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Join us for an exciting general information session where you can explore various ways to participate in PMA's live and mediated productions. Meet passionate directors and filmmakers who will share insights about their projects and casting requirements.
Discover the world of performing and media arts at PMA, where you can explore these unique art forms through diverse courses, programs, and prospects. Mark your calendars for PMA's Open House on Friday, August 18, 2023, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., offering the opportunity to immerse yourself in theatre, dance, film, screenwriting, and more. Engage with passionate faculty, talented students, and dedicated staff from PMA. Enjoy stimulating conversations, networking opportunities, and delicious food and refreshments. All are welcome to attend this event, so come with your curiosity and enthusiasm to explore the captivating world of performing and media arts. We look forward to seeing you there!
PMA 2800 presents...Acting Showcase. May 8th 6-7:30 p.m., SB21 Black Box Theatre, Schwartz Center
Join the Art Beyond Cornell and the Prison Reform and Education Project (PREP) for a screening of the PMA Professor Bruce Levitt's film in collaboration with the Arts, Justice and Safety Coalition: Before Time / After Time. A 45-min film exploring the paths leading to incarceration and the challenges of reentry, followed by a facilitated discussion.
Call for Actors: Peerless written by Jihae Park. A student thesis PMA production
Join us Thursday, May 4 at 5:45 pm for a devised play A MINGLED YARN spun from the works of William Shakespeare, guided by PMA faculty Theo Black and Bruce Levitt along with PhD student Sara Stamatiades (Literatures in English) in the Black Box Theatre, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts. Free and no tickets required.
The 10th Annual Centrally Isolated Film Festival (CIFF) is happening on April 29th-30th.
To the Academy is a multimedia performance work inspired by Kafka’s short story, A Report for an Academy, and the ancient Sanskrit treatise on performance, The Natyashastra. The piece weaves a tale about an ape couple rehearsing a music hall show for a group of scholars. As the apes grapple with how to entertain their audience, they stage a sexy romp through contemporary culture wars and collapsing institutions. The one-hour performance is followed by discussion with the audience. Content Warning: moment of nudity.
Out Here: 3 Short Films about Rural LGBT Life
Written & Directed by PMA Associate Professor Austin Bunn
From the Big Red to the Red Carpet: A two-day visit with alumni filmmakers Scott Ferguson ‘83 and Michael Kantor ‘83
PMA presents 'The Family Copoli: a post-apocalyptic burlesque and repopulation play'. Written by Andy Colpitts (book/lyrics) and Michael Wookey (music).
Blending realism and abstraction, this full-length play explores the future and the past, technology and humanity, solitude and family. Written, translated from Russian, rewritten, and directed by Anna Evtushenko, PhD candidate in Information Science.
March 24th, 5:00 p.m., March 25th, 2:00 p.m. & 7:30 p.m.
and March 26th, 2:00 p.m., Black Box Theatre | Get Tickets
Adam Shulman '23, the creator of "Nature's Play: An Invasive Performance," has spent a year tending to a degraded thicket near Cornell University's North Campus. The result of Shulman's efforts will become an immersive, eco-theatrical installation to reconsider the effect of human apathy and give voice to the grove's residents. The installation will feature a sculptural set design woven from uprooted invasive plants and collected debris. The on-site performances will draw parallels between biological and social networks to challenge perceptions of land ownership, standards of natural care, and the origins of invasive species.
The Critical Moves: Performance in Theory & Movement Series presents:
“A Love Supreme, a conversation with photographer Lola Flash”
Lola Flash (Photographer)
Thursday, April 13th
5:00-6:30PM, Film Forum
Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts (430 College Avenue)
As a longtime figure in New York's downtown art scene, Lola Flash’s artistic practice focuses on the intersection of race, sexual identity, aging, and social justice activism. Flash directly engages those who are often deemed invisible, as their work is an introspective assessment of their life experience. Their art and activism are profoundly connected, fueling a life-long commitment to visibility, and preserving the legacy of LGBTQIA+ and communities of color worldwide. Flash has work included in important collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, MoMA, the Whitney, the Museum of the African American of History and Culture and the Brooklyn Museum. They are currently a proud member of the Kamoinge Collective, and on the Board of Queer Art. For further information on flash, please visit: Lolaflash.com
Part of the Critical Moves: Performance in Theory & Movement Series, this event is funded by a Humanities Impact Grant, with generous support and co-sponsorship from the Department of Performing and Media Arts.
FANCY DANCE announces the arrival of a major directorial talent: Erica Tremblay. Her unflinching exploration of marginalization uses a mystery narrative as a springboard for an oblique coming-of-age story, lovingly and luminously enacted by Gladstone and Deroy-Olson. Tremblay’s juxtaposition of settler violence against the strength of Indigenous communities offers a nuanced account of the human costs of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women epidemic and the possibilities of healing for those left behind. This event is sponsored by the Department of Performing and Media Arts, American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program (AIISP), and the Cornell Cinema.
