Annual Activities Report
Narrative Self-Evaluation
July 1, 2002 - June 30, 2003
Anatoly Antohin, Theatre, CLA
Teaching
During the past academic year I continued the development of the web-supported courses. Each course I teach has its own directory with my notes, bibliography, links, samples of student assignments and hyperlinked syllabus, but since 2002 I began to build the vertical hierarchy for more detailed subdirectories. For example, the three levels of acting classes have their independent directories such as act.vtheatre.net (THR121 Fundamentals of Acting), filmplus.org/biomx (THR221 Intermediate Acting) and method.vtheatre.net (THR321 Advanced Acting) -- each with five subdirectories to reflect on the main area studies (Text, Craft, Art, Actor, Showcases). Students are required to subscribe to class forums, posting their scenes and monologues, reviews on acting in Theatre UAF productions.
In addition, the web-structure is useful in advising, recruetment and orientation.
Film and drama courses: http://script.vtheatre.net has two separate directories for THR-215 Dramatic Literature and THR-413 Playscript Analysis (each with 4 subdirectories); https://afronord.tripod.com/film/title.html for Film Directing and http://film.vtheatre.net for THR-334 Film and Movies. The Web-medium offers many new ways for teaching, complimentary to live lectures and textbooks.
As I stated in my previous self-evaluation the web-supported teaching doubled (at least) my time preparation for classes. The content must be re-evaluated before, during and after each class. I hope that one day I can arrive to the traditional textbooks in print. Unfortunately, I work on the texts mostly when I teach classes and as a result all of them are in work-in-progress stage.
All my classes are open for cyber-students, who can subscribe and follow the class. The mixture of live and audit students, I believe, makes UAF students work harder. Last year the number of visitors to my intructional page reached 1000 visitors/day mark. My three-day-workshop in LA in Jan. of 2003 (Loyola U.) was originated by the webpages on Biomechanics and Chekhov.
Research, Scholarly and Creative Work
The best way to see what this web-building process does to my directing is to visit the directories devoted to the UAF productions. Two main stage shows, Dangerous Liaisons (Fall 2002) and Don Juan (Spring 2003), have both components -- research and creative work. My preproduction period nowadays begins a year or more in advance and I have to spend some time for post-production (graphics and texts to finalize the web presentation of each show). I am glad that students could see in real time what it takes to put together a show. All stages and areas of directing are visible for UAF casts and crews and for the cyber theatre community. Thanks to Tara and Kade the UAF productions have a lot of videographic records and I use the photos for webpages. Each new show, I format as a showcase to use as a demonstartion of practical applications of theories in drama, acting and directing. (see http://shows.vtheatre.net)
Virtual Theatre format (http://filmplus.org/vtheatre) requires more work with the plays (I began writing the new stage composition for The Possessed, Fall 2003, in 2002. I plan to continue to work on this project in the Spring of 2004 to offer the new script on terrorism to other theatres.
[ I am still working on the play for Moscow theatres, in Russian -- see http://plays.vtheatre.net ]
Thanks to my webpages, I began to review book proposals (acting, drama) for big publishers (McGraw Hill, Focal Press), which helps me stay updated with what is coming out in my field.
Service
I discussed with the Dept. Head the issue of the biggest impact on my time by the service segment of the web-building. I do not know if there is a way to reflect it my workload. I understand that this a new issue for academia, but for UAF web presence is extremely important and we have to be ahead, not behind other universities in new technologies. So many aspects of the Internet are not in place (copyright, for example), so I have to use comercial servers (and pay for it), not UAF server. The number of hours I invest in webbing is astronomical (Tara is even more involved). Is there any way to structure it within my academic assignments?
Advising UAF theatre and film students has also became more time-consuming. We teach them to perform, and we have to have Theatre UAF productions. We have to have Winter Shorts (student-directed) seasons. And also hey have to shoot their films (independent studies). Frankly, without another faculty, I won't be able to develop film study area any further.
