Tisch Faculty and Alumni Collect Honors and Awards

By Richard Pierce

Richard Schechner Receives Poland’s Outstanding Service Medal

      Richard Schechner, University Professor and professor of performance studies in the Tisch School of the Arts, was recently presented with Poland’s Outstanding Service Medal for Contributions to Polish Culture. The medal, awarded on behalf of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland, was presented by Monika Fabijanska, director of the Polish Cultural Institute in New York.
      Schechner was honored, in part, for his enduring commitment to the work of Jerzy Grotowski, of whom he was America’s first champion.
      “It is hard to imagine how Polish theater would be understood in the United States today had Richard Schechner not had the vision in 1963 to translate and publish Jerzy Grotowski in Tulane Drama Review, if he had not participated in the Laboratory Theatre workshops held in New York in 1967, and if he had not introduced generations of students to Grotowski, as well as other Polish theater artists, over the past four decades,” said Fabijanska.

Red Burns Honored with Women in Science Award

      Red Burns, arts professor and Tokyo Broadcasting Chair of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at the Tisch School of the Arts, has been awarded a Women in Science: Inspiring Women in the Field award by San Francisco’s Exploratorium. She and her four fellow honorees will be feted at the 32nd annual awards dinner on May 18. The Exploratorium, housed within the walls of San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts, is a collage of hundreds of science, art, and human perception exhibits, and is a leader in the movement to promote museums as informal education centers, among other things Burns is being honored for her tremendous impact on the communications field. During the 1970s, as head of NYU’s Alternate Media Center, she designed and directed a series of projects including a two-way television for senior citizens, telecommunications applications to serve the developmentally disabled, and one of the first Teletext field trials in the United States.

George C. Stoney Honored in Month-Long Tribute

      George C. Stoney, Paulette Goddard Professor of Film in the Kanbar Institute of Film and Television at the Tisch School of the Arts, is the subject of a month-long tribute by Anthology Film Archives, the New York-based center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video.
      Anthology is recognizing the renowned documentarian for his life-long work as media activist and film professor. One or more of Stoney’s works is screened every Wednesday throughout the month of April, and a discussion with Stoney and special guests follows each event. For more detailed information, call 212-505-5181; or visit www.anthologyfilmarchives.org

Tisch Alumni Win 2009 Jonathan Larson Grant

      Mark Allen ’06 and Ryan Scott Oliver ’07, recent alumni of the Graduate Music Theatre Writing Program at the Tisch School of the Arts, were among the five 2009 winners of the Jonathan Larson Grants, which recognize and support emerging composers, lyricists, and book writers. The winners were presented with their awards at an industry reception last month in Manhattan.
      The Jonathan Larson Grants were established in 1997 to honor the memory of the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize recipient. Originally established with the resources of the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation and gifts from the Larson family, an endowment at the American Theatre Wing sustains the awards in perpetuity.

Robert Stam is Visiting Davis Fellow at Princeton

      Robert Stam, University Professor in the Cinema Studies Department at the Tisch School of the Arts, is a Visiting Davis Fellow in Princeton’s Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, which conducts a weekly seminar on a theme or aspect of history. Topics represent relatively new approaches to the study of history. For 2008-10, the theme is “Cultures and Institutions in Motion.”
      While in residence, the six to eight selected Fellows, along with faculty, graduate students, and selected undergraduates, pursue research related to this theme.