A group of East Stroudsburg University students, faculty and alumni joined more than 5,000 theatre professionals and students at the largest scenographic event in the world: the Prague Quadrennial (PQ) of Performance Design and Space held June 18-28, 2015 in Prague, Czech Republic.<\/p>\n
Since 1967, the Prague Quadrennial featured international exhibitions exploring the cutting-edge trends in stage, lighting costume and sound design, and new scenographic practices in a multi-day, multi-event, multi-stage format of performances, exhibitions, symposia and workshops throughout the historic core of the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cPQ has been a major factor in shaping the direction of world theatre and live performance for the past 40 years,\u201d said scenic and lighting designer Yoshi Tanokura, associate professor of theatre, who, along with Margaret J. Ball, D.M.A. associate professor and chair of theatre, led the ESU group.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt PQ, the exchange of ideas goes well beyond the narrow confines of theatrical design and style,\u201d Tanokura said.\u201cYou learn about the latest scenographic practices and technology around the world and network with colleagues from different countries which I can now bring to ESU\u2019s theatre productions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two current students, Madison Petro, a sophomore from Moosic, Pa., majoring in both theatre and English, Christopher Robinson, a junior from Cape May, N.J., and four theatre alumni Michael Lloret \u201915 of Shawnee on Delaware, Pa., Rebecca Regina \u201915 of Rutherford, N.J., Ahleea Zama \u201911, and Robert McIntyre \u201912, rounded out the ESU contingent.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was my first time out of the country and my first time traveling on an airplane,\u201d Petro said.\u00a0 \u201cI went out exploring on my own, stopped in some shops where no one spoke English, and I thought it was incredible how we managed to communicate without understanding each other\u2019s languages.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was surprised at how easily I was able to find my way around the city even though I am not the best with directions and none of the street signs were in English,\u201d she said. \u201cI loved the novelty of being in a foreign country and all the discovery that came with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were many aspects to the conference that reminded me of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF) with a design-oriented focus,\u201d said Robinson, who was part of ESU\u2019s contingent at the 2015 KCACTF Region II conference in Cleveland, Ohio.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I really enjoyed was the different ways each country showcased their design concepts,\u201d he added.\u00a0\u201cStudents and professors from Mexico decorated a boat with traditional designs, took us on a river tour under the famous Charles Bridge and educated us on how we could help solve Mexico\u2019s water shortage.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Regina, the trip provided an opportunity to connect her theatre experience to a historical event.\u00a0Since she appeared in ESU\u2019s 2012 production of The Diary of Anne Frank,<\/em> she has been interested in World War II and Holocaust history, so she visited the Terezin Concentration Camp outside of Prague.<\/p>\n \u201cTerezin was a chilling, frightening and yet interesting adventure,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u201cYou can read about the Holocaust and look at pictures, but actually standing where people were murdered in masses was chilling to the bone. It calmed me to know that Terezin was one of the only concentration camps to approve theatre performances. Theatre can turn even the worst situations into something better.\u201d<\/p>\n Lloret came away from the conference with two new perspectives on theatre.\u00a0\u201cAs an actor looking into the world through the scope of a scenographer, I opened my mind to ideas in performance I might not have seen otherwise,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cI learned that \u2018the space\u2019 is equally as important as the actor in this realm of storytelling. The designer will look at a space\/set, and see it as a representation of a whole idea behind what is going on.\u201d<\/p>\n Lloret also learned that technology has had a huge impact on performance design. For example, a student theatre company from Estonia used a moving light and a microphone to produce a living character that interacted with the audience.\u00a0He believes a lot of these ideas he was exposed to were cutting edge, new, and foreign.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a thrill to get to experience this famous international festival with my students and colleague. I am so appreciative of Professor Tanokura for organizing the students and alumni to attend. It was good to see ESU had student representation alongside much other larger American schools like Northwestern University,\u201d Dr. Ball said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ESU Theatre Visits Prague, Czech Republic <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[22,42,84,58,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-facebook","category-news-release","category-ospr-news","category-slider","category-theater"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12582"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12582"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12586,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12582\/revisions\/12586"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}