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Staging Brecht at Carleton: Students as Actors at a Liberal Arts College
- from Special Interest Section: Teaching Brecht
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- By Julie Klassen, emerita professor of German at Carleton College, where she taught German language and literature and environmental studies., Ruth Weiner, Class of 1944 Professor of Theater and the Liberal Arts emerita at Carleton College, where she taught and directed, and where, with a colleague in dance, she established a new Department of Theater and Dance in 2004.
- Edited by Theodore F. Rippey
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- Book:
- The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 41
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 27 July 2019
- Print publication:
- 31 December 2017, pp 118-137
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Summary
During their teaching careers at Carleton College, Ruth Weiner, professor in the Department of Theater and Dance, and Julie Klassen, professor of German, engaged with Brecht's plays and legacy in various ways. Weiner directed English-language productions of Brecht, including The Caucasian Chalk Circle, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, and Man Is Man. Klassen directed two German-language student productions: Der Jasager / Der Neinsager and Der kaukasische Kreidekreis. In 1998, Weiner and Klassen organized a campus-wide Brecht symposium to celebrate Brecht's hundredth birthday and the fiftieth anniversary of the world premiere of The Caucasian Chalk Circle at Carleton. In 2006, Weiner invited guest director Edward Berkeley to Carleton to mount a main stage production of the musical Happy End, for which she made the arrangements, and Klassen was asked to be dramaturg. Together they conducted postproduction interviews with members of the cast and the production staff.
This examination considers what effects production conditions had for staging Brecht with students in three of these plays: Der Jasager / Der Neinsager, Der kaukasische Kreidekreis, and Happy End. Some of the parameters included the language of the performance, the size and composition of the potential acting pool, the amount of time and production resources available, and the performance venue. The goals of the respective performance influenced each director's decisions regarding the amount of conscious attention to direct to such theoretical concepts as Verfremdung, Gestus, and epic theater. The results indicate that the effective embodiment of these concepts in actual dramaturgical practices proved more important for approaching Brecht's stagecraft than conscious engagement with his theories. Each production foregrounded Brecht's commitment as dramatist to create a universe where human agency could question and defy social and political realities. Each expanded the experiences of actors and audiences alike with an important era of German language and culture.
From the Classroom to the Stage: Two German-Language Productions
In contrast to the scheduled productions typical for a theater department, Klassen's staging of two German-language plays did not originate as college- wide productions or as separate projects; they came about from her midcourse decision to have students perform the Brecht text they were reading. She plunged into each of these projects aware of the limitations on availability of German-speaking student actors, preparation time, and staging resources. Yet the opportunity to explore the written texts as drama outweighed the difficulties of mounting the productions.
Calgary Experience with West Nile Virus Neurological Syndrome During the Late Summer of 2003
- Ana-Luiza Sayao, Oksana Suchowersky, Ali Al-Khathaami, Brian Klassen, Nili R. Katz, Robert Sevick, Peter Tilley, Julie Fox, David Patry
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- Journal:
- Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences / Volume 31 / Issue 2 / May 2004
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 16 February 2016, pp. 194-203
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- Article
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Background:
Between August 25 and September 25, 2003 seven patients with West Nile virus neurological manifestations were identified through the hospital neurology consultation services in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Three of the seven patients were treated with interferon alpha-2b (IFN alpha-2b). In this report we document the clinical characteristics of these seven cases.
Methods:Clinical and laboratory information was obtained from a retrospective review of patient hospital and clinic charts. Patients were included if they had serological evidence of West Nile virus infection and had clinical evidence of aseptic meningitis, encephalomyelitis, cerebellar syndrome or motor neuronopathy. Three patients received a treatment course of three million units IFN alpha-2b, administered by subcutaneous injection once per day for 14 days.
Results:Four patients had cerebellar signs without change in consciousness, two had both encephalitis and neuromuscular weakness, and one patient had focal lower motor neuron arm weakness. The mean age was 52 (range 24 - 73). All patients had flu-like illness and fever as presenting symptoms and six had severe headaches. Two patients were immunocompromised prior to infection. Two patients with cerebellar signs (one with opsoclonus-myoclonus) improved spontaneously and exhibited only mild residual deficits on discharge. The other two patients with cerebellar findings developed brainstem involvement, one coinciding with and one subsequent to the cerebellar symptoms. Within one week of treatment with IFN alpha-2b these latter two patients showed marked improvement. One patient with encephalitis and neuromuscular weakness, was treated with IFN alpha-2b and subsequently recovered.
Interpretation:In this case review of seven patients, multiple neurological symptoms occurred in each patient and the neurological presentation was varied. Four patients had predominant cerebellar findings and one patient had opsoclonus-myoclonus, not previously reported. The marked improvement in three patients who received IFN alpha-2b raises preliminary optimism towards this potential treatment.