News Archive

Spring, 2004

Shared activities for playwriting classes. Ann Muse (Hendrix), Alan Litsey (Birmingham Southern) and Tony Haigh (Centre College) are exploring possibilities for collaborative activities in play writing class for the spring of 2004.

Spring, 2003

Faculty Exchanges
Rhodes College and Furman University Begin Faculty Exchange Program.
Doug Cummins (Furman University ) and Cookie Ewing (Rhodes College) are the first team to exchange performance/coaching sessions. In April, 2003, Prof. Cummins gave his one man show Shakespeare Lives! at Rhodes. On October 5 Prof. Ewing visited Furman to coach scenes from Shakespeare prepared by Furman students.

Fall, 2002

Trash Theatre at Centre College
Trash theatre is rough, mobile, street performance. Like most street theatre, it's made up of short pieces that adopt elements of storytelling, commedia, burlesque, and clowning. Trash theatre work began at Centre last year, with funds granted by the ACS Environmental Initiative. It is being performed in arts fairs, schools, campuses -- wherever there is an audience that needs to think more about caring for the environment. In our view, that's pretty much everyone, everywhere. There is now about 30-35 minutes of material right now, including "Little Green Riding Hood," "The Real Story of the Three Little Pigs," a percussion "junk jam," and some improv pieces. For more information contact Patrick Hagan-Moore at kaganmoo@centre.edu.

9-11-2002: Tony Haigh, chair of the drama department at Centre College, was nominated by the Board of Directors of the Southeastern Theatre Conference as President-elect at its September Board meeting in Charlotte, NC. Tony will take up his duties at the March conference of SETC in Arlington, Virginia. He will be responsible for planning the 2004 conference of SETC in Chattanooga, TN after which he will become president of that organization. SETC is the largest theatre organization in America and its annual conference attracts thousands of theatre practitioners, academics, teachers and students from all over America. At the March conference in Arlington the drama faculty of ACS will hold a lunchtime meeting to plan the next stage of the ACS Drama Initiative. That lunch meeting is planned for 12.00 on Thursday March 7 in the Lincoln Room of the Hyatt Regency Hotel. This is an excellent opportunity for ACS drama faculty to meet each other. We strongly encourage you to come.

9-5-2002: Centre College is seeking help from a tenured faculty member in Design and Technology to assist in the tenure evaluation process of one of its faculty. The colleague will be invited to attend a production and respond to the design elements of that production following the ATHE guidelines for tenure review. For more information contact Tony Haigh at haigha@centre.edu.

ACS Theatre Collaborative is Established
by Anthony Haigh, Professor of Dramatic Arts, Centre College

The ACS Drama faculty who met June 5 – 8 June 2002 at the ACS Technology Center at Southwestern University see great value in the possibilities suggested by an ACS grouping of Drama and Theatre programs. We find that our programs are broadly similar in structure, size, mission and curriculum. The advantages of inter-collegial cooperation were quickly seen and it was agreed that opportunities for interactions between ACS Drama & Theatre programs need to be expanded. Several of our programs are in a state of flux and see obvious benefits in inter-collegial cooperation and in the sharing of suggestions, solutions and pitfalls. Generally, in our world, the liberal arts colleges and universities are under-served by other regional and national organizations. Existing organizations (e.g. KC/ACTF) are more often based on competition than on cooperation.

We acknowledge the possibilities presented by new interactive technologies, but do not want to use technology for the sake of using technology. Our discipline presupposes face-to-face contact.

During the course of the meeting we developed ideas for a range of short term, medium term and long-term initiatives.

ACS Theatre Collaborative Goals for 2002-2003

• to encourage a sense of an ACS community of artists by fostering communication among faculty and departments
• to use the circuit rider model in establishing relationships between departments
• to begin working toward faculty exchange opportunities
• to build a website that can be used for sharing such information as production calendars, design archives, syllabi, and information about individual department offerings