Global Media and Communications Seminar – 2024
[Insert 2024 Summary]
Global Media and Communications Seminar – 2023
In the spring of 2023, the School of Communication (SoC) was again able to offer the Global Media and Communication Seminar (GMCS). Taught by performance studies faculty and associate dean Lori Barcliff Baptista, the seminar was anchored around three central topics: creative capital, film and television, and theatre and comedy. The course materials prepared the class for the London School of Economics (LSE) faculty lectures, alumni-hosted engagements, and the opportunity to experience firsthand London’s theaters, museums, and cultural attractions.
London-based Bill Murray Comedy Club proprietor Dec Munro zoomed into our Evanston discussion of the British comedy circuit and welcomed us to a London performance. Media executive and Producer Lou Wallach (C91) zoomed into our Evanston discussion about global Netflix; Eliza Abramson (C16)—currently Netflix’s director of PR for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa—joined us at the LSE to continue the conversation. Lou Stein (C72) invited our group to Soho’s Groucho Club. Students were given access to the British Film Institute National Archive during our visit to the BFI Mediatheque. Thomas Hoegh (C92) extended the hospitality and technologies of Garden Studios film production complex, inviting students on set to demonstrate state-of-the-art production equipment. The course came full circle when Katie Russell (C20) participated in our alumni panel discussion at the LSE to share her insights regarding career opportunities at the BBC. Katie is a London-based senior programming executive for the broadcaster; she was also a communication studies major enrolled in the GMCS course that was taught at the start of the pandemic shutdown.
Prague Quadrennial Seminar 2023
In the spring of 2023, 14 MFA directors and designers and nine SoC undergraduates majoring in Theatre and Performance Studies participated in the Prague Quadrennial Seminar (PQS). Sponsored by the School of Communication and led by Professors Mary Zimmerman (performance studies) and Ana Kuzmanic (theatre) this program gave students the opportunity to attend one of the greatest theatre design conferences in the world as well as engage with the unique theatrical history and culture of the Czech Republic.
Students accepted into this program registered for the Prague Quadrennial Seminar class Performance of Prague (Theatre 310/Performance Studies 330), in spring 2023. Upon completion of the seminar class, they travel alongside SoC faculty and staff to Prague. The course used lectures, discussions, presentations, and project critiques to explore representations of Prague in literature, major Czech playwrights and designers, and the histories of the Czech Republic. Stage directors SKUTR (Martin Kukučka a Lukáš Trpišovský) and costume designer Simona Rybakova zoomed into the Evanston class to prep students for A Bouquet, the performance that the class later attended at the Czech National Theatre. Following the performance in Prague, Kuzmanic facilitated a talk back with the artistic team.
Established in 1967, the festival’s main location was the Holešovice Market with additional site installations in Prague’s National Gallery and The Academy of Performing Arts. New media and interactive spaces were represented alongside architectural works, reflecting current trends of live and immersive performance design and scenography. An international curatorial and programmatic team presented works that reflected this year’s theme: RARE, signifying the “the unique and raw realities that artists create.” More than 70 countries exhibited thousands of professional performance designs and artifacts—set models, costumes, sketches, videos, and performance fragments in individually designed pavilions that are often interactive works of art or performances themselves. Equally global in scope, the Student Exhibition featured imaginative ways of sharing “local knowledge, local culture, and identity.”