Contact:	Kim Brockway					For immediate release
			(212) 854-2419
			kkb18@columbia.edu


Bill T. Jones, Margo Jefferson, Andrei Serban, 
Anne Bogart, David Henry Hwang and Others Featured 
in Columbia University Theatre Conference, May 2-4

	The Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies at Columbia 
University's School of the Arts will host a theatre conference entitled Thinking 
and Doing: Performance and Text  on May 2-4.  Theatre theorists and 
practitioners will gather for workshops, panel discussions, and performances 
that explore the position of text in theatrical production.  

	Panels include "Revisiting the Greeks;" "Justice, Race, Performance;" 
"Amnesia, Nostalgia, Authenticity: Rewriting History for the Stage;" "Acting and 
the Demands of Language;" and "Document and Vision."  Andrei Serban, Anne 
Bogart, Tina Landau, and Kristin Linklater will lead acting, voice and 
choreographing fiction workshops.

	The conference is open to the public.  Conference tickets are $30; $25 for 
students/ seniors (there is an extra charge for workshops).  The conference will 
take place within Columbia University's theatres: Miller Theatre; Schaprio 
Theatre; Teatro, Casa Italiana; and Schapiro Studio.  For ticket information, 
please call (212) 854-3408.

	Participants are expected to include Bill T. Jones, Robert Auletta, Annie 
Hamburger, Charles L. Mee, David Greenspan, Oliver Mayer, Shelby Jiggetts, 
Helene Foley, Froma Zeitlin, Margo Jefferson, Martin Meisel, Arnold Aronson, 
Joseph Roach, Susan Bennett, Una Chaudhuri, Richard Knowles, James 
Leverett, Kendall Thomas, David Henry Hwang, Jonathan Crary, Elinor Fuchs, 
and Emily Mann.   	

	The conference is set to coincide with the M.F.A. actors' thesis production, 
American Silents, created and directed by Anne Bogart, at The Raw Space, 529 
West 42nd Street, May 2-11.  For tickets or further information about American 
Silents, call (212) 279-4200.

	The conference is a result of joint efforts of Columbia's Ph.D. and M.F.A. 
theatre departments, and was organized by Julie Bleha, Heidi Coleman, Ehren 
Fordyce, Ellen MacKay, Carrie Ryan, and Tamsen Wolff.  The Ph.D. program 
emphasizes the exchange between theatre practice and academic scholarship.  
The professional theatre program at the Oscar Hammerstein II Center, under 
the direction of Andrei Serban, offers M.F.A. programs in dramaturgy, directing, 
acting, playwriting, and theatre management, and produces dozens of theatre 
events each year, from new play readings to third-year acting and directing thesis 
productions.  

	American Silents is an exploration of the American silent film era using 
Bogart's widely-praised technique of training actors and creating ensemble.  The 
text is a compilation of first-hand source material on twenty players (actors, 
directors, cameramen, and producers) from the silent film period. 


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