Biographical Notes

Veronika Ambros, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Toronto, has published extensively on the semiotics of theatre and drama, literary theory, and modern Czech literature. Her research interests include cultural theory, German and Russian literary theory and literatures. Among her recent works are "The Anabases of the Good Soldier Švejk" in VSMU (2002), "Přesýpací hodiny--aneb pražská semiotika divadla a dramatu v kontextu soudobých semiotických teorií" in Divadelní Revue 1 (2001), "Modern Czech Women Writers after 1945" in A History of Central European Women's Writing (Palgrave 2001), and "Creating a Space of One's Own: The German Theatre In Prague Between The Wars" in Deutschsprachiges Theater in Prag, (Divadelní ústav, 2001). Articles currently in press include "Magnetic Fields. Theatre of the Avant-garde in Prague after 1918," "The Great War As A Carnival in Jaroslav Hašek's Novel The Fortunes of the Good Soldier Švejk During the War," and "Melancholy and Fear in the Work of Milada Součková." Professor Ambros is currently working on a new study From Karel Čapek to Václav Havel: The Experimental Stage in the Prague School of Semiotics Drama and Theatre.

Cynthia Ashperger was born in Zagreb, Croatia. She holds a BFA from the Academy for Film, Television, and Theatre (now the Academy for the Dramatic Arts) at the University of Zagreb and an MA from the University of Toronto where she is currently a PhD candidate. Ms. Ashperger has twenty years' experience as an actor and ten years' as an acting teacher. She currently holds a tenure-track position as an Acting Professor at the Ryerson Theatre School in Toronto (Ryerson University). Since 2000 her main interest has been Michael Chekhov's acting technique. She is currently working on a doctoral thesis titled "Michael Chekhov's Acting Technique in Contemporary Pedagogy and Practice." This year Ms. Ashperger will be presenting her paper "Spirituality in Michael Chekhov" at the Michael Chekhov International Conference (MICHA) in Amsterdam. She will also be receiving her Chekhov Technique certificate from MICHA at that time. Her other recent conference presentation was titled "Bunuel and Brecht: Liberating the Audience," which was presented at the conference Transcultural Imaginary of Luis Bunuel at the University of Ottawa in 2001.

Aleksei Bartoshevich, Ph. D., professor, and Winner of the Stanislavskii Prize, studied with the best specialists in Western theatre, including G. N. Boiadzhiev and A. A. Anikst, while completing his doctoral thesis, Shakespeare's Comedies at GITIS (now RATI). He is currently the leading Russian expert on Shakespeare, member of the International Shakespeare Association, and combines his teaching activities at RATI with his work at the State Institute of Art History. Besides his activities as a scholar and a teacher, Dr. Bartoshevich actively participates in Russian theatre life: he served as the secretary of the Union of Theatre Workers and as the vice president of the International Theatre Institute's Committee for Theatre Education. Dr. Bartoshevich has also served on juries for numerous theatre festivals and publishes regularly on theatre. Since the mid-90s he has presented a series of television programs about Shakespeare and English theatre.

Franc Chamberlain, Senior Lecturer in Performance Studies at University College, Northampton, UK. He is a scholar and artist in the field of performance with a specific interest in the performer's creativity. A former editor of Contemporary Theatre Review and Contemporary Theatre Studies, he is currently series editor for Routledge Performance Practitioners. Recent publications include a collection of essays, Jacques Lecoq and the British Theatre (Routledge 2002), which was co-edited with Ralph Yarrow, and Michael Chekhov (Routledge, in press). He is currently working on a solo performance entitled Playing with Robert Daniels's Playing with Myself which draws on, among other things, his studies into Process Work, Focusing, and phenomenology.

