John Emigh
Encyclopedia
John Emigh is Professor Emeritus from the Departments of Theatre, Speech and Dance and of English at Brown University
, Providence, RI. Emigh taught at Brown from 1967 to 2009.
He entered Amherst College
, became interested in theater arts, and took a year off to travel to Spain and Morocco to study and translate plays by Federico García Lorca
. He received his BA from Amherst in English and Dramatic Arts in 1964 and went on to graduate school at Tulane University
in New Orleans. Tulane awarded him an MFA in Theatre (Directing) in 1967, and a PhD (Theatre: Theory and Criticism) in 1971.
Emigh is a director, performer, and acting teacher who has directed more than 70 plays in universities and in professional theatre, and has written extensively on the mask
ed theatre and rituals of New Guinea
, Bali
, and India
, as well as on Western theatrical practices. In 1974–75, he traveled in New Guinea
, South Asia, and Indonesia
, where he studied Balinese "topeng
" masked dance with I Nyoman Kakul. Since then, he has made several more research trips to Asia, investigating the street jesters and court fools of Rajasthan
, the use of masks in Eastern India, and the changing dynamics of performance in Bali
.
His 1985 documentary film, Hajari Bhand of Rajasthan: Jester without a Court, has been shown at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. Emigh also recently completed an interactive database of the permanent collection of masks at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi. His book Masked Performance: The Play of Self and Other in Ritual and Theatre combines years of ethnographic research with the insights of a practicing actor and director to describe and theorize the use of masks in both Asian and Western contexts.
Emigh has published contributions or articles in Cambridge Companion to Performance Studies; Cambridge Guide to Theatre; Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance; South Asian Folklore: An Encyclopedia; Teaching Performance Studies; Re-Playing Shakespeare in Asia; The Idea of Rajasthan: Explorations in Regional Identity; Gender in Performance: The Presentation of Difference in the Performing Arts; Art and Politics in Southeast Asia, Six Perspectives: Papers from the Distinguished Scholars Series; Popular Theatre: A Sourcebook; Masks: Faces of Culture, published by the St. Louis Art Museum; Teaching Performance Studies; SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies; Seagull Theatre Magazine; Faces; The Drama Review; Communications; Asian Theatre Journal; World of Music. His recent projects include an essay on the killings in Bali in 1965 as reflected in the Balinese performing arts, an article theorizing about Samuel Colt as the inspiration for George Bernard Shaw's Undershaft, and a report on a Balinese adaptation of Macbeth in the style of the gambuh theater. He is also investigating the links between the traditional concerns of the theater and recent research in neuroscience, as well as studying mask performance and traditions in Mexico
, Austria, Germany, and Italy
.
As a performer, Emigh has acted with leading Balinese artists and has performed one-man shows and lecture-demonstrations based on Balinese mask techniques at schools, hospitals, universities, theatres, and festivals throughout the United States and in Bali and India, including the Performing Garage
in New York City, The New Theatre Festival of Baltimore, the Indian National School for Drama, the Tibetan School of Drama, and the Balinese Academy for the Arts. Substantive articles about Emigh's theatrical work have appeared in TDR: The Drama Review and Asian Theatre Journal, as well as in various Asian journals.
He was the founding chairperson of the Association for Asian Performance and served as chair of Brown University's Department of Theatre, Speech and Dance from 1987 to 1993. In 1971, he conceived and co-ordinated the RI Festival of New Theatre (the first festival to bring together the work of America's leading avant-garde groups of that period). In 2005, Emigh was Artistic Director for Performance Studies International's Providence, RI conference and festival: "Becoming Uncomfortable." He served on the steering committees for the founding of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and of Performance Studies International, and he currently serves on PSi's executive board.
During his many years as a teacher of acting and directing, Emigh has trained several generations of stage and film actors, directors, playwrights, theater technicians, theater administrators, dramaturgs, and drama theorists. He counts among his students Kate Bornstein
, Bess Armstrong
, JoBeth Williams
, Eve Gordon, Laura Linney
, Aunjanue Ellis
, John Krasinski
and many more. He has nurtured a love of theater in thousands of his students. With his insatiable curiosity about the role of theater in human life, he has expanded many different fields of theater practice and theory, from studying the role theater plays in other cultures, to the role theater can play within the human brain.
Emigh is married to Ulrike Emigh and the father of David B. Emigh, and he is the father of Aaron Emigh and Rebecca Emigh from a previous marriage.
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
, Providence, RI. Emigh taught at Brown from 1967 to 2009.
Biography
John Emigh was born in Hartford, CT and grew up in Connecticut. In his New Britain high school, he was a saxophonist in the school band, treasurer of numerous clubs, and planning on going to law school with the goal of going into politics.He entered Amherst College
Amherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
, became interested in theater arts, and took a year off to travel to Spain and Morocco to study and translate plays by Federico García Lorca
Federico García Lorca
Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He is believed to be one of thousands who were summarily shot by anti-communist death squads...
. He received his BA from Amherst in English and Dramatic Arts in 1964 and went on to graduate school at Tulane University
Tulane University
Tulane University is a private, nonsectarian research university located in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States...
in New Orleans. Tulane awarded him an MFA in Theatre (Directing) in 1967, and a PhD (Theatre: Theory and Criticism) in 1971.
Emigh is a director, performer, and acting teacher who has directed more than 70 plays in universities and in professional theatre, and has written extensively on the mask
Mask
A mask is an article normally worn on the face, typically for protection, disguise, performance or entertainment. Masks have been used since antiquity for both ceremonial and practical purposes...
ed theatre and rituals of New Guinea
New Guinea
New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...
