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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, which will take place throughout downtown��Toronto, features the work of more than 500 local, national and international artists��

Theatre Professor Shawn Kerwin collaborated with Laurel McDonald to create "", an “art-app” for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. The app is one of five interactive installations featured in Technological Displacement, a production of the Canadian Film Centre’s Media Lab, at the Bata Shoe Museum on Bloor Street.

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Above: Professor Shawn Kerwin has developed a new art-app for the BlackBerry PlayBook. It will debut at Nuit Blanche.

"Alone Together" uses poetic wordplay and expressive videos to remind us that we can always reframe our relationships. Kerwin developed the piece during her five-month residency at the CFC Media Lab earlier this year.

Technological Displacement is one of the 38 projects in Zone A, whose overarching theme, Restaging the Encounter, attempts to capture the fleeting moment when the political become poetic.

Another project in Zone A is by 91��ɫ visual arts��alumna and multimedia artist (BA ‘73), located in Barbara Ann Scott Park at the heart of College Park. The work transforms a memorable phrase from Canada's national anthem into a giant haiku poem, made from flowers and cut wood floating in a water-filled pond.

Left: True Patriot Love by visual arts��grad Chrysanne Stathacos

The theme of Zone B is The Future of the Present. The works on view in this sector use new technologies to form a vocabulary for a non-pictorial art.

Visual arts grad (MFA ‘96) and her collaborator Lance Winn are contributing , a multimedia work that addresses the nature of surveillance, mechanization and control. Installed at Ryerson University’s loading dock on Gerrard Street, Projektor resembles a prison tower, with a roaming spotlight video projection that exposes a barren prison yard and a prisoner who attempts to escape the light.

Collaborators since 2002, Jones and Winn share a common interest in the mechanisms of reproduction and the impact they have on representation. Their work focuses on the edges of the two-dimensional image and a desire to see beyond the limits of the frame.

Also in Zone B is , an installation at 62 Bond Street by film alumnus (BFA Spec. Hons. ‘02). ��Reibling argues that the dolly shot (where the movie camera glides along rails) is the most revered, powerful and evocative moment in the making of a film.�� To create 12 Hour Dolly, a film crew will set up a circular dolly track and shoot film continuously for 12 hours straight. Located in the centre of the track is a makeshift stage with a single stool.�� One by one, spectators are invited to sit centre-stage and participate in the making of the film, which will be streamed live onto an adjacent wall.

Right: Dylan Reibling's take on the dolly shot took 12 hours to film

Reibling is an award-winning filmmaker whose work, exploring the mechanics of narrative,��ranges from stop-motion animation and drama to interactive prototypes.

Two other 91��ɫ film alumni, (MFA ‘11) and (MA ‘09) co-created , a sound, video and interactive performance installation in the form of a "silent disco" on the P1 floor of The Atrium on Bay’s underground parking lot.��The work grew from the artists’ desire to explore the troubling policies entrenched in national and territorial border politics, and to question access and mobility within those borders. Participants are invited to listen with headphones to musical tracks��with lyrics referencing the text inside passports, and to watch related video projections.��

Bamboat��is a film and video artist whose work centres around aspects of diasporas, critiques of nationalism, and the ways in which the queer body relates to sites of mobility.�� Mitchell is a documentary filmmaker and media artist whose work explores performativity, memory, statehood, space and architecture.

Left: Border Sounds is a sound, video and interactive performance installation by two 91��ɫ film alumni

Maria Coates, a graduate student in art history and curatorial studies, is interning with the curator of Zone C, 91��ɫ art history alumnus Nicholas Brown (MA ‘08), who comes to Nuit Blanche after a two-year stint as curator of Toronto’s Red Bull 381 Projects.

Brown’s theme for Zone C is You had to go looking for it. Convening in the wake of the recent civil unrest around the G20 meeting in the city, the project invites the masses to transform and occupy Toronto's financial district. Artists will open up the area as a place of otherworldly encounter, ambivalent assembly and enthusiastic competition, inverting and misusing the symbolic language of corporate capitalism.

Coates, whose research centres on contemporary Latin American art, is working on , an installation by Mexican-born, Los Angeles-based artist Camilo Ontiveros. The project is a large-scale vigil that invites audience members to light a candle in commemoration of the lost lives of migrant workers in Ontario. It reaches out to individual passersby as well as organizations that represent the interests of labour, including United Food and Commercial Workers Canada and the Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts.

“What attracts��me to Camilo's project in the context of this international, corporate-sponsored, city-run festival is how it offers a space for pause and reflection in honour of something that we tend to overlook,” said Coates.

Coates appreciates the opportunity to intern with Brown – a relationship brokered by Art History Graduate Program Director Anna Hudson. “It’s been great to work with a recent grad whom I could relate to through discussions of contemporary art and what’s entailed in becoming a curator in Toronto. Nick has been a great mentor in guiding me through the process and leaving room for me to perform in a meaningful way,” she said.

Also in Zone C are a performance installation by visual art alumnus (MFA ‘10) and Tibi Tibi Neuspiel, and by John Notten, a visual arts and education graduate (BEd ’87, BFA ‘87).

Right: The Tie Break is a performative re-enactment of the most riveting episode in the history of tennis

Pugen, whose work has been featured in publications such as Artforum and Adbusters, is a recipient of the K.M Hunter Award for Interdisciplinary Art. His collaborative piece, The Tie Break, is a performative re-enactment of the “most riveting episode in the … history [of tennis]” (ESPN): the legendary fourth set tie-break at the 1980 Wimbledon men’s singles finals between Björn Borg and John McEnroe. The matches will take place hourly at 25 minutes after the hour at Commerce Court, North Plaza on King Street.

���dzٳٱ��’s Intensity invites the audience to explore the presentation centre for a luxury condominium development, but delivers a vast and sprawling tent city.��As in the 2002 eviction of Toronto’s waterfront tent city, viewers are forced to move out of their temporary tent homes every few minutes. Installed in the Arnell Plaza of the Bay-Adelaide Centre, this all-night drama echoes the realities of makeshift communities around the world that rise up in the wake of human tragedy.

Left: John Notten's Intensity delivers a vast and sprawling tent city. Viewers must move out of their temporary homes every few minutes in a re-enactment of the 2002 eviction of residents from Toronto's waterfront tent city.

Toronto’s sixth annual Nuit Blanche kicks off at 6:59pm on Saturday, Oct. 1 and runs to daybreak on Sunday, Oct. 2.

With 134 installations, the celebration covers the city’s entire downtown area, from Roncesvalles Avenue in the west all the way to the Distillery Historic District in the east, and from Bloor Street to the Lake Shore. Admission to all events is free.

Photos courtesy��of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche

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

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