Lisa Wolford Wylam Archives | Research & Innovation

Video: Faculty of Fine Arts' Summer Institute for grad students focuses on Performance Art

fmaquito — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

The two co-founding artistic directors of the hugely influential performance collective La Pocha Nostra were artists-in-residence at 91��ɫ’s fourth annual Summer Institute in Theatre Studies, which ran June 15 to 27.

Guillermo Gómez-Peña, described as “among the most significant of late-20th-century performance artists" by New 91��ɫ City’s Village Voice, and Roberto Sifuentes, professor of performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and former artistic director of New 91��ɫ’s Trinity/La MaMa Performing Arts Program, led the intensive workshop.

Right: Guillermo Gómez-Peña

During their residency, they worked with graduate students to develop an original performance which was showcased on Saturday in the Accolade East Building at 91��ɫ’s Keele campus. Gómez-Peña and Sifuentes performed as part of the open public exhibit.

Founded in 1993, is an ever-morphing trans-disciplinary arts organization based in San Francisco, with branches in many other cities and countries. Positioning themselves as collaborators with “rebel artists” around the world, members of La Pocha Nostra seek to erase the “dangerous” borders between art and politics, practice and theory, and art and spectator.

A Spanglish neologism, “pocha nostra” is loosely translated to mean “our impurities” or the “cartel of cultural bastards”. The group describes its installation performances as living museums. The performers decorate themselves as “ethno-cyborgs” that are one-quarter stereotype, one-quarter audience projection, one-quarter esthetic artifact and one-quarter unpredictable personal or social monster. La Pocha Nostra audiences are invited to observe, interact and participate in a wide and wild variety of activities, from dressing and posing the performers like dolls to leashing them like animals or pointing weapons at them.

Left: Robert Sifuentes

“The Summer Institute brings prominent international theatre artists and scholars to campus each year to work with graduate students to give them an intensive experience of applied research and praxis,” said Professor Lisa Wolford Wylam, the director of 91��ɫ's master's and doctoral programs in theatre studies. “Given that our theatre studies MA/PhD areas of specialization include post-colonial theatre and performance studies, bringing Pocha Nostra artists made perfect sense. And having had the opportunity to see Gómez-Peña and Sifuentes work with graduate students at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth some years ago, I knew it would be a fabulous experience for our students.”

Wolford Wylam has a long history with the company, including working as a dramaturge and assistant director on La Pocha Nostra shows in the late 1990s and editing the manuscript for Gómez-Peña's book Dangerous Border Crossers, to which she contributed an interview and an afterword. Wolford Wylam’s Theatre Department colleague Professor Laura Levin is the editor of Conversations Across the Border, a collection of interviews with Gómez-Peña slated for publication by Seagull Press.

Among the many remarkable La Pocha Nostra shows Wolford Wylam has participated in and witnessed as an audience member, The Mexterminator, a piece presented in San Francisco to commemorate the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, stands out in her mind.

“It was a large-scale production, for which they'd transformed an enormous warehouse into a post-apocalyptic environment inhabited by hybrid border creatures. The atmosphere was electric, like a rave, and audience members were completely uninhibited in the ways they interacted with the artists,” she said. “There was even an ‘ethnic makeover booth’ where gallery visitors could transform themselves into a ‘romantic Indian princess’ or a ‘militant Black Panther’ complete with bad afro wig and blackface makeup. And people went for it. I couldn't believe it, but they went for it without shame or hesitation.”

Left: Lisa Wolford Wylam

Such extreme, experimental and interactive performances have brought the company an international following and made La Pocha Nostra a legendary name in the worlds of performance studies and conceptual art.

The graduate students participating in the Summer Institute come from both the Faculty of Fine Arts and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. Wolford Wylam gave seminars on Pocha Nostra's work to prepare them for the artists' arrival.

While at 91��ɫ, Gómez-Peña and Sifuentes road-tested the final manuscript for their new book Radical Performance Pedagogy: Exercises for Rebel Artists and Border Crossers (forthcoming from Routledge Press in 2011). They led improvisations and exercises with the students that encouraged them to explore their expressivity and develop their own iconic performance personae through physical games and tableaux.

“The students had an amazing time,” said Wolford Wylam. “They hung out with the artists in the evenings and spent the mornings scouring thrift stores for props and costume elements to enhance their adventures in pop culture archeology.”

Previous topics and guests of 91��ɫ’s Summer Institute in Theatre Studies include The Greek Theatre, directed by Regina Kapetankis of the National Theatre of Greece, and Brecht: Theory in Practice with Johanna Schall, a leading German director and granddaughter of Bertolt Brecht, and Politics in Black African Theatre, directed by Nigerian playwright and educator Femi Osofisan.