Julius Gajdoš, Ph. D., studied pedagogy at Komenský University in Bratislava. In 1985 he finished his graduate studies at DAMU in Prague. He began working as the dramaturge for the Czechoslovak Radio in Bratislava in 1986. In 1991 he founded the professional theatre society IN-THEATRE, the projects of which have featured theatre artists from various European countries. He is the author of plays and radio dramas, such as Lehcí jako prach, Rodinný přítel, Obývací stena, Cukrárna, Prach, and Z patologie lidske vitality. In 1993 he began teaching at Palacký University in Olomouc and the Centre for Experimental Theatre in Brno and in 1994 at the Theatre Institute of the Philosophy Faculty at Masaryk University in Brno and at the Theatre Faculty of the Janáček Academy of Music in Brno His current research interested include drama and theatre theory and postmodern forms of theatre

Stephen Grecco teaches dramatic literature and creative writing at the Pennsylvania State University in University Park. He writes for both the stage and radio and has won two National Endowment for the Arts playwriting fellowships, two EARPLAY awards, a Rockefeller Playwriting Prize and a Shubert Playwriting Award. His plays have been performed in New York City and in regional theatres, and have been broadcast nationally by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Radio Theatre. He has published critical articles on Anton Chekhov, Eugene O'Neill, Bernard Shaw, and the theatre of the absurd. He is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama.

Elwira M. Grossman is the Stepek Lecturer in Polish Studies at Glasgow University, UK. She has published comparative articles on Witkacy and G.B.Shaw, Różewicz and Albee. She is the editor of Studies in Language, Literature and Cultural Mythology in Poland: Investigating the 'Other' (2002). Currently she is working on a book devoted to twentieth-century Polish women playwrights.

Jana Horáková graduated from the Institute of Theatre and Film Science at the Faculty of Art Masaryk University in Brno. Her thesis was titled "Possibilities of Theatre in the System of Interactive Media." After graduation she enrolled as a graduate student at the Institute of Theatre and Film Science (the Faculty of Art of Masarýk University in Brno). She will graduate next year upon completion of her thesis "The Shift in Human-Machine Relations in the 20th Century; from Čapek˙s Robots to Stelarc˙s Cyborgs". Her publications include: "Virtuální realita -nbsp; -mdash; prostor divadelních aktivit," Otázky Divadla (2002), "Datatransfer" in Otázky divadla (2002), and "Divadlo-stroj, Divadlo-organismus" in Otázky Divadla (2003), which is currently in press.

Silvija Jestrović, Ph. D., is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the English Department at York University in Toronto. Her dissertation, "Making the Familiar Strange in Avant-garde Theatre," has been nominated by the Graduate Centre for Study of Drama, University of Toronto, for the 2002 CAGS/University Microfilms International Distinguished Dissertation Award. She has published numerous articles, including "Theatricality as Estrangement of Art and Life in the Russian Avant-garde" in Substance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism and "Performing the Symbiosis of Intertextuality and Distancing" in Balagan: Slavisches Drama, Theater und Kino. She is currently working on her book Theatre of Estrangement: Context, Theory, Consequences. She was also a convenor and co-organizer of the Conference on Theatre and Exile (University of Toronto, 2002), which gathered a distinguished group of scholars and practitioners from around the world. She is a guest co-editor for the special issue of Modern Drama (Summer 2003) dedicated to the topic of theatre and exile. In addition to her scholarly work, Dr. Jestrovic is a playwright and dramaturge, whose stage and radio plays have been produced in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and Belgrade.

Svetislav Jovanov is a dramatist, theatre critic, and the editor of the Serbian theatre journal, Scena. Between 1998 and 2000 he was the selector of the Yugoslav national theatrical festival Sterijino Pozorje and from 2000 to 2001 he was the head of the Drama Department at the Serbian National Theatre (Novi Sad). He has written many essays about contemporary Serbian playwrights, such as Dušan Kovačević, Ljubomir Simović, Vida Ognjenović, and Biljana Srbljanović. He has also written several books about contemporary Yugoslav and Serbian drama and literature including: Poisoners of Eden: Essays About Drama of Difference (1987), Picnic at Calvary: The World Literature of Borislav Pekić (1987), Heretic in the Altar (1994), Lobotomy Class: An Encyclopedic Bestiary of Danilo Kiš (1997), A Dictionary of Postmodernism (1999), and Deceived Eros: The Woman Question in Serbian Drama (1999). He has translated works by Raymond Chandler, Edgar Allan Poe, and Walter Benjamin into Serbo-Croatian. Presently he lectures on media theory at the Faculty of Management in Novi Sad, Serbia.

