teaching Voice and Speech this fall at the Shakespeare Theatre Company as part of their Master Acting Classes program. She is currently serving as Voice, Speech, and Text Consultant on Everyman Theatre's production of The School For Scandal directed by Artistic Director Vincent Lancisi. In 2007, Ms. Long will return to the stage to play Queen Gertrude in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead at the Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C. Studio Theatre's production, directed by Kirk Jackson, as part of the 2007 Shakespeare Festival in D.C.

Contact us via email with questions, comments and feedback, or call us at 301-405-6676.
Department of Theatre, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742-1610