In this talk, Ricardo Montez discusses the challenges of writing a historical narrative about the popular artist Keith Haring. Most stories about the artist fail to address Haring’s desire for and contact with Black and Latinx bodies with any depth, choosing instead to privilege a vision of the great, white male artist who made “art for everybody.” What does it mean to make racial production a central part of art historical analysis? How do traditional forms of historical narrative fail to capture the political complexities of cross-racial contact? How does one demonstrate a deep respect for the skill and brilliance of an artist while giving scope to political ambivalence toward productive ends?
Jung Joon Lee, Associate Professor, Theory and History of Art and Design, Rhode Island School of Design; Fellow, The Society for the Humanities, Cornell University, 2022-23, In this talk, Jung Joon Lee explores trans-Pacific intimacies engendered through collaborative art projects, namely QueerArch (2019), focusing on spaces of exhibition as sites generating affective ruptures with the official histories, memories, and kinships of East Asia that maintain a strong hold on both sides of the Pacific. The title of Professor Lee's talk is On Trans-Pacific Collaboration and Repair: Notes from QueerArch (2019) and Queer/Feminist/Praxis (2021). Co-sponsored by the History of Art, Asian American Studies Program, FGSS and LGBT Studies Program.
March 10th, 3:00 p.m., Film Forum | Register in advance for Zoom option
Daniel Passer creates work as a performer, writer and director. For over a decade, Daniel has been a lead Clown and Comedy Conceptor for Cirque du Soleil and Dragone Entertainment. Daniel currently is on the faculty of the Theater School at CalArts where he is also the Associate Director of Performance. He has taught Commedia/Clown/Improvisation at Moscow Art Theatre, Cirque du Soleil, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Brown University, Harvard, Cornell, CalArts, Trinity College, The Second City and was a Master Acting Teacher for The Edward Albee Theatre Festival and the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts. Daniel was the U.S. representative at the International Commedia dell’Arte Festival in Italy and a graduate of U.C. Berkeley and The A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard. For more, please visit danielpasser.com.
Moderated by HEADING INTO NIGHT collaborator and PMA Associate Professor Beth F. Milles
March 13th, 5:00 p.m., Film Forum
Professional Directions: A Conversation with Documentary Filmmaker – David Siev (Bad Axe)
Daniel Passer (Cal Arts/Cirque du Soleil) will be doing a clown workshop on Saturday, February 18th, at the Schwartz Center. Participants will learn from a world-renowned clown Conceptor, performer, and educator (performance instigator).
Join us for a Professional Directions: A Conversation with Gabriella Mosses on Thursday, Feb 16 at 5pm in the Film Forum, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts. (430 College Ave.)
Locally Grown Dance (LGD) is an annual dance showcase performed by PMA dance students.
March 9th, 10th, and 11th, 7:30 p.m., Kiplinger Theatre
A staged reading of a work in progress, Soul Mining is a short meditation on emotion, connection, and sensation as we consider the entirety of our lives and the eventual trajectory of the natural world. More of an allegorical or abstract representation than anything else, the work follows four unnamed characters as they puzzle over what they have been left with and what they have left behind. Written by John Colie.
February 18th, 7:30 p.m., Black Box Theatre
Dotun Ayobade is an Assistant Professor of Performance Studies and African American Studies at Northwestern University. He studies how embodied forms of popular culture shape the meaning of community, justice, and activism in late twentieth century West Africa. The title of Professor Ayobade's talk is Ethnographies of Serious Play: Sensing the Ludic in a Women’s History of Afrobeat Music
February 17th, 3:00 p.m., Film Forum
Call for Actors - Spring 2023
Invitation to Propose a Student Project - We invite you to propose work that you would like to present for AY 2023-2024.
Now showing as a loop on the digital screen above the box office in the Schwartz Center lobby are the short films students created for the PMA 1410 Media Production Lab - Fall 2022 course.
Please join us for a screening of final films from the Environmental Film Production course of the Performing and Media Arts Department at Cornell. Student short films range in form and content, exploring ecological questions. At 5:30 we will have snacks and the screening will begin at 6pm.
Join us as students from PMA's film production courses screen their films in the Schwartz Center's Kiplinger Theatre.
Mini Locally Grown Dance (MLGD) is PMA's annual fall dance production. This event showcases choreography and performances that PMA students will present in their entirety at the March 2023 Locally Grown Dance. This year's MLGD is four works by faculty, students, and guest artist, Olive Prince.