Paul J. Kelly is a graduate of the Comparative Literature Department at Pennsylvania State University and a freelance writer.

Aleksandr Laskin is a candidate in art history and an assistant professor at the St. Petersburg University of Culture and Art. He is a member of the St. Petersburg Union of Writers and is a winner of the International Tsarskoe Selo Prize in Art (1993) and the Zvezda Prize (2001). His books include: Neizvestnye Diagilevi, ili konets tsitaty (St. Petersburg, 1994); Neizvestny Mariengof (St. Petersburg, 1996); V poiskakh Diagileva (St. Petersburg, 1997), and the scholarly monograph Russkii period deiatel'nosti S.P.Diagileva (St. Petersburg, 2002). He was curator of the exhibition "S.P. Diagilev in Photographs, Graphic Art and Sculpture" (National Pushkin Museum, 1997).

Ralph Lindheim, Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Toronto. His research interests include Pushkin, the plays and prose of Anton Chekhov, Russian drama and theatre, and nineteenth-century Russian fiction and criticism. Among his numerous publications is Towards an Intellectual History of Ukraine: An Anthology of Ukrainian Thought from 1750 to 1995 (U of Toronto P, 1996), which he co-edited with George Luckyi. He has also edited a special issue of Modern Drama (Winter 1999) dedicated to Anton Chekhov.

Olga Miedwiediewa, PhD, graduated from the Moscow State University and Academy of Humanities of Russia. She has worked as a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Slavic Studies of the Academy of Humanities of Russia, written numerous articles on Polish literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and translated books and articles from Polish into Russian. Since 2001 she has resided in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Yana Meerzon, MA, Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (GITIS), is a PhD candidate at the Graduate Centre for Study of Drama, University of Toronto. Her doctoral thesis, "Actor, Stage Figure, Dramatic Character Semiosis in Michael Chekhov's Acting Theory and Practice," examines Michael Chekhov's acting theory in the prism of the Prague School's theatre studies. Her interests include the semiotics of theatre and film, cultural and performance studies, and Russian drama. She has published articles on theatre theory, translation, perception, and theatre criticism in Slavic and East-European Performance, On-Stage Studies, Translation Perspectives, Toronto Slavic Quarterly and Teatrl'naya Zhizn'. She is currently a guest co-editor for a special issue of Modern Drama (Summer 2003) dedicated to the topic of theatre and exile.

Don Nixon has a BFA in Theatre from the University of Saskatchewan. Since 1993 he has lived in Prague and worked as production manager for various theatre companies. Recently he coordinated the Canadian Theatre Season in Prague, and is currently working on a reciprocal season in Canada.

Il'ya Okazov is a poet, dramaturge, and translator of Kipling. He works as a translator in Moscow.

Jennifer Olson is currently a doctoral candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto. She received a BA in Russian and Slavic Studies from McGill University and an MA in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of Washington. Her dissertation will compare the works of Karel Hynek Mácha and M. Iu. Lermontov. Other interests include nationalism, the subversion of cultural myths in literature, and genre theory.

Robert Ormsby is a Ph. D. candidate at the University of Toronto's Graduate Centre for Study of Drama. He is working on late 20th-century performances of Shakespeare's Coriolanus. Although his primary research interests are focused on contemporary performances of Renaissance drama, he is also founder and editor of www.drama.ca, a website devoted to reviewing and writing about Canadian performance.

