Congratulations to Courtney Colligan and Shea Hwang who defended their dissertations in July and graduated in August 2002! Courtney Colligan defended her dissertation, “Freedom is a Practice: The Praxis of Postcarceral Performance in the United Kingdom and the United States” This year she will be a Visiting Instructor in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women Studies program at Pitt and is also an adjunct instructor for Theatre teaching Intro to Dramatic Art. Shea Hwang defended her dissertation ‘An Island of Death’: Crumpled Childhood, Performance, and the Jeju Massacre (1948). Starting this week, she is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Middle Tennessee State University.
Victoria LaFave won the American Theatre and Drama Society’s Graduate Student Research/Travel Grant and a Pitt Mellon Pre-Doctoral Fellowship for the 2022-3 academic year. She was also recognized as a Performance Studies Focus Group Emerging Scholar at the Association for Higher Education’s 2022 conference where she presented her award-winning paper on the Performance Studies Focus Group’s Debut Panel.
Alison Mahoney presented their paper "Devising Access Intimacy: Lessons from Oily Cart's 'Uncancellable' Season" on the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Directing Focus Group panel, "Covid-Era Devising: Toward a New Canon." She also organized the ATHE Performance Studies Focus Group’s Emerging Scholars Panel as the Performance Studies Focus Group’s Graduate Student Representative. She also joined the Disability Justice Education Project working group, hosted by the Museum, Arts, and Culture Access Consortium.
Chris Staley recently finished his third summer training with the Suzuki Company of Toga. In 2022 his chapter contributions were published in Theatre and the Macabre and Teaching Performance Practices in Remote and Hybrid Spaces. Over the last year, Chris worked in courthouse operations for the anti-incarceration non-profit, Bronx Community Solutions, a borough project of the Center for Court Innovation.
Theatre Arts is excited to welcome two MFA students and three PhD students to the department.
Karim S. Chebli is a first year MFA Student in the Performance Pedagogy program. Born and raised in Mount Lebanon, the actual country on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, Karim just left his homeland to join the University of Pittsburgh. He holds a BA in Business Administration, a BA in theater, and an MA in Education Administration and Policy Studies, where his thesis focused on the development of pedagogic content knowledge of theater educators. Alongside his studies, he taught theater, trained with non-governmental organizations and launched a local artistic career, writing, directing and acting in staged productions. Karim's current research focuses on the intersections of Civil War History in Lebanon, performances and conflict resolution.
Hansel Tan is a first year MFA Student in the Performance Pedagogy program. Originally from Singapore, Hansel earned his bachelor's at Wesleyan University researching issues in late Medieval Musicology before establishing a career as an actor in NYC and the regional circuit, appearing on stage, film, and TV. Besides performing, Hansel has conducted workshops at Yale-NUS, the Haque Center of Acting and Creativity (Singapore), and Sightlines Actors Studio (Manila, Philippines), is a Designated Meisner Teacher (The Meisner Institute), and is motivated to investigate extended notions of theatricality, vitality, and the kinesthetic imagination through experimental and experiential pedagogies. Union affiliations: Actor's Equity Association & Screen Actors Guild.
Payne Banister is a first year PhD Student in the Theatre and Performance Studies program. They earned their MA in Theatre and Performance Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, where they explored the precarious working conditions of drag performers in the St. Louis area. Payne researches at the intersections of theater and performance studies, queer and feminist studies, and U.S. cultural history. As a drag performer and scholar, Payne is particularly interested in the cultural, historical, and social contexts of nightlife and queer performance cultures.
Patrick Mullen earned his bachelor’s degree in History and English Writing (fiction, poetry) from the University of Pittsburgh, and he earned an MFA in Writing (fiction) from Columbia University. His research attempts to understand why contemporary artists sometimes adhere to classical forms of performance, and sometimes diverge from these forms, in order to engage with recent national memory, especially trauma born from the violence of twentieth and twenty first century conflicts. Currently, he researches international collaborations of artists who adapt classical Noh to tell contemporary stories, particularly stories that challenge the hegemonic state power of repressive governments and/or right-wing extremist movements.
Frederick D. Miller is a musical theatre dramaturg and playwright. He is the dramaturg for the J2 Spotlight Musical Theatre Company in New York City, and recently worked on the Off-Broadway revivals of The Baker's Wife and A Class Act. He is a recent graduate of Penn State University where his play Headspace received its world premiere in 2021. Although a Nittany Lion through and through, he is excited to join the Pitt Panthers!