Professional Directions: Q&A with Keri Putnam, Co-founder of ReFRAME and former CEO of the Sundance Institute. Moderated by Jessica Bardsley and Daniel Pfeffer. Free and open to the public and first-come, first-served
Raelle Myrick-Hodges has worked as a stage director for over twenty-five years and as a producer/curator for more than ten. She is the founder of Azuka Theater in Philadelphia. In this Professional Directions, Raelle will discuss her work as a director and practicing theater artist.
"Ghosts" tells the story of three Kiowa boys' daring escape from a government boarding school in Anadarko, Oklahoma in 1891, to attend a ghost dance ceremony at a distant Kiowa encampment.
Baby Rock is a bilingual children's musical adapted from the original Spanish play by Carlos De Matteis.
Dr. Kareem Khubchandani and Dr. Samantha Iwowo are the speakers for the Fall 2022 PMAPS Colloquium
Update: Due to travel-related issues, this evening's (10/14) Professional Directions with Tia Lessin '86 has been postponed to a later date.
Once Upon a Time in A Place Called Now: An Interactive Storytelling Workshop for Artists, Activists, and Educators
Heidi Latsky, Artistic Director and Founder of the Heidi Latsky Dance Company (a "physically integrated" dance company that brings together disabled and nondisabled performers), will be the Guest-Artist-In-Dance from October 12th to October 15th at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts.
Cornell University welcomes the internationally-renown indigenous Canadian dance troupe Kaha:wi Dance Theatre, to perform their poignant and powerful theatrical dance performance, The Mush Hole.
Festival 24 features an array of plays written, directed, rehearsed, and performed by students in just 24 hours!
Produced by Taylor Bazos and Andrew Aman with assistant producer Ethan Ordower and technical director James Tallman.
The Department of Performing and Media Arts is hosting a Call for Actors - Fall 2022.
Thursday, August 25th 7:00PM
Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts, Flexible Theatre
430 College Ave. Ithaca, NY 14850
Roles available for stage and screen. Meet directors in a low-stress environment and see what is of interest to you!
Open to all Cornell students, faculty and staff. For details and to sign up, go to the Callboard at bit.ly/PMAcallboard22
Join us for a general information session for Cornell students on how to get involved in PMA's film, theatre, media, and dance projects.
Come and join us for the PMA Open House. Friday Aug 19th, 10am-12pm in the lobby of Schwartz Center (430 College Ave)
The Department of Performing and Media Arts provides opportunities to explore film, theatre, media, and dance as distinct art forms or to combine these disciplines in exciting ways. Learn about the courses, programs, & opportunities that PMA offers.
PMA 1611: Rehearsal & Performance presentsHaunted Natures, Hidden Environments, an immersive-environmental performance.May 6-7, 7:30 p.m.Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts (430 College Ave., Ithaca, NY)Haunted Natures, Hidden Environments is an immersive-environmental performance that will take place in several theatre/performance...
Learn about Grad School for Performance / Performance Studies. Sabrina Liu ‘20 is an Acting MFA at the University of California San Diego. Allen Porterie ‘20 is a Masters student at the University of Texas Austin. When: Friday, April 22, 12:30 pm - 2 pm Where: bit.ly/pma-panel22Please contact pma@cornell.edu for Zoom password.
Performing and Media Arts Presentation SeriesPMAPS ColloquiumFriday, Apr 29, 20223:00 P.M.Danielle Bainbridge, Assistant Professor, School of Communication, Northwestern UniversitySylvia Wynter, Maskarade and Performing the StateFriday, May 6, 20223:00 P.M.Brian V. Sengdala, PhD Student, Performing and Media Arts, Cornell University...
Centrally Isolated Film Festival celebrates the work of student filmmakers from across the upstate and greater central New York region. This year submissions from around the world were accepted and programmed into this year's exciting line-up.
Situating Lesbian Desire is a live staged reading of C.A. Johnson’s The Climb and Audrey Cefaly’s The Gulf, two plays that investigate gender, sexuality, and place. The Climb synopsis: Marge is a photographer, and her wife, Tiffany, has been her sole photographic subject for seven years. When Tiffany goes on a month-long hiking trip to get...
WaterAn immersive media art installationConceived by Shanti Pillai, Thea Goldman, and Anastasia Kreisel April 22-23, 7:00 p.m.Black Box TheatreSchwartz Center for the Performing Arts Reserve times at SchwartzTickets.com. Admission times will be staggered in 5 minute intervals for groups up to 3. Parties larger than 3 will be split. This...
Join us on Saturday, April 16, at 7:30 p.m. for Musics of Southeast Asian America featuring Ruby Ibarra and Bochan Huy.Location: Kiplinger Theatre, Schwartz Center for the Performing ArtsDirect from the San Francisco/Bay Area, Cambodian American vocalist Bochan Huy and Filipina American hip hop artist Ruby Ibarra take the Kip Theatre stage in...