Vadim Perelmuter, poet, literary historian, essayist, and translator, began publishing in 1965. His first volume of poetry Diary came out in 1984 and since then he has published two more volumes of poetry (1991 and 1997) and a book on Viazemskii (1993). In all he has contributed to around twenty books, including volumes on Viazemskii, Sluchevskii, Krzhizhanovskii, Shengeli, Shteinberg, Khodasevich, and others, as compiler, textologist, or author of introductions and commentaries. He has published over one hundred articles in periodicals. Perelmuter also worked for fifteen years (from 1977) on the editorial staff of Literature Education. He initially took charge of the poetry section and then, for twelve years, headed literary theory and archival publications.

Susann Suprenant, Ph. D., University of Oregon, is currently the Head of Directing at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, a position she has held since 2000. She is also the chair of the Directing Symposium for the Mid-America Theatre Conference. Her recent activities in directing, dramaturgy, and research, which include her dissertation “Shakespeare Re-visions: Representations of Female Characters in Appropriations and Radical Performance Adaptations of Shakespeare's Plays,” focus on stage adaptations of canonical drama. She performed, presented, and published regionally (Northwest Theatre Review 2000) on her collaborative efforts to develop a performance composition method called Script (Inter)play. Currently she is researching the uses of performance composition in rehearsal and the classroom.

Tamara Trojanowska is Associate Professor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto. Her interests include 20th-century Polish literature, Slavic drama and theatre, modernity and postmodernity, and the discourse on identity and nationalism. Professor Trojanowska has published numerous articles on contemporary Polish and Czech drama and theater in Poland, Great Britain, Canada, and the United States and co-authored Quest for a New Theater. Her book, Identity on Trial: Gombrowicz, Różewicz and Mrożek and the Discourses of Modernity, is forthcoming.

A. Colin Wright, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies at Queen's University, has written widely on Russian and comparative literature, with a major book on Mikhail Bulgakov, and has published stories in various Canadian and British literary magazines. He also writes plays and novels. He was the 1993 winner in the Special Merit Category of Theatre BC's National Playwriting Competition for this adaptation of Lieutenant Kizhe and was a finalist in last year's competition with a play Germany Calling! -nbsp; -mdash; about the British traitor known as Lord Haw-Haw. He has just completed a new play on the Earl of Oxford as the writer of works attributed to Shakespeare. Both Lieutenant Kizhe and a one-act play, George's Funeral, have had stage performances.

Natal'ia Yakubova graduated from the Drama Studies Department of the Russian Academy of Theatre Art (GITIS). Her academic interests include Polish culture, typological research on Eastern European theatre after the fall of communism, and gender studies. As a critic she has written extensively about the work of the latest generation of European theatre artists and was among the founders of the festival NET: New European Theatre. She worked as an editor for the magazine Moskovskii nabludatel' (Moscow Observer). Since 1995 she has been a research fellow at the State Institute of Art Research, Moscow, Department of Central and Eastern European Art. Besides publications of State Institute of Art Research and other academic institutions, she has published works in theatre periodicals: Moskovkii nabludatel', Teatr, Sovremennaia dramaturgiia, (Russia), Didaskalia, Dialog, Pamietnik literacki (Poland), Vilagszinhaz (Hungary), Medzicas (Slovakia), and Etcetera (Belgium). She has translated works from English, Polish, and Hungarian into Russian. Her most recent projects explore the relevance of categories of gender theory for the contemporary drama theatre as well as for theatre history.

Krzysztof Zarzecki studied Polish and English at the University of Warsaw. He has worked as an editor and publisher for several publishing houses in Poland, among them Czytelnik, Iskry, and PIW. He has been a member of the new Association of Polish Writers since 1989 and of the Association of Polish Translators and Interpreters since 1984, serving as President of the latter's Section of Literary Translators from 1985 to 1987. Mr. Zarzecki has translated over 30 volumes of British, American, and Canadian authors, including John Dos Passos, Truman Capote, J.D. Salinger, Tennessee Williams, and Carol Shields, into Polish. His translations have been awarded prizes by the Polish Association of Translators, the Association of Authors (Warsaw), and the Turzanski Foundation (Toronto). He has also edited two anthologies of modern American short stories and an anthology of Western stories. He presently divides his time between Toronto and Warsaw.

© Toronto Slavic Quarterly

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