2008-2009

my wl-2007-2008

Annual evaluation by Oct. 9 -- electronic submission?

Directing

Classes

Web

[ last year ]

... from 2006-2007 workload:

Fall 07 -- pre-production for main stage, dramaturgy -- 3 [shows.vtheatre.net/hamlet/webshow]

Spring 08 -- "R/G are Dead" by Tom Stoppard, Theatre UAF, directing -- 3 [ groups.yahoo.com/group/vtheatre ]
** Post-production [ Summer ] postmodern pages -- Stoppard is not dead, virtual theatre, postmodern project : vtheatre @ film-north + stoppard + stoppard.ru + utopia + 2008: Spring Theatre UAF [ pomo.vtheatre.net - postmodern theatre notes - pages ]
pomo.vtheatre.net/RG.html
stoppard theatre theory | shows.vtheatre.net/stoppard - design : chains, (sailing) curtain, theatre stage naked = ship ... pomo.vtheatre.net pages : postmodern theatre ... filmplus.org/thr/stoppard
stoppard 2008 theatre UAF | After-Thought : Fall THR413 Script Analysis class - postmodern today & neo- modernism (?) : Beckett & Stoppard (Theatre After the End of Theatre) ... shows.vtheatre.net/stoppard

[ some listing from google search ]

* Textbook [ StageMatrix ] -- 3

Research/Creative Activity Workload Units: 9

Service Workload Units: 0 [ medical reduction 6 ]

[ * ] "Stagematrix" (textbook for directors) is probably is the best examplr of what is going wrong. I have is my self-evaluations for yaers, and although I work on the content, the project is not completed.

I taught THR331 (Fundamentals of Directing), the course that is the basis of the textbook since I came to UAF, and I began doing it online in 1998. In 2000 I started to keep my director's notebooks for shows I worked at Theatre UAF, thinking that is the way to make it a different textbook, having "showcases," the samples of how director deals with productions from the concept phase to actual show.

I thought that making the process visible can demonstrate director's method and techniques in all its aspects (dramaturgy, work with actors, theory and etc.) "The Three Sisters" was the first online case.

I divided this undertaking into several different cyber tasks -- A. Research (Playwright and Play - era, historicity, specific style). B. Director's Vision... That how the new directories in "Virtual Theatre" [vtheatre.net] appeared. Play analysis [script.vtheatre.net] and numerous chapters on Chekhov to support the "Cyber 3 Sisters" [post-production work which is followed Fall 1999 directing this piece at UAF -- shows.vtheatre.net/3sisters].

I turned the rehearsal process into online experience for cast and crew [ groups.yahoo.com/group/3sis -- drama, character analysis and discussion ]. That format alone took years to shape [I have the production groups/lists ever since].

In order to explain how to work with actors I created act.vtheatre.net -- acting classes I teach anyway. And -- one ACTOR's directory became two and three different projects ...

Before I knew I had online presence for ALL classes I teach (including film courses), and for the shows I wanted to direct (short and long lists). At first, I thought it would take me a year ot wo to build the system, this "web" and "net". And the first draft could be done in a couple of years, but then comes the editing (rewriting) phase, and what I didn't anticipate -- the maintenance of existing webpages... that's how I became a webmaster.

I do not mind learning another language (HTML); to teach one has to be an eternal student, but I hadn't plan to have another full-time job of serving ever growing Film-North and virtual Theatre websites.

In my mind I had the "service" rational for doing webbing -- online presence serves students, community, national and international in areas of my expertise and profession! I had the numbers -- the traffic (users, visitors, readers) were growing at 100% a year. By 2005 I had more than half a million of them: around two thousand a day visiting my webpages. My textbook(s) were becoming web-books. And then I had my first stroke.

For two years I didn't know if I will regain the previous capacities -- to work and more important -- to think. Even in 2007-2008 I asked for reduced workload.

I am better now, but not the same. Slow, forgetting things, getting tired quickly, cannot travel. No, I haven't forgotten the stagematrix; last year I designated the new domain stagematrix.com [ to satisfy the people who are coming from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_director ], but I know that I cannot maintain the same level of creative energy I had before.

Therefore I am retiring; 2008-2009 will be my last year with UAF.

...

Well, this is a story of the textbook -- The Stagematrix.

... Of course, the similar work was done for my classes I taught the past academic year.

"Around R/G" -- "Comedy About Tragedy" : Production of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" at Theatre UAF Spring 2008.

First time I read the script was in 1992 in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Russian American Theatre (RAT) and the Formal Theatre of Andrey Moguchi were participation in first Russian production of Stoppard with Hamlet played in English (my Fulbright Abroad year).

In 2001 I directed "Hamlet Dreams" at UAF [ doing two Shakespeare's comedies, "Twelfth Night" and "Taming of the Shrew" as well ] and "Waiting for Godot" in 2006. After teaching Shakespeare and Beckett for years I was ready to direct the new trilogy by Stoppard "The Coast of Utopia," but the task was to big for us to handle -- that's how the choice of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" became final.

To understand Stoppard two other obvious playwrights are needed to study -- Shakespeare and Beckett -- and only then we can understand what Postmodern Theatre is. I am researching the postmodern since mid 1990s [ pomo.vtheatre.net ] and now I had to translated the complex theories into 2008 theatre forms.

Here is again two-folded task : creative/research and educational. Every production (3+2 points in workload) asks for three stages -- pre-production, rehearsals, and post-production phases. In practical terms it means that I have to start working on Theatre UAF show a year ahead of the opening and another year after the run is over. The post-production is a must in educational theatre settings. The production experience has to be processed into learning formats -- that's something we didn't have in pre-web era. Not just PR packages that we usually have before shows are opened, but the materials generated by the process for our theatre majors and others in cyber world. For example, in order to finalize "R/G are Dead" I have to go back to files on my Beckett and Shakespeare files updating them.

Several new "pages" (chapters) were created in my instructional directories -- script.vtheatre.net/pomo, script.vtheatre.net/pm, filmplus.org/thr/pomo & many in pomo.vtheatre.net/.

FILM -- classes and research [ 2007-2008 new ]

...

2005-2006 Theatre UAF Season: Four Farces + One Funeral & Godot'06
Film-North * Anatoly Antohin