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

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Theatre studies student wins University-wide thesis prize

fmaquito — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Claire Wynveen (MFA ’09) is the first student on record in the Department of Theatre to be awarded a thesis prize by the Faculty of Graduate Studies.

Her thesis encompassed her performance in the Theatre @ 91��ɫ production of Peter Barnes’ macabre satire The Bewitched (see YFile, April 7, 2009) as well as a written paper titled “Smashing the Psychophysical Dam: Exploring Fear and Release in The Bewitched” and an oral defence. It was on the strength of this three-pronged research project that she was recommended and ultimately selected for the highly competitive prize.

Right: Claire Wynveen

The examining committee that nominated Wynveen for the honour unanimously found her thesis exceptional.

“Claire’s performance, paper and oral were so outstanding that it seemed to all of us it would be criminal not to recommend it for nomination for the prize,” said Professor Erika Batdorf. “I can honestly say that I have never seen such a comprehensive and complete performance and paper. The mastery is in the way each of the elements supports the others so fully.”

Under the direction of Nigel Shawn Williams, Wynveen performed the role of the fanatical and ruthless Queen Mariana of Austria in The Bewitched. In Barnes’ nightmarish recreation of late-17th-century Spain, Mariana is the ruling force behind her grotesquely inbred, imbecilic and impotent son, King Carlos II. The power struggle between her and her son’s wife is one of the most dramatic plot lines in the complex play.

“One remarkable aspect of Claire’s thesis research is the extent to which she was able to translate historical details into her process of constructing the character – translating from intellectual insight to embodiment with admirable facility and sensitivity,” said Professor Lisa Wolford Wylam, director of 91��ɫ’s Graduate Program in Theatre Studies and a member of Wynveen’s examining committtee.

“Her accomplishment goes beyond completing the relatively straightforward task of background research, in that she demonstrated a sophisticated ability to select among myriad details those that could best facilitate characterization, as well as to lucidly articulate the process by which her historical analysis nourished her studio work.”

Professor Honor Ford-Smith from the Faculty of Environmental Studies, who likewise served on Wynveen’s thesis committee, found Wynveen’s description of her research-to-performance process most illuminating, with the potential to be a “very useful resource for young actors struggling to understand what the creative process involves.

Above: Claire Wynveen (left) with Courtney Smith in the Theatre @ 91��ɫ production of Peter Barnes’ macabre satire The Bewitched

“Claire’s main contribution is a careful narrative of how one actress approaches the challenges of translating key theories of Western acting into daily practice,” said Ford-Smith. “The thesis narrates precisely and evocatively how she develops her own practice. She explains clearly the psychological, observational and physical work which she undertakes in order to create the role.

“She tells the story of how the character gradually emerges within the player, and how she recognizes and supports the growth of the role within her. She draws on critical self-reflection, her own personal relationships, physical exercises, everyday activities and the work of other directors, writers and performers to validate and develop her process. Claire also proposes many useful exercises for the actor such as mask work, yoga, journaling and voice exercises to develop her approach.

“This dissertation is an excellent example of how actors learn and how process can be a form of praxis-based education.”

Wynveen was surprised and delighted to learn last month that she had won a thesis prize. “It validated my opinions that theatre is important for community-building and that the study of acting can provide useful benefits to academic institutions and society at large,” she said.

Since graduating last spring, Wynveen has been putting this philosophy, her stage experience and research to good use. She recently completed a nine-month contract with Classical Theatre Project, a Toronto-based company that produces classical theatre for high-school students. Her work with the company included performing Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Ophelia in Hamlet, understudying Lady Macbeth, and assisting the education director by giving workshops designed to make Shakespeare accessible and engaging for young people.

Wynveen also performs with the newly formed Cowgirl Choir, a 10-member women’s ensemble that gives semi-theatrical performances of old and new country and western songs. The group’s plans include concerts in Toronto this summer and potentially a Canadian tour in the coming year.

As she advances her professional career, Wynveen is grateful to her mentors at 91��ɫ who helped her during her graduate studies. “A special thank you to my thesis advisor Gwen Dobie, who was very supportive during the writing process,” she said. “I would also like to thank the fantastic professors who sat on my thesis defence panel and nominated me for the thesis prize. They are all very strong, intelligent and inspiring women and it was a pleasure to share my work with them!”

A copy of Wynveen’s thesis is stored at the National Library of Canada and kept in 91��ɫ’s Department of Theatre.

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

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