Performers and Contributors
A professor of piano and music theory at Southwestern University, Kiyoshi Tamagawa (pianist) has performed in such illustrious venues as Weill Recital Hall, Merkin Hall, and Wigmore Hall. Deemed an “excellent pianist” by The Strad magazine, Tamagawa has performed in cities across North America including Chicago, New York, and Ontario. In addition to performing regularly at SU, Tamagawa’s skills as a pianist have taken him to numerous international cities including Xiamen, China; Taipai, Taiwan; London, England and Pune, India. For Les Chansons de Bilitis, he will perform in all three live performances: the 12 Chansons de Bilitis, 3 Chansons de Bilitis for mezzo-soprano and piano (with Carol Kreuscher,) and the 6 Epigraphes antiques (with Anthony Tobin.)
Magen Comley (flutist) has been playing flute since she was 11 years old and will receive her Bachelor of Music degree in Flute Performance from Southwestern University in May 2010. At Southwestern, Magen has performed numerous works by composition students as well as faculty; she also served as the principle flutist for The Color of Dissonance last spring and second flutist for Michael Cooper’s edition of Felix Mendelssohn’s St. Paul. In addition to playing with the University Orchestra, Wind Ensemble, and Woodwind Quintet, Magen has performed under the direction of Dr. Lois Ferrari as a substitute flutist for the Austin Civic Orchestra since she was a first-year student at SU. In spring 2009, she was selected by application to be a part of the Small College Intercollegiate Band that performed at the CBDNA (College Band Directors National Association) convention in Austin, TX.
Currently performing with the Dallas Opera, Delaine Fedson (harpist) also makes occasional appearances with the Austin, Ft. Worth, San Antonio and Waco Symphonies. Not only a performance harpist, Fedson has taught harp throughout the United States, Canada, and Italy at various workshops, festivals, and conferences. Fedson’s teaching positions have also included prestigious Texas universities, specifically Texas A & M, St. Edwards, Baylor, the University of Texas at Austin and Southwestern. Still teaching at UT and SU, Fedson currently maintains her private harp studio in Austin, which she founded in 1986. Fedson will perform in the 12 Chansons de Bilitis as part of the chamber ensemble.
A member of the American Composers Forum and ASCAP, Adrienne Inglis (flutist) has been playing the flute since she was a child and now performs, records, composes for, and tours with Chaski, a Latin American folk music trio. In addition, Inglis does freelance flute playing, composes sacred choral works, and teaches flute at Southwestern University, Georgetown and Westwood High Schools, and St. Stephen’s Episcopal School. An accomplished soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player, she also has several film soundtrack recordings under her belt, including Kill Bill: Vol. 2, SpyKids 2, and The Children’s War. Inglis will perform with the chamber ensemble in the 12 Chansons de Bilitis.
Kathleen Juhl (director and narrator), a professor of acting and performance studies at Southwestern University since 1987, is both a seasoned performer and director. As a performer, Juhl has traveled across the Midwest and Southeast; in addition, she collaborates regularly with various SU music ensembles, lending her powerful and emotive voice to accompanying narrations. As a director, Juhl has directed numerous productions at Southwestern, most recently Execution of Justice by Emily Mann, Disappeared by Phyllis Nagy, and April DeAngelis’ Playhouse Creatures. A certified Alexander Technique teacher, Dr. Juhl has also completed training in related bodywork modalities, including the Feldenkrais Technique and Craniosacral Therapy. For Les Chansons de Bilitis, Juhl contributes both as director as well as recitation performer in the 12 Chansons de Bilitis.
Mezzo-soprano Carol Kreuscher (mezzo-soprano) is no stranger to the stage; her opera credits include Cosi fan tutte, Die Zauberflöte, The Ballade of Baby Doe and The Medium. Kreuscher has also been a featured soloist in Handel’s Messiah, Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, and Honegger’s King David and has held fellowships at the Aspen Music Festival and the Stonybrook Bach Festival. A sought-after master class clinician, Kreuscher has been a faculty member at Southwestern since 1995, where she most recently performed as Gabriele Münter in the world premiere of The Color of Dissonance. Kreuscher will perform with Kiyoshi Tamagawa in 3 Chansons de Bilitis for the Bilitis project.
Anthony Tobin (pianist) joins the performers of Bilitis from the University of Texas at Austin. An accomplished pianist and winner of the Junior Baldwin Piano Competition, Tobin has performed across the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, and in Brazil, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom as a soloist, chamber musician, and pianist for eurythmy (an art form combining dance, music, poetry, and lighting.) Tobin’s renditions of Beethoven sonatas are featured in the motion picture The Quiet, and he has acted as piano coach and technical advisor for actresses Camilla Belle and Elisha Cuthbert. Not limited to performing, Tobin has taught at the University of Southern California, Laredo Community College, Kirby Hall School, and the University of Texas at Austin. Tobin will join Kiyoshi Tamagawa to bring the 6 Epigraphes antiques to life.
