Theatre artists Ted Witzel and Ker Wells are going about it somewhat differently. They’re the inaugural participants in the 91��ɫ MFA in Theatre – Stage Direction in Collaboration with Canadian Stage, a landmark initiative that’s breaking new ground in Canadian theatre training.

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Launched last fall as a partnership between one of Canada’s preeminent theatre schools and one of the country’s leading not-for-profit contemporary theatre companies, this innovative graduate program offers highly specialized, advanced training in large-scale theatre directing.  Its mission is to support the development of directorial talent for the national and international stage.

“When directors make their mainstage debut, they often feel they’re getting one kick at the can, and if they fail they’ll never get to do a large production again,” said Professor Eric Armstrong, director of 91��ɫ’s MFA theatre programs. “Here, you get to work with large casts on big shows in a mentored setting – something that just doesn't happen in the professional world.”

The collaborative MFA program allows students to develop their creative and technical skills to the highest level, integrating their academic and studio work in 91��ɫ’s Department of Theatre with involvement in artistic projects at . The opportunity to direct a Canadian Stage production and an internship with a major national or international theatre are key elements of the two-year program.

Canadian Stage Artistic and General Director Matthew Jocelyn and Resident Artist Kim Collier serve as personal mentors for the MFA candidates.  Collier, co-founder and artistic director of Vancouver’s Electric Company Theatre and winner of the 2010 Siminovitch Prize for directing, works closely with the students to support their professional development.

The program is customized for each student based on their background, artistic orientation and goals, so Wells and Witzel’s experience over the past year and their plans for the next are highly individual.

Wells assisted Collier in her direction of the Canadian Stage production of Red last fall, and served as assistant director to Richard Rose for , Canadian Stage’s 30th anniversary Shakespeare in the Park presentation, running in Toronto’s High Park until September 2.  This coming season, Witzel will assist Kim Collier on a production for Vancouver's .

On the international front, Wells heads to the Netherlands this fall for an internship with acclaimed director Ivo van Hove at , working on a play by Ingmar Bergman. Witzel has an internship lined up with the renowned Canadian-born, Europe-based opera director Robert Carsen (LLD Hons. '05) for a production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the in Baden-Baden, Germany in March 2013.

Both MFA candidates bring a wealth of experience to their work at 91��ɫ, at Canadian Stage and abroad.

Active in Toronto’s independent theatre scene for the past five years, Witzel is artistic director of , a company he co-founded in 2006. His directing credits include a number of bold, site-specific adaptations of classics in non-traditional venues such the Gladstone Hotel, Drake Underground, Whippersnapper Gallery and Trinity Bellwoods Park. His most recent productions for Red Light District have been La Ronde, an adaptation of the Arthur Schnitzler play, at the downtown club Wicked, and Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly, Last Summer with the Tennessee Project at the Gibson House Museum in North 91��ɫ. Witzel divides his time between Toronto and Germany, where he has worked as assistant to leading directors such as Johanna Schall and Sebastian Baumgarten.

Wells is an actor, director and teacher who has toured across Canada and in the US, England, Denmark, France, Italy and Serbia. He was a founding member of Primus Theatre in Winnipeg, where he worked for nearly a decade before moving to Toronto and co-founding Number Eleven Theatre in 1998. His productions with Number Eleven include Icaria, The Prague Visitor and The Curious History of Peter Schlemihl. Other credits include The Confessions of Punch and Judy for New 91��ɫ State-based NACL Theatre and solo shows Living Tall for Public Energy, Peterborough and Swimmer (68) for Toronto’s Hopscotch Collective.

91��ɫ’s Graduate Program in Theatre is now accepting applications for the next cycle of the MFA program in Theatre - Stage Direction in Collaboration with Canadian Stage. Two new students will be admitted into the program in September 2013. The  application deadline is Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2012. Directors with extremely strong individual and interpretive voices and substantial professional experience are invited to apply. Candidates should be committed to developing their artistic and technical skills and have a clear interest in working on a large scale.

For more information, visit the Theatre - Stage Direction in Collaboration with Canadian Stage website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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The competition is an initiative organized by the Council of Ontario Universities (COU), in partnership with the Government of Ontario. The province-wide competition is being overseen by the IDeA Working Group, comprised of representatives from engineering and design Faculties at several Ontario universities.

Students will vie for $3,000 in prizes, with entries that must address barriers to accessibility in five categories: attitudinal, physical/structural, information and communications, technological, and systemic.

