Academic Theme Launched on World Water Day
Two of the participating institutions: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UMASS Amherst have used THE WAY OF WATER to respond to their school's mandates to initiate campus-wide discussions about water. Take a moment to check out these articles published by UNC's University Gazette and The Valley Advocate:
ACADEMIC THEME LAUNCHED ON WORLD WATER DAY. 27 March 2012
"The things that are wrong with water today are pretty big, and the pressures on water are huge. But it is within the grasp of human kind to use it as a tool for good," said Jamie Bartram, professor of environmental sciences and engineering at the Gillings School of Global Public Health and director of The Water Institute at UNC.
CITIZEN ARTISTS: A FESTIVAL OF DEVISED WORK RESPONDS TO ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER. 5 April 2012.
The UMASS Theater Department has risen to the deans' challenge by creating three original works that "map and explore our changing relationship to the natural world and offer models of community response to ecological crisis." Beyond the Horizen is an exercise in "devised theater," explains dramaturgy grad student Megan McClain, the project's curator. The pieces were co-created by the participants---two dozen students from three of the Five Colleges---using research, found texts and their own words and ideas. This approach, says McClain, mirrors and extends the notion of interconnectedness in the campus wide theme.
We also appreciate Carnegie Mellon dramaturgy student Emily Anne Gibson initiated an article on TheatreManiaU.
"All in all, this is a project I feel strongly about being involved in. I have a lot of beliefs about theater, but one of them is that it should provide a social commentary. And this most certainly does. I also think theater should create a conversation. And I believe that The Way of Water will do just that. And I know, first hand, that theater must be communal---this reading series is a wonderful embodiment of that community, and when the play receives its world premiere, I believe that it will create a community out if its audience that can talk, argue, collaborate, and come to new understandings."