Scholars and Other Contributors
Elliott Antokoletz, Ph.D. (UT) (biography coming soon)
For Kerry Bechtel (costume and make-up designer), costume and make-up design is hardly foreign territory. Previously, Bechtel has acted as costume designer with several groups including PRO Arts Collective, Zilker Theatre Productions, HBMG Foundation, and Alpine Theatre Productions for shows including Common Ground, Beauty and the Beast, Love Sonatas, and Pete n’ Keely (respectively.) As a make-up artist, Bechtel worked with Bajakaloop! Productions as well as Polyvinyl Pictures. At Southwestern University, Bechtel has produced designs for numerous productions including Alice in Wonderland, Cabaret, All’s Well That Ends Well, HAIR, Company, The Country Wife, and The Rocky Horror Show in spring 2009. Professor Bechtel is also a member of United Scenic Artists (USA Local 829) as well as USITT Costume Commission.
John Michael Cooper (producer) has directed five conferences in the past twelve years, giving him ample preparation for coordinating the multi-faceted Bilitis project. Dr. Cooper has held the Margarett Root Brown Chair in Fine Arts since 2006, when he first joined the SSFA faculty. Specializing in nineteenth-century music, historiography, and political history, Dr. Cooper has published numerous journal articles and is the author of several books, including Mendelssohn, Goethe, and the Walpurgis Night: The Heathen Muse in European Culture, 1700-1850, which was published by the University of Rochester Press in 2007. In addition, Dr. Cooper has unearthed and edited unknown and little-known works by Felix Mendelssohn and Fanny Hensel; these include Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony (Oxford University Press, 2003), Mendelssohn’s Opus 69 and Opus 78 Motets, and Mendelssohn’s St. Paul (the latter three all published by Bärenreiter). At Southwestern, Dr. Cooper is teaches music literature, emphasizing arts history in a cultural context, as well as a Paideia professor. He will also direct the upcoming Brown Symposium XXXIII, titled Think – Converse – Act: The Salon and Its Cultures, Then and Now, in spring 2011.
2009 – 2010 will be Sergio Costola’s (dramaturg) sixth year at Southwestern University; his specializations include theatre history and historiography, which make him an ideal dramaturg for the Bilitis project. Before coming to Southwestern, Costola taught at the University of California, Los Angeles and at Loyola Marymount University. The subjects of his courses revolve around theatre history, dramaturgy, and intercultural theatre. Not only a versatile professor, Costola has also written various book reviews, articles, and presented papers at several conferences. In the summer of 2009, he is teaching theatre courses in Bulgaria.
A scholar in the areas of scientific, British, and imperial history, Elizabeth Green Musselman (documentary contributor) comes to the Bilitis project with an in-depth understanding of the historical relationship between science and society. She encourages her students to become active, critical and well-informed on history’s events. Currently conducting research on African and European knowledge about and ways of understanding nature in colonial South Africa, Green Musselman also displays a passion for knitting and the fiber arts. Musselman has authored Nervous Conditions: Science and the Body Politic in the Industrial Age as well as several notable articles, and she has been the recipient of multiple major awards, including a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (2003.) Her interest in Bilitis, Revisited derives not least of all from Louÿs’ decision to imbue his forgeries with an air of authority by casting them as scientific findings (the discoveries of a fictitious German archeologist).
Halford W. Haskell (documentary contributor) frequently conducts his research on the Greek Bronze Age economy (ca. 1500-1200 B.C.E., the time of the Trojan War) and is the director of a long-term interdisciplinary pottery analysis project, aiming to rediscover the pathways which connected ancient cities. A Paideia professor at Southwestern University, Haskell also teaches courses in advanced Greek and Latin. Haskell’s expertise is exemplified in his numerous article publications as well as more than thirteen years of participation in the virtual Classics program, Sunoikisis, initially funded by the Mellon Foundation. To aid in data collection and analysis, Haskell employs his students as research associates, broadening students’ minds and strengthening the student-faculty relationship. Haskell’s insights on connections and interpretations of the literature of Classical antiquity, the historical facts of life in ancient Greece, and the significance of the liberties Louÿs and Debussy took in interpreting that subject for their contemporaries make him an essential contributor to Bilitis, Revisited.
A special interest in early Greek thought makes Phillip Hopkins (documentary contributor) an integral contributor to Bilitis, Revisited. Hopkins’ specialty, Ancient Philosophy, has led him to research in the rhetoric of mass media, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of religion, and the relation of media and moral heuristics. In his research, Hopkins concerns himself with the ways in which people talk to one another as well as questions of how humans come to know and judge the world, supplemented by further exploration of the world’s earliest thinkers and how they knew the world as well as how they chose to explain it. At Southwestern, Hopkins teaches courses in philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, history of philosophy, and various related topics.
2009 – 2010 will be composer Jason Hoogerhyde’s (documentary contributor) fifth year at Southwestern University. Through a Meet-the-Composer grant, Hoogerhyde has been artist-in-residence at the Ucross Foundation, the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, and the Cincinnati Public Schools. Within the U.S., his music has been performed at festivals and concert series including MusicX, College Music Society, and Weill Recital Hall in New York City; internationally, it has been performed by groups in the United Kingdom, France, Latvia, and the Philippines. Working with multiple professors within the SSFA, Hoogerhyde composed the music for the new opera The Color of Dissonance, which premiered last March to rave reviews.