“Ontario universities are strongly committed to the important goal of leading the country towards greater accessibility,” says Alastair Summerlee, chair of COU and president of the University of Guelph. “Tapping into the innovative capabilities of our students is an excellent way to build awareness and to advance ideas that lead to a more accessible world.”

91��ɫ students can find rules and registration information . The deadline for contest submissions is March 31. Students interested in submitting their idea or concept should review the rules and criteria, register and then submit the concept by e-mail to ideas@yorku.ca by the end of the business on March 31.

Submissions will first be evaluated by 91��ɫ and then successful candidates will move on to a second round of judging conducted by a panel of experts in the five categories. Evaluations will be based on innovation, cost-effectiveness and practicality. Judges will also place a premium on entries whose format itself demonstrates consideration to accessibility issues.

The winner will be announced at an event at the Ontario Centres of Excellence Discovery Conference in May 2012.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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In “Battle Lines Drawn: Resisting Ableism Through Creative Intervention”, will explain how to use cultural warfare – online publishing and publicity stunts such as stairbombing and chair mobbing – to put the lie to common myths and stereotypes about disability, with humour.

Right: Jeff Preston in a snowbank, in a photo on his website getmobilized.ca

Following his talk, his hosts, Access 91��ɫ’s Disability Education & Awareness Subcommittee, are taking his advice and staging a stairbombing on the Keele campus. They will block off a major stairwell using caution tape and place a sign stating: “Caution: These stairs are out of service. Inconvenient, eh? This is only one example of what persons with disabilities experience every day."

Preston made headlines when he drove his electric wheelchair from London to Ottawa to raise awareness about inaccessible transportation. In 2010, Preston and Clara Madrenas created Cripz, an online comic strip about two high school boys in wheelchairs that aims to entertain through humour while satirizing myths about disability.

Left: Image from webcomic Cripz

The disability advocate gives talks in which he argues that mainstream media, from “Daredevil” to “Glee”, rarely speak to the lived experience of disabled persons. Such TV shows are based more on the skewed perspectives of nondisabled creators, who draw heavily on stereotypes infused with pity and paternalism when portraying disabled characters.

Hear Preston speak in Winters College dining hall, 001 Winter's College, Feb. 7 from noon to 2pm. To attend, RSVP by Feb. 3 to kaley@yorku.ca.

This event was organized by Access 91��ɫ with assistance from the Centre for Human Rights, the Office of the Vice-President Students, and the Institute for Research & Innovation in Sustainability.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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[1.] 91��ɫ, Canada

91��ɫ’s Department of Film [Faculty of Fine Arts] is Canada’s first, largest and most comprehensive university-based film school. Film programs are taught by 40 award-winning filmmakers and prominent scholars, all active in their field. Students benefit from comprehensive, professional training that blends theory and practice in a free-thinking and creative environment. Five hundred-plus students work in modern learning, production and screening facilities in Toronto, one of the world’s leading film capitals. 91��ɫ offers a mix of graduate and undergraduate programs covering a range of topics. Students explore everything from the role that film and television play in society to genre-specific topics such as the vampire in cinema or crime film.

Asian students with international filmmaking aspirations have a couple of major avenues to choose from. They can give into the Hollywood paradigm and study in LA, where they will be encouraged to conform to the system and join the filmmaking masses. Opposite this, they can seek out smaller, counter-cultural schools that put a priority on the modern film as work of art.

For those intent on pursuing the latter, a school like 91��ɫ is an excellent option. Based in Toronto in Canada, it offers all of the advantages of a North American education without cornering aspiring filmmakers in the Hollywood mindset.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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After five years of transnational research by educators and artists in Panama, Nicaragua, Mexico, the United States and Canada, the VIVA! Project is launching its new book, iVIVA! Community Arts and Popular Education in the Americas, edited by project lead Deborah Barndt, a professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES) and coordinator of the Community Arts Practice certificate.

“The book is the culmination of years of research and rich exchange with partners,” says Barndt of the 2003-2007 Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada-funded participatory action research VIVA! Project. “Each partner undertook research of a community arts project and annual transnational workshops allowed them to reflect critically and creatively, collectively and comparatively, on their diverse educational and artistic practices.”

(SUNY Press and Between the Lines), which includes a DVD that brings the projects to life, will launch Friday, Oct. 28, from 6:30 to 9pm, at the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto, 16 Spadina Rd., Toronto. The launch, co-sponsored by the Catalyst Centre, will include performances, poetry and video screenings at 7pm and 8pm, as well as displays of VIVA! partner organizations and local community arts groups. Refreshments will be served.

