Guest Artists

Spring 2006

Jane Gabriels

Jane Gabriels is the Director of Pepatian, a South Bronx–based arts organization dedicated to supporting contemporary Latino art. Gabriels worked with an artists' collective to initiate and organize the first Montreal International Dance Intensive in 1996. She later created other performance exchanges in both Montreal and Manhattan to create further artistic opportunities for dancers, poets and singer–songwriters. In New York City, she was the office and space manager at Pentacle and worked with Nancy Duncan on the Dancing in the Isles UK/NYC project. She was an administrative assistant in the Corporate Contributions Department at Philip Morris Companies Inc. and Booking Director for Gina Gibney Dance, where she helped initiate the Women at Work Domestic Violence Project. As a poet activist, she created performance projects for other poets and dancers in Lower East Side public gardens with grants from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Poets & Writers. In addition to administration, she has been a featured spotlight poet at the legendary Nuyorican Poets Cafe, her award winning poems have been published in Montreal's LeDevoir, Voir, Hour and Mirror newspapers and aside from her own work, she has collaborated with many NYC and Montreal choreographers, including: Christian Canciani, Ori Flomin, KJ Holmes, Hetty King, Louise Moyes, Antonio Ramos, Alyson Vishnousky, Jean Vitrano, Kathy Westwater and Nami Yamamoto. She is the Associate Director of Pepatian where she initiated and continues to produce the Bronx Artist Spotlight series: Jump It Up and Fall Into It

Roger Bedard

Roger L. Bedard holds the Evelyn Smith Family Endowed Professorship of Theatre at Arizona State University (ASU). At ASU, Dr. Bedard heads the Theatre for Youth M.F.A. and Ph.D. Programs and directs ARTSWORK: The Kax Herberger Center for Children and the Arts – a research and program development center focusing on children and the Arts. He teaches graduate level courses in theatre for young audiences and dramatic theory and criticism. Dr. Bedard was a founding board member and the first Executive Secretary of the American Alliance for Theatre and Education. He currently serves as a Trustee of the Children's Theatre Foundation of America and as a member of the Board of ASSITEJ/USA (the national association of professional theatre for young audiences). Dr. Bedard has consulted on program development for professional TYA companies throughout the country. He has served on advisory and grants panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, The President's Committee on the Arts, The National Endowment for the Humanities, the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Virginia Commission on the Arts, and other local and municipal arts agencies. His directing and dramaturg credits include work at universities, professional TYA companies, and national play development institutes. He has conducted theatre and drama workshops for students and teachers for organizations throughout the country, including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (Washington D.C.), the Tennessee Arts Academy, the Arizona Artist/Teacher Institute, and the Virginia Theatre Conference. His primary research has been in the area of the history and theory of theatre and young people. His book publications include editing Dramatic Literature for Children: A Century in Review (Anchorage Press) and Spotlight on the Child: Studies in the History of American Children's Theatre (Greenwood Press). He has published articles in such publications as TYA Today, Youth Theatre Journal, Arts Education Policy Review, Stage of the Art, Children's Literature Quarterly, and Theatre Enfance et Jeunnese. In 2002 Bedard received the Outstanding Service Award, given annually by the ASU Alumni Association.

John Welker and Christine Winkler

Currently performing leading male roles with Atlanta Ballet, John began dancing in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio with the BalletMet Dance Academy and then went on to train throughout the United States and abroad on full scholarship. He has recently performed as a guest artist nationally and internationally with the Chamber Dance Project, Configurations, and New Orleans Ballet Theater. Principal roles John has performed recently with the Company include Dracula in Michael Pink's “Dracula,” Pinkerton in Stanton Welch's “Madame Butterfly,” Ghosts in Margo Sappington's “Shed Your Skin,” and the lead male in Julia Adam's world premiere “If a rose falls.” When he is not dancing, John is a self–taught carpenter and enjoys cooking for his wife, fellow Company member, Christine Winkler.

California native, Christine Winkler trained with Sacramento Ballet School and San Francisco Ballet School, later performing with those companies as well as Ballet West. She has been a guest artist with Maximum Dance, Chamber Dance Project, and Configurations. Christine has performed principal roles in John McFall's Nutcracker and Peter Pan; Michael Pink's Dracula and Romeo & Juliet; Ben Stevenson's Alice in Wonderland and Cinderella; Stanton Welch's Madame Butterfly; Septime Webre's Carmen; and Margo Sappington's Shed Your Skin. She has worked with acclaimed choreographers Julia Adam, Diane Coburn Bruning, Christian Holder, David Parsons, and Lila York. Christine currently performs leading female roles with Atlanta Ballet and is married to Company member John Welker.