, Bali
Bali
Bali is an Indonesian island located in the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east...
, and India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, as well as on Western theatrical practices. In 1974–75, he traveled in New Guinea
New Guinea
New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...
, South Asia, and Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
, where he studied Balinese "topeng
Topeng
Topeng is a dramatic form of Indonesian dance in which one or more mask-wearing, ornately-costumed performers interpret traditional narratives concerning fabled kings, heroes and myths, accompanied by gamelan music...
" masked dance with I Nyoman Kakul. Since then, he has made several more research trips to Asia, investigating the street jesters and court fools of Rajasthan
Rajasthan
Rājasthān the land of Rajasthanis, , is the largest state of the Republic of India by area. It is located in the northwest of India. It encompasses most of the area of the large, inhospitable Great Indian Desert , which has an edge paralleling the Sutlej-Indus river valley along its border with...
, the use of masks in Eastern India, and the changing dynamics of performance in Bali
Bali
Bali is an Indonesian island located in the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east...
.
His 1985 documentary film, Hajari Bhand of Rajasthan: Jester without a Court, has been shown at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. Emigh also recently completed an interactive database of the permanent collection of masks at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi. His book Masked Performance: The Play of Self and Other in Ritual and Theatre combines years of ethnographic research with the insights of a practicing actor and director to describe and theorize the use of masks in both Asian and Western contexts.
Emigh has published contributions or articles in Cambridge Companion to Performance Studies; Cambridge Guide to Theatre; Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance; South Asian Folklore: An Encyclopedia; Teaching Performance Studies; Re-Playing Shakespeare in Asia; The Idea of Rajasthan: Explorations in Regional Identity; Gender in Performance: The Presentation of Difference in the Performing Arts; Art and Politics in Southeast Asia, Six Perspectives: Papers from the Distinguished Scholars Series; Popular Theatre: A Sourcebook; Masks: Faces of Culture, published by the St. Louis Art Museum; Teaching Performance Studies; SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies; Seagull Theatre Magazine; Faces; The Drama Review; Communications; Asian Theatre Journal; World of Music. His recent projects include an essay on the killings in Bali in 1965 as reflected in the Balinese performing arts, an article theorizing about Samuel Colt as the inspiration for George Bernard Shaw's Undershaft, and a report on a Balinese adaptation of Macbeth in the style of the gambuh theater. He is also investigating the links between the traditional concerns of the theater and recent research in neuroscience, as well as studying mask performance and traditions in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, Austria, Germany, and Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
.
As a performer, Emigh has acted with leading Balinese artists and has performed one-man shows and lecture-demonstrations based on Balinese mask techniques at schools, hospitals, universities, theatres, and festivals throughout the United States and in Bali and India, including the Performing Garage
Performing Garage
The Performing Garage is an off-Broadway theater in SoHo, New York City. Established in 1968, it is the permanent home of the experimental theater company originally named The Performance Group that morphed in 1980 into The Wooster Group , and their primary performance venue.Since 1978, it also...
in New York City, The New Theatre Festival of Baltimore, the Indian National School for Drama, the Tibetan School of Drama, and the Balinese Academy for the Arts. Substantive articles about Emigh's theatrical work have appeared in TDR: The Drama Review and Asian Theatre Journal, as well as in various Asian journals.
He was the founding chairperson of the Association for Asian Performance and served as chair of Brown University's Department of Theatre, Speech and Dance from 1987 to 1993. In 1971, he conceived and co-ordinated the RI Festival of New Theatre (the first festival to bring together the work of America's leading avant-garde groups of that period). In 2005, Emigh was Artistic Director for Performance Studies International's Providence, RI conference and festival: "Becoming Uncomfortable." He served on the steering committees for the founding of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and of Performance Studies International, and he currently serves on PSi's executive board.
During his many years as a teacher of acting and directing, Emigh has trained several generations of stage and film actors, directors, playwrights, theater technicians, theater administrators, dramaturgs, and drama theorists. He counts among his students Kate Bornstein
Kate Bornstein
Kate Bornstein is a Jewish-American author, playwright, performance artist, and gender theorist.-Biography:Born in Neptune City, New Jersey, Bornstein studied Theater Arts with John Emigh and Jim Barnhill at Brown University . Bornstein joined the Church of Scientology but later became...
, Bess Armstrong
Bess Armstrong
Elizabeth Key "Bess" Armstrong is an American film and television actress.-Life and career:Armstrong was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the daughter of Louise Allen , who taught at Bryn Mawr, and Alexander Armstrong, an English teacher at the Gilman School...
, JoBeth Williams
JoBeth Williams
JoBeth Williams is an American film and television actress and director, and current President of the Screen Actors Guild Foundation.-Early life:...
, Eve Gordon, Laura Linney
Laura Linney
Laura Leggett Linney is an American actress of film, television, and theatre. Linney has won three Emmy Awards, two Golden Globes, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She has been nominated for three times for an Academy Award and once for a BAFTA Award...
, Aunjanue Ellis
Aunjanue Ellis
Aunjanue L. Ellis is an American actress known for her roles in Ray, in Undercover Brother, and on The Mentalist....
, John Krasinski
John Krasinski
John Burke Krasinski is an American actor, film director, and writer. He is most widely known for playing Jim Halpert on the NBC sitcom The Office...
and many more. He has nurtured a love of theater in thousands of his students. With his insatiable curiosity about the role of theater in human life, he has expanded many different fields of theater practice and theory, from studying the role theater plays in other cultures, to the role theater can play within the human brain.
Emigh is married to Ulrike Emigh and the father of David B. Emigh, and he is the father of Aaron Emigh and Rebecca Emigh from a previous marriage.