Thomas Howe (installation architect: “The Mysteries Revisited”), an architectural historian with background in several fields including classical archaeology, art history, and architectural theory and design, comes well-equipped to act as architect for The Mysteries Revisted. A revered professor who co-founded Southwestern University’s architectural studies program with Patrick Veerkamp, Howe has conducted research in Turkey, the United Kingdom, and Italy, acquiring reading and speaking abilities in French, Italian, Green, Latin, Turkish, and Chinese. Howe’s translation of and commentary on Vitruvius aided the creation of a Smithsonian exhibition, and the drawings are currently the basis for the “Eureka, the Genius of the Antiques” exhibit showing at the Museo Archeologico Naxionale di Napoli, the largest and oldest archaeological museum in Europe.
An assistant professor of communication studies at Southwestern University, Julia Johnson (documentary contributor) recently received a grant to conduct interviews with transgender activists in Los Angeles and San Francisco, supplementing interdisciplinary research on feminism, communication, and activism. Johnson has been an appointed faculty member on the Feminist Studies Committee at SU since 2007 and teaches interdisciplinary courses such as Communication, Culture, and Social Justice. With three other SU professors, including Kathleen Juhl, another Bilitis participant, Johnson will identify problems in Southwestern’s study-abroad programs by participating in the Border Studies Program that Earlham College runs at the U.S./Mexico border.
An authority on disability studies, feminist and queer theory, and activism, Alison Kafer (documentary contributor) is no stranger to the paradigm-shifting issues surrounding Bilitis. Kafer’s journal articles, including “Disability Studies and LBGTQ Movements” and “Hiking Boots and Wheelchairs: Ecofeminism, the Body, and Physical Disability,” usually present an interdisciplinary approach to her many areas of expertise. Kafer has been the recipient of numerous awards,including the Ed Robert Postdoctoral Fellowship in Disability Studies and the Women’s Studies Dissertation Scholar Teaching Fellowship. On the university circuit, Kafer has received a Mellon Integrated Scholarly Community Award with several other SU professors, the President’s Award at Claremont Graduate University, and the Presidential Talent Scholarship in Studio Art at Wake Forest University. Kafer is currently a board member of Generations Ahead: For Reproductive and Genetic Justice as well as Forklift Danceworks in Austin, TX, where she also serves as President.
Francis Mathieu (documentary contributor) comes to the Bilitis project with a wealth of knowledge in the areas of French literature, culture, and women’s studies. At Southwestern, Mathieu teaches upper-level French language, composition, culture, and literature courses; his interests include literature and culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and women’s studies. In previous academic endeavors, Mathieu has examined amorous passions in literary representations, and he recently received a grant to conduct research at the French National Library in Paris. Along with seven other Southwestern professors, two of whom are Bilitis contributors, Mathieu was recently selected to lead a section of the Paideia program, SU’s interdisciplinary Honors program.
A member of Actors Equity union, John Ore (lighting designer) is the resident lighting and sound director at Southwestern University as well as the Director of Technical Operations for the SSFA. His technical experience ranges from four years as lighting designer at the Alley Theatre in Houston to acting as production stage manager for the Houston Shaw Festival. Now beginning his thirteenth year at SU, he teaches courses including lighting design, sound design, and stage management. In the summer of 2009 he directed SU’s Summer Theatre Camp, which offers high-school students a chance to appear in theatrical productions.
Before coming to Southwestern University, Desidério Roybal (set designer) taught scenic design, lighting design, and technology courses for fifteen years at South Dakota State University. Roybal’s contributions to the Bilitis project will be supplemented by the designs he has completed for over 70 productions for theatre companies throughout the United States. At Southwestern, Roybal teaches scenic design, scene painting, and multiple other courses associated with the staging theatre; the research for his Master of Arts Degree concentrated on early twentieth-century popular theatre using wing and drop design, culminating in a series of drops which were sewn, built, and rigged using late nineteenth-century technology.
The work of Nancy Schiesari (cinematographer) has appeared on such channels as England’s Channel 4, BBC in London, ABC, National Geographic, PBS Independent Lens, the Australian Broadcast Corporation, TVOntario, and PBS; she has acted as director of photography, director, and producer on over 30 documentaries and feature films. Schiesari worked as cinematographer on Regret to Inform, an Academy Award-nominated documentary, and on the Emmy Award-winning The Human Face. She trained as painter and cinematographer in England, where she graduated from the Royal College of Art in London, and she currently teaches filmmaking and cinematography at the University of Texas at Austin, where she has been a professor for twelve years.
Marianne Wheeldon, Ph.D. (UT), documentary contributor (biography coming soon)
Brooke Lyssy, webmaster (biography coming soon)
Nicole Licea, site artwork (biography coming soon)
Megan McCarty, research assistant (biography coming soon)
Audrey Olena, administrative assistant (biography coming soon)
