{"id":1008,"date":"2015-03-13T15:40:44","date_gmt":"2015-03-13T02:40:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/?p=1008"},"modified":"2015-03-13T15:41:53","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T02:41:53","slug":"nuts-nz-issue-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/2015\/03\/13\/nuts-nz-issue-5\/","title":{"rendered":"NUTS NZ Issue #5"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editorial<\/h1>\n

Welcome to the fifth edition of\u00a0NUTS NZ\u00a0<\/strong>– the Newsletter for University Theatre Studies New Zealand. The purpose of the newsletter is to help us\u00a0communicate more effectively as a community of scholars interested in Theatre and Performance. We are glad to report that\u00a0Sharon Mazer has kindly offered to be our PBRF Theatre Corespondent for NUTS NZ in 2015. Sharon will update us on important issues or developments related to PBRF over our next three issues of NUTS NZ. If you have any specific issues related to PBRF that you would like to raise please let us know.<\/p>\n

In other big news Massey is planning to introduce a Theatre Minor next year. The School of English and Media Studies has a 52-year history of teaching theatre, currently teaches it in 10 papers and into 17 programmes, and employs a range of full time and casual theatre staff. Yet there is currently no named theatre studies programme at Massey University.\u00a0The School is proposing to introduce a Minor in Theatre Studies in 2016. The plan to introduce the minor was tabled at the University Committee for Theatre and Performance Research NZ which was held at VUW\u00a0in November last year. No doubt some of you will receive the CUAP application in the next couple of months where you will be invited to comment.<\/p>\n

We have an interesting selection of stories and news items for you in this fifth\u00a0issue of NUTS NZ. Please refer to the important dates below. News items for issue #6 are due by 1 May. As always, submissions should be sent to the NUTS NZ editor Jane Marshall:\u00a0\u00a0j.g.marshall@massey.ac.nz<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Newsletter Issue<\/b><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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Information Required by<\/b><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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Date of Circulation<\/b><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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Issue 5<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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6 March 2015<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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13 March 2015<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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Issue 6<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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1 May 2015<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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15 May 2015<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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Issue 7<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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31 July 2014<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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14 August 2015<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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Issue 8<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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30 October 2014<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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13 November 2015<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Kind regards,<\/p>\n

NUTS NZ editors: Jane Marshall and Rand Hazou.<\/p>\n

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Nuts People<\/h2>\n

University of Auckland\u00a0Drama students are well represented in the Shortlist for the Adam Play Award this year. 2014 BA Hons student Michelanne Forster (featured in the NUTS NZ issue #2<\/a>) was nominated for \u201cThe Gift of Tongues\u201d, which was her Drama 720 project supervised by Murray Edmond. The shortlist also included 2004 MA alumnus Anders-Falstie Jensen\u2019s most recent play \u201cCentrepoint”. Congrats to Michelanne and Anders-Falstie and the team at Auckland Uni for an outstanding result. In each edition of NUTS NZ we want to be able to profile\u00a0an academic and a postgraduate student to show case \u201cour people\u201d and their current research\/interests. For this issue we are trying\u00a0something a little different and have invited Massey student Rebekah Hines to submit a short piece on her experience being enrolled in the postgraduate paper 139.763 Community Theatre\u00a0<\/em>which is coordinated by Massey’s Asoc. Prof. Angie Farrow.<\/p>\n

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139.763 Community Theatre<\/h3>\n

November 17th<\/sup>, only ten days after completing my Bachelor of Arts I was locked and loaded to participate in my first Masters paper at Massey University, 139.763 – Community Theatre, taught by Dr. Angie Farrow. My experience with this paper can only be communicated in brief because the reality is, there was so much that we did and learnt that the only way you can fully understand it, would be to participate yourself. And the truth is, four students engaging in creativity to recreate the intimate truths of reality, is a beautiful mess only understood in fullness, in the moment. But let me give you a snippet of my contact course in December at the Palmerston North Campus.<\/p>\n

After spending time engaging with Playback Theatre, watching documentaries and conversing about various theories and agencies of Community Theatre as a whole, my fellow students, Lyn, Hana Laurence and I were set the task of creating a piece of theatre for a community of our choosing, making sure we were engaging with and understanding the concepts we had been learning about. We quickly found ourselves at Palmerston Manor, a rest home, gleaning stories from various residents as inspiration.Gathering stories was not the most difficult task. Sure there were moments when we had to speak slower, repeat our questions, speak louder, lean closer or listen to the same story on repeat, but getting stories, getting any form of inspiration was not strenuous. The difficult task was choosing which characters to portray, what to stories believe, which bits to use knowing we had to somehow recreate those stories theatrically. We tried our hand at devising, with the help of our tutor Rachel, and while what we devised was poetic it was so abstract that Angie advised us our audience would not understand it. She reminded us that our performance was not for academics or avid theatre goers, but rather for a community riddled with alzheimers, dementia, deafness and partial comprehension, many of whom would never have been to a theatre before. So we started again. As we devised, there was a sudden realisation of self-imposed importance. In that moment, seemingly irrelevant bits of knowledge, hazy memories, unheard of locations and excessive lovers, gave life to nonsensical realities and we, who had considered them worthless were forced to relearn what it meant to be gracious; what it meant to live in someone else\u2019s mind; what it meant to relinquish judgment on the recollected mishmash of falsified truths shared in heaven\u2019s waiting room and to love that which wasn\u2019t, that which was all<\/em> which we would retell. This was probably one of the hardest lessons to learn, but it makes sense- it\u2019s what we were there to do, that is what community theatre does, it presents a story on the community\u2019s terms.<\/p>\n

Performing for the residents is something I\u2019ll be reluctant to forget. It was there, performing what we titled Truth and Lies <\/em>that we got a real life glimpse at the agency of Community Theatre. It brought feuding couples together for just a moment as they laughed at the same joke, or held their breaths during a sad moment, gasped together and remembered together. I think, in a modern world in which the focus often seems to be on the individual first and the community second, theatre and specifically Community Theatre provides the rare opportunity to come together with other human beings to experience a sense of collective belonging. Working with that community I now understand how Community Theatre offers a chance to discover positive potential outside of society\u2019s label. While the majority of society views rest-homes as sad, boring places, we saw a positive potential; we saw a range of personalities and were invited into a beautiful place of grace and wonder, which we then recreated.<\/p>\n

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ADSA Prizes<\/h2>\n

It is that time of the year again, when we call for nominations for ADSA\u2019s many prizes to acknowledge outstanding achievements by members of the association.<\/p>\n

In 2015, ADSA will seek to award the following prizes –<\/p>\n