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Announcing: Storytelling on Screen – An Online Playback Theatre Archive and Guidebook

by Anita Walz, posted on October 9, 2021

Virginia Tech School of Performing Arts and Virginia Tech Publishing are happy to announce publication of Storytelling on Screen: An Online Playback Theatre Archive and Guidebook. 

What is Playback? Playback Theatre is a form of community-centered storytelling theater where the audience tells stories, which are then reflected by a company of actors and musicians. 

Storytelling on Screen: An Online Playback Theatre Archive and Guidebook is an open education resource consisting of a collection of full-length recordings of online Playback Theatre performances, and a 55-page explanatory guidebook. The guidebook, featuring a foreword by Playback Theatre co-founder, Jo Salas, explains the adaptation to online performances and some of the key concepts, roles, and forms involved in online Playback Theatre. The resource as a whole is suitable for a wide range of theatre students in courses such as applied theatre, theatre for social justice, improvisation, theatre appreciation, or acting. The guidebook contains hyperlinks to specific sections of the archive where students can see a given form or concept in action, allowing for a comparison of how different companies approach a given form.

Cover Storytelling on Screen: An Online Playback Theatre Archive and Guidebook by Jordan Rosin and Heidi Winters Vogel with Sammy Lebron
Cover Art: (c) 2021, Paul Haesemeyer The Race(rs) CC BY NC SA 4.0; Cover design: Kindred Grey

Table of Contents

Foreword by Jo Salas
Acknowledgments
Editor Biographies
How to Use the Archive and Guidebook
Introduction to the Project
I. The Archive
– Performance #1 World Playback Theatre: “New Beginnings”
– Performance #2 The Ume Group: “Voices in the Stone” at Virginia Tech
– Performance #3 Pangea Playback Theatre: “What Now?”
II. The Guidebook
What is Playback Theatre?
Roles
Concepts
Forms
Further Reading, Listening, and Viewing
Appendix I: Adding to this Archive
Appendix II: Additional Viewing

About you

If you are an artist, educator, or theatre-maker using this resource, please help us understand your use by filling out this form https://bit.ly/playback_interest

About the Editors

Jordan Rosin (he & they) is a director/choreographer, actor-creator, and researcher/teacher, specializing in applied and ensemble-devised physical theatres. He is a Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of the New York City–based physical theatre ensemble, The Ume Group and is a frequent collaborator with the butoh/physical theatre company 連翹奏 Ren Gyo Soh. During the creation of this archive and guidebook, Jordan was on the faculty at Virginia Tech’s School of Performing Arts where he taught acting and applied Theatre as a 2019–2021 Post-MFA Teaching Fellow in the Department of Theatre and Cinema.

Heidi Winters Vogel (she/her) is a director, performer, educator, and activist. She is a member of the theater faculty at Wabash College in Indiana, teaching acting, improvisation, dramaturgy, and socially engaged theatre. Heidi co-founded Inside Out Playback Theatre over a decade ago in Virginia and continues to perform with World Playback Theatre, Playback for People, and Thursday Zoomers. Heidi serves on the Advisory Council for Playback North America, is a board member (Treasurer) for the Centre for Playback Theatre, and serves in regional leadership for the Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival. She has directed for such companies as Crossroads Repertory Theatre, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, Penn State’s Centre Stage, and Loaves and Fish Repertory. wintersvogel@gmail.com

Sammy Lebron (he/him) is a student, aspiring actor, and lover of all things involving storytelling. He provided editorial assistance for this volume. As of the fall semester of 2021, Sammy will be entering his fourth and final year at Wabash College. He is currently studying toward a BFA in Theater. He was cast in several mainstage productions, compiled data for the costume department, interned with companies such as Crossroads Repertory Theatre and the Sugar Creek Players’ Vanity Theatre, and was nominated to compete for the Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival’s Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship.

Acknowledgments

Contributing Companies
Pangea Playback Theatre
The Ume Group, Jordan Rosin and Keelie Sheridan, Co-Artistic Directors
World Playback Theatre

Contributors
Will C., Sarah Monnerat, Rosey, Autumn, Mary Johnson, Dorina Harangus, Cherae Hailey, David B., Jeremie Day-Gilder, Randy Mulder, Matteo, Karen McClain Kiefer, Warren, Kathy, Vicki, Steve Nash, Liza Zagryazhskaya, Sammy, Roberta Gore, LK, Florence Yoo, Felicitator, Rethabile Molatela, Danny, Bernard, Clarissa, Lou van Laake, Moe, Jo Salas, Joan Lipkin, Sheila Donio, Ricardo Pérez González, Andrea Sandoval, Ping, Joe, Federico Mallet, Linda Steuernagel, Joan, Michael, Karen McClain Kiefer, Joerge, J Fox, Paul McIsaac, Agnes, Nir, Rena, Judy Dolmatch, René, Lisa Schrauf, Suri, Joyce Lu, Andrew, Alejandro Bastien, Natasha, Pi, Dorothy, Ben Rivers, Erica, Diana G., Mary Elizabeth Wheeler, Tanya, Marcin, Sinikka, Judy, Debe Edden, Elsa Childs, Erica, Devrim Nicoló Turletti, Kathleen Sills, Sheila Donio, Judy Freed, Diana Greenhut, Roni Alperin, Noha Arafa, Wavey Davey, Fish, Heidi Jablonski, Chris Panzica, Rick Sanford, Thulasi, Tom Tillar, David Vogel (he/him), Katharina Witte, and various others who prefer to remain anonymous and/or whose names appear only in the recordings.

This work was made possible in part by a commission from the Council on Virginia Tech History and funding from the University Libraries at Virginia Tech’s Open Education Initiative Faculty Grant program, Virginia Tech Publishing, and Wabash College’s Theater Department Summer Internship Program.

The stories in these performance archives are the property of their tellers. The recordings of them were released by their owners under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 license.

CC-BY-NC-SA logo

This work is licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Suggested citation: Rosin, Jordan, and Heidi Winters Vogel. 2021. Storytelling on Screen: An Online Playback Theatre Archive and Guidebook. Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Tech Publishing. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/104420. Licensed with CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0.

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