TSQ No. 9 - 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).

Dennis Beck is a theatre historian whose areas of research include Czech theatre, theatre censorship, acting theory and history, and the function of theatre in a mediatized world. His work has appeared in Theatre Survey, Theatre Journal, Theatre Forum, Theatre InSight, Onstage Studies, Slavic and East European Performance, and in the anthologies Method Acting Reconsidered, and Why Teach Theatre (Fall 2004). For his research he has been awarded Fulbright and National Security and Education Program fellowships, as well as Research Excellence grants from Bradley University, where he teaches in the Department of Theatre Arts.

Alexander Burry is a Post-doctoral Fellow in the Princeton University, Slavic Department.

Daša Drndić was born in Zagreb in 1946 and graduated from the Philological Faculty at the University of Belgrade in 1968. She is presently a Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Rijeka and a writer of prose fiction and essays. Her works include Put do slobode (1982), Kamen s neba (1984), Marija Czestochowska još uvijek roni suze ili Umiranje u Torontu (1997), Canzone di Guerra. Nove davorije (1998), Totenwande. Zidovi smrti (2000), Doppelganger (2002).

Aleksei Goncharenko is a doctoral student in the Department of History of the Russian Theatre at the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (GITIS), where he is working on his dissertation, "A. I. Iuzhin: Director of the Malyi Theatre, 1909-27." He is the main specialist on childrens' and puppet theatre for the Theatre Union of the Russian Federation and he is also a scholarly colleague at the scholarly research section of the Moscow Art Theatre. As the author of over 100 articles, he has published in both journals (Teatr and Teatral'naia zhizn') and newspapers (Ekran i stsena and Pervoe centiabria).

Mgr. art. Pavol Janík, PhD. has worked at the Ministry of Culture (1983-87), in the media, and in advertising. In 1998, he became the secretary of the Slovak Writers' Society (Spolok slovenských spisovatelov) and since 2003 he has been its president. He has received a number of awards for his literary and advertising work both in his own country and abroad. He has published poems and aphorisms, plays and scholarly articles. His dramatic works include Tuctová komédia (s manzelkou Olgou) (Commonplace Comedy [with his wife, Olga]) (1986), Skrupinový zámok (Eggshell Castle) (1988), Súkromný striptíz (A Private Striptease) (1993), Maturitný oblek (A School Graduation Suit) (1994), Pasca na seba (The Trap) (1995), and Nezná klauniáda (A Tender Farce) (2004).

Dasha Krijanskaia, Ph.D is a theatre history lecturer at the Theatre Acting School GITIS-Scandinavia, Denmark. She is also a chief editor of the journal TEATRÚ: Russian Theatre Past and Present. Her research interests include contemporary Russian and Eastern European theatre, Russian and European modern theatre, and the directorial systems of the 20th century. She has published in Slavic ànd Eastern European Performance, Theatre History Studies, Encyclopedia of the World Directors (in print), and the newspaper Kul'tura (Moscow).

Anne Lounsbery is Assistant Professor of Russian Literature at New York University. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard. Her first book, currently under contract at Harvard University Press, is about Gogol, Hawthorne, and the simultaneous rise of print culture and national literature in Russia and America. The present article grows out of her work on a second book, which will explore the symbolic construction of the provinces and the idea of provinciality in Russian culture and literature, primarily in the nineteenth century. Her other interests include race and ethnicity in Russian and American literature, Pushkin and blackness, and the African American reception of Pushkin.

Aleksandar Lukač is a theatre director from former Yugoslavia. He teaches drama at York University, Toronto as well as McMaster University. He has an MFA in Directing from York University and an MA in Drama from the University of Toronto where he is currently completing his doctorate

Yana Meerzon, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University of Ottawa. Her research interests include theatre theory and Russian drama. She has co-edited both of the theatre and drama issues of the Toronto Slavic Quarterly and publishes in both English and Russian. Her work has appeared in Slavic and East European Performance, OnStage Studies, and Translation Perspectives. Her book entitled The Path of the Character: Michael Chekhov Inspired Acting and Theatre Semiotics is forthcoming.

Jennifer Olson is a doctoral candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation is titled "K. H. Mácha and M. Iu. Lermontov: The Romantic Poet in 1930s Paris, Prague, and Moscow."

Vadim Perel'muter is a poet, literary historian, essayist and translator. He began publishing in 1965. His first volume of poetry, Diary, came out in 1984 and since then he has published two more poetry volumes (1991 and 1997) and a book on Viazemskii (1993). In all he has contributed to some 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 100 articles in periodicals. Perelmuter also worked for 15 years (from 1977) on the editorial staff of Literature Education. He initially took charge of the poetry section and then, for 12 years, headed literary theory and archival publications.

Rachel Perlmeter is a playwright, director and critic, currently in residence with Mabou Mines in New York. As a recent Fulbright Artist Fellow, she spent a year in Moscow working with the Fomenko Studio theatre and studying movement at the Shchuckin School of the Vakhtangov Theatre. She holds an M.A. in Theatre History and Criticism from the University of Texas at Austin and a B.S. in Theatre from Northwestern University where she graduated Summa cum Laude with highest distinction in Speech.