Judith Hamera

Judith Hamera is Professor and Head of the Department of Performance Studies at TAMU. She received her B.A. (1980) in Mass Communication from Wayne State University and her M.A. (1982) and Ph.D. (1987) in Interpretation and Performance Studies respectively from Northwestern University. She is the author of Dancing Communities: Performance and Culture in the Global City (forthcoming from Palgrave Macmillan); editor of Opening Acts: Performance In/As Communication and Cultural Studies (Sage, 2005); co–editor of the Sage Handbook of Performance Studies (Sage, 2005); and co–editor of the Cambridge Companion to American Travel Writing (forthcoming). She has served as editor of Text and Performance Quarterly, the performance studies journal of the National Communication Association. Her essays have appeared in Cultural Studies, TDR: The Drama Review, Modern Drama, Text and Performance Quarterly, Theatre Topics, and Women and Language. She is the recipient of the National Communication Association's Lilla Heston Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Performance Studies. Dr. Hamera's research examines relationships between performance and the construction of culturally diverse communities.

Robbie McCauley

Robbie McCauley is an OBIE Award playwright and a nationally recognized performance artist and director. An AUDELCO Award recipient for acting, her directing credits include the premier of Daniel Alexander Jones' Bel Canto co–produced with The Theater Offensive and Wheelock Family Theater. One of the early cast members of Ntozake Shange's for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf, Ms. McCauley went on to write and perform regularly in cities across the country, striving to facilitate dialogues on race between local whites and blacks. She is anthologized in several books including Extreme Exposure by Jo Bonney, ed.; Moon Marked and Touched by Sun by Sydne Mahone, ed.; and Out of Character edited by Mark Russell. Ms. McCauley is an Associate Professor at the Department of Performing Arts at Emerson College.

Elin Diamond

Elin Diamond is an English Professor at Rutgers, specicalizing in drama and performance, dramatic theory and critical theory, and feminism and gender studies. Professor Diamond is the author of Unmaking Mimesis: Essays on Feminism and Theater (Routledge, 1997) and Pinter's Comic Play (Associated University Press, 1985 ); and the editor of Performance and Cultural Politics (Routledge, 1996). Among her many journal publications are essays on 17th– and 20th–century drama, and Freudian, Brechtian, and feminist theory. Her work continues to explore connections between performance, feminist, and critical theory, using texts from early modernism through postmodern art. She is currently at work on a book on modernism and transatlantic performance.

David Cooper

David Cooper originally studied architecture, but decided to pursue his interest in photography when an opportunity arose to work with the Vancouver Playhouse. He worked closely with the design and production departments there, collaborating on brochures, posters and advertising campaigns, as well as doing all production photography for the company. He is now recognized across the country for his distinctive style of artists' portraits and show photography.

Cooper has also developed a nation–wide reputation as an excellent dance photographer, renowned for “Capturing the moment – not easy in dance!” He has photographed prima ballerinas Evelyn Hart and Veronica Tennant and created design and production Photography for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Alberta Ballet, Ballet British Columbia, and Les Grand Ballets Canadians, among others. Mr. Cooper's elegant photography has graced numerous programmes and souvenir books, each a valuable keepsake.

His work for theatre companies has appeared in newspapers, magazines and Souvenir programmes across Canada. Mr. Cooper has created design photography for use in brochures, and served as production photographer for the Vancouver Playhouse and the Shaw and Stratford Festivals. He was the still photographer for the television series McGyver for several years, and photographed several feature films shot on location in the Vancouver area.

Mr.Cooper owns a studio in Vancouver where, in addition to his performing arts photography, he is developing a design and advertising clientele.

www.davidcooperphotography.com

Dr. Mark Ellinger

Dr. Mark Ellinger, has been a licensed psychologist in private practice in south Florida since 1986. Dr. Ellinger specializes in a unique combination of structural–strategic and cognitive–behavioral therapy and has provided over thirty thousand hours of client care. He lectures nationally on a variety of topics related to the field of psychology.

According to F.B.I. statistics, there are currently 33,000 different gangs in 2500 communities across America, including in middle class neighborhoods. Despite these overwhelming numbers, there are ways to understand and successfully interrupt gang activity and gang–related violence. In this lecture, psychologist Dr. Mark Ellinger will address several key issues related to gang culture including the history of gangs and reasons for affiliation, the sociology and psychopathology of gang membership, resiliency factors, and successful intervention programs that include the arts and adventure–based components. Dr. Ellinger will argue that by using proven research strategies, we can provide alternatives for young people who may feel that gang affiliation is their only choice.

Dr. Ellinger's visit is in conjunction with UT's Imagine Safer Schools outreach project in Victoria, Texas.

Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle

This fun loving artist couple has committed to doing multi–disciplinary projects that explore and generate love; include performance art, theater works, visual art, printed matter, activism, and series of experimental performance weddings.

Their project grew out of their response to the horrors of violence of the war, and the anti–gay rights movement. They also are madly, passionately in love and wanted to share the excitement of the experience with others.

They will also share some of their individual works.

Annie Sprinkle is the prostitute/porn star that bridged into the art world, is the author of several books and creator of many films. Elizabeth Stephens is a sculptor, conceptual artist, and an associate professor of art at UCSC.

www.loveartlab.org
www.anniesprinkle.org
www.elizabethstephens.org