NYU Steinhardt to Host FORUM ON ETHNODRAMA This Month

The Program in Educational Theatre at New York University's Steinhardt School will host the NYU Forum on Ethnodrama: The Aesthetics of Research and Playmaking - a two-day event featuring conversations, presentations, workshops, networking opportunities, and performances rooted in ethnodrama, the practice of creating a play script from materials such as interview transcripts, field notes, journal entries, and/or print and media artifacts.

The Forum will take place April 21-22, 2017 at NYU Steinhardt's Frederick Loewe Theatre (35 W. 4th Street, New York, NY).

The event will kick off with a conversation featuring Patricia Leavy. Leavy is an independent sociologist and international leader in the field of arts-based research who has earned critical and commercial success in both nonfiction and fiction. Her 21 published books include Method Meets Art: Arts-Based Research Practice, The Oxford Handbook of Qualitative Research, Fiction as Research Practice, Essentials of Transdisciplinary Research and the novels Low-Fat Love, American Circumstance, and Blue.

After a full schedule of workshops, papers, narrative presentations, and artistic sharings from established and emerging voices in the field of ethnodrama, the first day will conclude with excerpted performances of Watched in the World by Theatre 167 and America is Hard to See by Life Jacket Theatre Company.

The forum will continue Saturday with a conversation on "The Art of Fabrication" featuring Johnny Saldaña, professor emeritus from Arizona State University's School of Film, Dance, and Theatre in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. Saldaña is the author of numerous books on qualitative research and ethnodrama including Longitudinal Qualitative Research: Analyzing Change through Time, and Ethnotheatre: Research from Page to Stage, and is the the editor of Ethnodrama: An Anthology of Reality Theatre. Saldaña will also receive the Swortzell Innovator Award in recognition of outstanding contributions to the field of educational theatre and sustained service to the fields of ethnodrama and qualitative research.

The second day of the forum will continue to highlight the work of theatre artists, researchers, and researcher-artists engaging in ethnodrama, considering questions surrounding the aesthetic presentation of data and data-based playmaking while also discussing the opportunities and challenges that emerge when working with this style of theatre and research.

The forum will conclude with performances of Picture Justice: (Un)Documented by United Nations International School Picture Justice Ensemble, and UNTOLD by Blindspot Collective in collaboration with students from Canyon Crest Academy.

For more information and to register for the conference, go to steinhardt.nyu.edu/music/edtheatre/forum.