Leading voice in global theatre to discuss '9-11 as avant-garde performance'
New York University's Professor Richard Schechner will give a lecture titled 9-11 as Avant-garde Performance? during his visit to the University's Department of Drama and Theatre Studies on Tuesday 16 February.
Professor Schechner's lecture, which is free and open to all, will take place at 6.30pm in Grimond Lecture Theatre 1 on the University's Canterbury campus. Early arrival is recommended.
During his visit, Professor Schechner will also lead a directing class for drama students and staff.
Richard Schechner is an award-winning director, author and founder of the academic field known as 'performance studies'. As a director, he is best-known for his radical stagings of classical material and, as a theorist, for work that has transformed the study and practice of theatre production. He has directed or conducted workshops in his native USA, Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America. In 2007, he directed a Shanghai-based production of Hamlet: That Is the Question, an experimental version of Shakespeare's play which went on to tour Europe in 2009.
His books are widely read in drama courses around the world and have been translated into Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, French, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, German, Italian, Hungarian, Dutch and Bulgarian. He is the long-standing editor of the very well respected international journal The Drama Review.
Professor Paul Allain, Director of Theatre Studies at the University of Kent, described Professor Schechner's visit as 'an exceptional opportunity to listen to a no doubt provocative and entertaining talk from one of theatre and performance's leading figures'.
He also explained that students will benefit from this visit 'as they will be able to meet, hear from, and work with one of the 20th Century theatre's great innovators - a hugely influential theorist as well as theatre-maker'.
Dr Peter M Boenisch, Co-Director of the University's European Theatre Research Network (ETRN), is among those looking forward to Professor Schechner's lecture. He said: 'When I studied theatre in Germany, Richard Schechner's books and his own radical performances about the Vietnam War provided much inspiration for an emerging generation. The topic of his lecture shows that he has not lost any of daring.'
Contact: mediaoffice@kent.ac.uk
Story published at 11:58am 5 February 2010
