December 9, 2013 The phrase, the overweight brain, comes from Hamletmachine by Heiner Müller (1929-2005), the East German dramatist. Hamletmachine is a postmodern distillation and reconfiguration of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In the play, Müller's Hamlet embodies the dead end of Western intellectual history—describing himself, he says, “Like a hunchback I drag my overweight brain.” Fred Newman loved Müller’s...
July 23, 2013 Last month I spent my Wednesday evenings in conversation on the topic of “Performance Activism.” I was co-leading a short course in the East Side Institute’s Revolutionary Conversation series. My partner was Dan Friedman, who is a theatre historian, artistic director of the Castillo Theatre and, with me,...
December 19, 2012 “A lot rides on our capacity to be who we’re not.” So remarked Christine LaCerva, director of The Social Therapy Group and the East Side Institute’s clinical training. Christine was one of six who I assembled to address the topic, “The Therapeutic Power of Performance,” at a plenary session...
December 16, 2012 I was in Serbia last week. I crammed a lot into four days and it was well worth it. I’ve been going to Serbia once a year for more than a decade and each time I experience the joy of people supporting other people to develop and, at...
October 17, 2012 “Schools for growth—ones where developmental learning occurs—are much more like theatrical stages than classrooms." I wrote those words, in 1997, as the opening sentence of my book, Schools for Growth: Radical Alternatives to Current Educational Models. Fifteen years later, I believe it even more strongly. As school becomes more...
September 24, 2012 Today I’m going to do some more promotion for Performing the World 2012 (PTW 2012)—because I’m so excited about it! The opening reception on Thursday evening October 4 will be a community welcome to New York—featuring food prepared by dozens of New York City friends; greetings by myself and...
September 13, 2012 It's the last few weeks leading up to the 7th Performing the World gathering taking place October 4-7 at the All Stars Project headquarters on 42 St in NYC. Amidst all the details and fine tuning of schedules and staffing, there's the bigger picture—the historicity of the activity,...
May 31,2012 For the past three Tuesday evenings, I’ve been leading “Making a Conceptual Revolution: The Practical-Critical Philosophy of Fred Newman”—an offering in the Institute’s Revolutionary Conversations series. It’s been delightful spending time with 30+ people from varied walks of life and varied levels of familiarity with Newman and his work...
January 23, 2012 A huge thanks to my friend Tony Perone for alerting me to a recent TED Talk by Stephen Volan, "Approaching Autism Theatrically." Diagnosed with Asperger's as an adult, Stephen shares how he experiences himself in the world, at one point likening it to just about constant stage fright....
November 8, 2011 Please check out the latest issue of the East Side Institute’s newsletter, Reports from the Field, for news on what our friends, colleagues and alumni are up to. You’ll hear from Annalie Pistorius and her new social therapy practice in Pretoria South Africa, the synergy between Elina Lampert-Shepel and...