The launch is part of a larger Arts & Communities Network event, which will run from Oct. 27 to 31. Five of the international VIVA! Project partners will facilitate professional development workshops over the five days, a cross-faculty initiative funded by 91��ɫ’s Academic Innovation Fund.

The workshops represent unique community-University partnerships, says Barndt. Community partners include the West-Side Arts Hub, Nomanzland Theatre, Young Peoples Theatre, Centre for Indigenous Theatre, Regent Park Focus, Digital Storytelling Toronto, Latin American Art Centre Collective, Latin American Canadian Art Projects and Mural Routes. Academic partners include 91��ɫ’s Community Arts Practice program, 91��ɫ's Faculty of Environmental Studies, the TD – 91��ɫ Centre for Community Engagement, 91��ɫ’s Department of Theatre and Department of Dance in the Faculty of Fine Arts, Destination Arts in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Education, the Centre for Research on Latin America & the Caribbean and the Centre for Refugee Studies.

Left: Deborah Barndt

The first workshop, Sharing Lives and Cultures: Community Media on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast, an evening dialogue with Margarita Antonio, will take place on Thursday, Oct. 27, from 6 to 9pm, at Regent Park Focus Youth Media Arts Centre, 38 Regent St. (lower level), Toronto.

Antonio is a Miskitu journalist, a leader in regional Indigenous women’s networks and the UNESCO Officer on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. She is founder of the Institute for Intercultural Communication of URACCAN University and she helped develop BilwiVision, a youth-run community television program. Antonio will share Central American experiences and open up a dialogue with Toronto community media activists.

The second workshop, Movement and Poetry Workshop, will be with Amy Shimshon-Santo on Friday, Oct. 28, from 1 to 4pm, at West-Side Arts Hub, 91��ɫ Woods Library, 1785 Finch Ave. W., Toronto. Shimshon-Santo is a Los Angeles-based performing artist, educator and researcher. As director of ArtsBridge for University of California, Los Angeles, School for the Arts & Architecture, she prepared arts educators, built arts education infrastructure and cultivated K-20 community partnerships.

On Saturday, Oct. 29, the Community Mural Production Workshop with Checo Valdez will take place from 10am to 4pm, at the Davenport-Perth Neighbourhood Centre, 1900 Davenport Rd., Toronto. Valdez is a well-known graphic artist, political cartoonist and muralist who teaches at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in Mexico City. He has recently developed a training program in community-based mural production and has coordinated mural projects all over Mexico.

On Sunday, Oct. 30, The Arrivals Creation Process: Recovering the Lost Body with Diane Roberts will take place from 2 to 5pm at West-Side Arts Hub, 91��ɫ Woods Library, 1785 Finch Ave. W., Toronto. Roberts is a Caribbean Canadian theatre artist working from an AfriCentric perspective. She is currently artistic director of urban ink productions, which develops and produces aboriginal and diverse cultural works of theatre, writing and film, integrates artistic disciplines and brings together different cultural and artistic perspectives and interracial experiences.

The final workshop, Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way with Monique Mojica, JoséÁngel Colman Pérez and Alberto Guevara, will take place on Monday, Oct. 31, from 6 to 8pm, at 612 Markham St., Toronto. VIVA! Project partners Pérez, Mojica and Guevara will speak about the collaborative and intercultural creation process in producing the groundbreaking play Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way at the Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse in May.

An established senior artist, Pérez is a master storyteller and oral historian and was the first professionally trained theatre artist of the Kuna people in Panama. Best known for his work in cultural recovery through theatre, Pérez was a major leader in the Kuna Children’s Art Project. Mojica (Kuna and Rappahannock nations) is a Toronto-based actor, playwright and artist-scholar spun directly from the web of New 91��ɫ’s Spiderwoman Theater. Her first play Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots was produced in 1990 by Nightwood Theatre and Theatre Passe Muraille. Guevara, a 91��ɫ theatre professor, is the coordinator of the Community Arts Practice (CAP) certificate offered by the Faculties of Fine Arts and Environmental Studies and was the assistant director of the play Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way. Originally from Nicaragua, he integrates performance and politics. His research has focused on the theatricality of violence in Nicaragua and Nepal.

All the events are open to the public and admission is free. To RSVP for the launch, visit the . For more information about the workshops, visit the  website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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