Magda Romanska - Polish director, designer and dramaturge, she received her B.A. from Stanford University. She also studied at Yale School of Drama and the Art Institute of Chicago. While at Yale, she was on the board of Yale Literary and Arts Magazine, Yale Theatre Magazine and Yale Journal of Law and Humanities. Her papers on contemporary theatre and literature were presented at conferences in Canada, United Kingdom, Greece, Turkey, Germany, France, Poland, India, and the U.S. at such Universities like Yale, Harvard, and Cornell. She is currently completing her Ph.D. in Theatre at the Cornell University.

Jacqueline Romeo is an adjunct faculty member at Emerson College Tufts University where she teaches theatre history and dramatic literature. She is in the midst of finishing her dissertation entitled "The Making of an American Stereotype: Constructing Chinese Identities in Late 19th-Century Frontier Melodramas."

Kate Sealey Rahman, Ph.D., is currently a British Academy Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL, University of London. She has published a number of articles on Ostrovskii and her book, Ostrovsky: Reality and Illusion was published in 1999. Her most recent publication was a study of Herzen in London, and she is currently working on a study of Ostrovskii's reputation and reception in Britain, funded by the British Academy.

Bogusław Schaeffer - Polish composer, theoretician and a playwright. He is the author of 40 plays. 17 books on modern music, and 400 music compositions, He is currently a professor at the Salzburg School of Music and at the Academy of Music in Kraków.

Prof. PhD. Eva Stehlíková is currently professor at the Department of Theater and Cinema Science at Charles University in Prague. Her fields of expertise are Czech, Roman, and Greek drama and theater. Her present project focuses on the work of the theater director Alfred Radok. As a theater critic she published numerous articles and books on medieval, Greek and Roman drama. Her publications include: A co když je to divadlo? (Koniash Latin Press + Divadelní ústav, 1998), Římské divadlo, (KLP, 1993), and Řecké divadlo klasické doby (Ústav pro klasická studia, 1991).

Heather Trebatická (née KING) was born in London and studied English language and literature at Manchester University. Since her marriage in 1967, she has lived in Slovakia, where she works as a lecturer in the Department of English at Comenius University (Bratislava). The majority of her translation work published in Slovakia has been in the fields of Slovak literature, culture, history and tourism. Translations published abroad (Canada, UK, USA) have included books on early Slovak history, medicinal plants, contemporary Slovak short stories, and traditional fairytales.

Mimi Tsankov works as lawyer in San Diego and is professionally involved with poetry at the same time.

Tatiana Tulchinsky is the award-winning co-translator of Lev Tolstoi, Plays in Three Volumes (Northwestern University Press, 1996-1998, with Marvin Kantor). She has also translated Anna Politkovskaya's A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya (University of Chicago Press, 2003) with Alexander Burry.

Irina Uvarova, Ph.D. is Head of the Department of Cultural Studies and a senior researcher at the Institute of Art History (Moscow, Russia). Her academic interests include puppet theatre, folk theatre, the Russian Avant-Garde, the Silver Age, and the life and works of Vsevolod Meierkhold. Uvarova is a chief-editor of the journal KykArt dedicated to the art of puppetry. She is the author of numerous articles and books I plyvet lodka (together with V. Novatskii) and Smeetsia v kazhdoi kykle charodei.

Georgii Vasilev, PhD, DSc, is Senior Researcher at the Agency for Bulgarians Abroad at the Council of Ministers in Sofia. He has a special interest in contemporary literature and, specifically, in the works of Stephan Gechev. He co-organized international conferences on Stephan Gechev and on the Bogomils, his second area of research. His book, Bogomil and Apocryphal Ideas in Medieval English Culture: The Bulgarian Image of Christ Plowman as Piers Plowman in William Langland's "The Vision Of Piers Plowman" was published in Bulgaria in 2001. Portions of his book can be found, in English, at: www.cl.bas.bg/Balkanstudies/bogomilism/index.html or www.geocities.com/bogomil1bg

Ewa Wąchocka, Ph.D. is Head of the Department of Theatre Studies at the University of Silesia. She was theatre critic and now she is occupied in modern drama and theory of drama. Her publications include books Między sztuką a filozofią. O teorii krytyki artystycznej Stanisława Ignacego Witkiewicza, Od symbolizmu do post-teatru and Autor i dramat as well as articles in collective works, and in Polish and German journals.

Lary Zappia (BFA University of Belgrade, MFA University of Calgary) is an international freelance theatre director. He has staged over 30 different productions (ranging from opera and musical to drama and vaudeville) in countries as diverse as Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Lithuania, Italy, and Canada. He has worked professionally both in "fossilized" institutions (like national theatres) and with non-mainstream "free" groups. Besides freelancing, he occasionally works as an acting and directing instructor and as a translator. For eight years he was also a member of the Board of the Dramatic Theatre Committee at the International Theatre Institute (ITI/UNESCO). He is currently in his third year of the Ph.D. program at the Graduate Centre for Study of Drama at the University of Toronto.

© TSQ

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