From this web page you can peruse our By-laws, preview our events for ATHE 1998, e-mail our Organizing Collective, read our Newsletters, try our links to related sites, and contibute to our plans for the future of this site.
You can also join our TASC electronic mailing list, begun in August, 1997. Send e-mail message to listproc@listproc.cc.geneseo. edu. In the body of the message, type "sub tasc-l yourfirstname yourlastname". Omit the quotes and substitute your name where appropriate. Be sure to leave the subject line blank and send no signature file.The purpose of the Theatre and Social Change focus group (TASC) is to:
1. Recognize the role that theatre with a conscious social perspective has played in the history of world theatre.
2. Promote the research and practice of theatre whose specific focus is the dynamic relationship between theatre and society, and especially cultural analysis and theatre practice and theory which sees itself as an agent for social criticism and/or change.
3. Serve as a focus point for studying those theatres that have created theatre-making processes that can serve as model processes for social change (e.g., collaborative approaches, audience choice, group membership).
4. Incorporate as part of the analysis and training process the discoveries made in cultures historically ignored by the west (e.g., the Third World) such as community animation and theatre for community action.
5. Provide a network through which those making and/or studying people's, political, and otherwise socially active theatre can share work, theory, and support.
For the full text of TASC's By-laws, click here.
Along with TASC's many panels that will be presented as part of ATHE 1998 in San Antonio, TASC will be sponsoring its second Post Conference. Click to see a list of TASC sponsored panels. For more information on the TASC Post-Conference, which is a free event to be held Sunday August 16, the day after the final ATHE events, e-mail Leslie Bentley: bleslie@BGNet.bgsu.edu
TASC is governed by an Organizing Collective (OC), elected annually at the ATHE conference. The OC is led by our Forum Representative and Conference Planner; other members include our Newsletter Editor, Secretary/Treasurer, and Elections Coordinator. Past members of the OC and the Forum Representative-Elect and the Conference Planner-Elect serve as advisory members. Most business takes place via e-mail, including newsletter suggestions, conference panel selection, and generation of new ideas about the future of TASC.
TASC's 1997-1998 Organizing Collective would love to hear your ideas on theatre and social change and your reaction to this web page. Contact us at the following addresses:
FOCUS GROUP REPRESENTATIVE:
Claudia Orenstein
21 Claremont Ave. #74
New York, NY 10027
(212) 864-8677 (hm)
(212) 854-6027 (wk)
FAX: (212) 854-1840
corenstein@barnard.columbia.edu
This is Claudia's second year as Focus Group Representative for TASC. At Barnard she teaches courses in theatre history and literature (East and West) and directs campus productions. She is interested in the political potential of both Western and Asian popular forms and is finishing a book that focuses on the work ofthe San Francisco Mime Troupe.
FOCUS GROUP REPRESENTATIVE, ELECT:
Beth Cherne
Assistant Professor - Theatre
Humanities Division
M105B HFA
600 E. 4th Street
University of Minnesota at Morris
Morris, MN 56267
Phone: 320-589-6267 H: 320-589-0369
chernemb@caa.mrs.umn.edu
Beth teaches theatre at the University of Minnesota, Morris. Her dissertation examined radical amateur theatre from the Depression era through the rhetoric of ideal "Americanism." She is interested in how free-floating yet pervasive ideas of "America" and "Americans" are represented in or contested in theatre.
CONFERENCE PLANNER:
Tim Mitchell
340 A Harford Rd.
Dryden, New York 13053
(607) 844-3312
mmm14@cornell.edu
Tim has spent six years involved with Theatre in Prisons at DC's Lorton Prison and, most recently, at two juvenile facilties in upstate NY. He is currently a doctoral student in the field o Theatre Arts at Cornell University.
MEMBERSHIP AND ELECTIONS COORDINATOR:
Sharon Green
135 East 50th Street,5G
New York, NY 10022.
(212) 421-3589
sgreen@email.gc.cuny.edu
This is Sharon's first year as TASC's Membership and Elections Coordinator. She is currently working on her dissertation at the CUNY Graduate Center and teaches acting at Brooklyn College.
SECRETARY AND TREASURER:
Melanie Blood
School of Performing Arts
SUNY Geneseo
1 College Circle
Geneseo, NY 14454
(716) 245-5840
blood@uno.cc.geneseo.edu
Melanie is Assistant Professor of Performing Arts at SUNY Geneseo. She is currently serving a second year as Secretary/Treasurer for TASC, is newsletter editor for ATDS, and is serving on ATHE's Electronic Technology Committee. Her interests include directing, women's studies, computer-based media as an interactive tool in performance and pedagogy, and performance as a vehicle of community expression and change.
NEWSLETTER EDITOR (outgoing)
Sharon Grady
University of Texas at Austin
Dept. of Theatre and Dance
Austin, TX 78712
(512)471-5793
sgrady@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu
Sharon teaches at University of Texas where she specializes in using improvisational drama and theatre techniques in educational and community settings as a way to examine the intersections between social and curricular concerns. She is currently writing a book on the politics of improvisational drama and "difference."
NEWSLETTER EDITOR (incoming):
Michael Mufson
1243 Cypress Dr.
Vista, CA 92084
(760) 941-9819
mufson@mailhost2.csusm.edu
Michael teaches theatre at Palomar College in San Diego County. He is most interested in theatre that combines radical approaches to both content and form. His theatre training includes work with Jerzy Grotowski's Objective Drama Laboratory at UC-Irvine and Tadashi Suzuki at Stage West. Michael's activist roots can be traced to his "red diapers" and mother's milk. He is looking forward to serving TASC as Newsletter Editor.
NEWSLETTER ASSISTANT:
Karen Gygli
John Carroll University
20700 North Park Blvd.
Cleveland, OH 44118
kgygli@jcvaxa.jcu.edu
Karen is an assistant professor of theatre in the Communication Department of John Carroll University, a Catholic liberal arts school in Cleveland, Ohio. Her research interests include immigrant theatre, labor union theatre and Canadian theatre during the 1960's.
GRADUATE STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE:
Cathy Plourde
RRI Box 4340
Lincolnville, ME 04849
(207) 763-4524
cplourde@acadia.net
Cathy is finishing a master's program in Theatre and Social Change. Her current work involves working with groups who have identified a need for better communication with and for girls, writing scripts for conference performances, or helping these groups develop their own pieces.
TASC publishes a newsletter three times annually. Beginning in 1998, newsletters will be published in eletronic form only. Some topics included in TASC Newsletters include current projects of TASC, issues for advocacy, upcoming festivals and conferences, and TASC events at ATHE conferences. To add yourself to our electronic mailing list, contact our Newsletter Editor.
Check out our recent Newsletters on-line:
Spring 1998; 9.1 -- Forthcoming
Fall 1997; 8.3
Spring 1997; 8.2
The Applied and Interactive Theatre Guide, at http://csep.sunyit.edu/~joel/ guide.html
Interactive Improv Theatre Network, at http://www.augie.edu/relat ed/itn/main.html
The OC has discussed many possibilities for the future of the TASC web site. Ideas include post-mortems of conferences related to TASC, such as the Pedagogy of the Oppressed Conference in Toronto, a syllabus course bank, and reviews of community based or political theatre productions. Let us know your thoughts!
Updated June 1998 by Melanie Blood