Chris DuVal

Department of Theatre

Amount Awarded: $9,766.76

Awarded for 2016-17

Title: Warrior Girls Project

This Dee Grant will be used to host noted artist-scholar Dr. Kamella Tate in collaboration with Assistant Professor Christopher DuVal for a teaching-performance residency that will include master classes, play development practicums, and an in-progress presentation of WARRIOR GIRLS. The project will provide students with training in text-based devised theatre practices, as well as serve as the basis for the development of novel approaches to playmaking, community building, and public practice in the cultural sector.

----------

Summary:

Dr. Kamella Tate and I (as the PI) collaborated during the entire academic year of 2016 / 2017 on a project titled The Warrior Girls, which developed in conjunction with curriculum development, guest taught classes, discussions with scholars, social workers, and artists across campus – in addition to the development of a Creative Caucus held in the Babcock Theatre with reknowned historian Dr. Judy Litoff. There were several grants that all contributed to this work, however the Dee Grant was instrumental primarily in the development of the curriculum that Dr. Tate and I defined, as well as serving as necessary travel funds for Dr. Tate to guest teach classes and engage in discussions / work sessions in planning the script and work flow.

Curriculum Development:

Images and video recordings will be forthcoming. Dr. Tate developed a deep series of master classes over 4 separate visits to the University of Utah. She taught, lead discussions, organized break-out sessions with a variety of students and colleagues across campus in which the development of “Text-based Devised Theatre” served as the central area of investigation. As the Head of the Actor Training Program, this was of particular interest to me in that our students are being taught to not only thrive within traditional theatre productions but to also learn to develop their own work in meaningful and productive ways. The work that Dr. Tate introduced was instrumental in helping further define our own curriculum in the ATP as well as offered our students and campus an opportunity to collaborate and learn from an artist / researcher based in Los Angeles.

Warrior Girls Script Development:

Dr. Tate also visited campus to serve the function of continuing to develop the script that was intended to be the foundation for a larger and more fully produced event in the future. This script development took the form of meetings, workshops, open studios, and rehearsals in which the large body of primary source material could be filtered, analyzed, and considered for artistic inclusion in the work.

Creative Caucus:

The Creative Caucus was an event held in the Babcock Theatre that served to summarize the work that had been accomplished. Dr. Litoff traveled to the University of Utah to present her work on the subject of women in WWII, and Dr. Tate presented a “work-in-progress” of Warrior Girls in which she demonstrated an early step towards the eventual creation of a more fully realized theatrical event.

Work products: All project materials can be found in the Google Drive Articles of War: Utah Casebook at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B4h7xYEjX7CseE40WEZtbC1rN1U?usp=sharing

The complete "reading-ready script" is in the Play Development & Open Studio folder – file name ArticlesOfWar_OpenStudioReadingText.pdf, along with a Women in the Military in WWII Resource Bank in the Resource Banks folder.