Visiting Teachers 2007

Alex Pinder (Australia), Acting & Movement Teacher

Alex has over 20 years experience in the performing arts, as an actor, director and theatre/acting teacher. He received his acting training at The Ensemble, Sydney, in areas such as voice, movement, improvisation, script and scene work, and subsequently at L’Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris for movement and mime, and neutral mask. He has taught subjects in movement and acting at The Victorian College of the Arts, The National Institute of Circus Arts and Deakin University (all Melbourne), which included subjects in mime, clowning, commedia and the neutral mask. Alex also taught the well-known Lecoq 20 Movements, where students choreograph and perform, using only the mime movements exercises taught in class. In January 2006, he taught commedia at The Darpana Academy of Performing Arts, with Mallika Sarabhai, in Ahmedabad, India, exploring character in the context of local folk tales and the Ramayana.

Alex has produced and directed his own productions including Cyrano de Bergerac, Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing all of which have been performed in Melbourne and have toured Victoria. He most recently performed in a reading of Salmon Rusdie’s Midnight’s Children in Melbourne, a complex piece about India’s independence.

Jarrod Benson (Australia), Voice Teacher

Jarrod holds a Licentiate in Speech & Drama Australia awarded by the Australian Music Examinations Board (Melbourne University).  He also has a Certificate IV in Assessment and Workplace Training awarded by Melbourne University.  In addition, Jarrod studied voice with international voice teacher Catherine Fitzmaurice and international Alexander technique voice teachers Jane Heirich (University of Michigan) and Cathie Madden (Assoc Prof University of Washington), as well as studying singing with musical director Mark Jones.

His earlier experience includes voice teaching at the National Theatre Drama School, Melbourne University, Swinburne University, Northern Metropolitan Institute of Tafe, Actor’s Lab and the Actor’s Showcase.  He also runs his own workshops and private practices. Jarrod's interest in Asia is fueled by his experience as a Butoh and physical theatre performer.

Li Qiu Ping (China), Beijing Opera Teacher

Mdm Li is Associate Professor of Shanghai School of Opera at Shanghai Theatre Academy China. She has extensive experience as a teacher and actress in Beijing Opera and this is her 4th visit to Singapore to train TTRP's 4th cohort of graduating actor-students.

Visiting Teachers 2006

Aarne Neeme, Teacher, Acting/Acting for camera/Introduction to European Theatre
Previously a Senior Fellow at National University of Singapore, Aarne Neeme has directed Hanif Kureishi’s Borderline for The Necessary Stage. He has been Artistic Director for various Australian theatre companies, and is now a freelance director who has frequently been engaged for television work as well as theatre. He has also taught at various tertiary institutions in New Zealand and Australia over the last twenty years.

Tian Wei Xu, Teacher, Acting
Currently resident actor with National Theatre Company of China, Wei Xu was also a full time actor with the Shanxi Cultural Troupe and China Youth Arts Academy. An accomplished director and actor, Wei Xu has performed in more than thirty productions from Shakespeare to Cao Yu. He is also no stranger to the film industry, having directed “The Silent Dawn”, “Water from Heaven” and several other made for television series. In 1993 Wei Xu worked with renowned Director Zhang Yi Mou as Assistant Director in the comedy/drama “Qiu Ju Goes to Court”.

Airan Berg, Teacher, Digital Media
Airan Berg has been the Artistic Director of the Vienna Schauspielhaus since March 2001. Airan has a strong global outlook counting Indonesia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Berlin and the United States among his many stops. He founded the Theater ohne Grenzen together with Martina Winkel and begun the first international puppet theater festival for adults “Die Macht des Staunens”. He was also the directorial assistant and co-director with Claus Peymann and Peter Zadek while at the Burgtheatre, where he went on to stage the first independent production.

Kanze Yoshimasa, Teacher, Noh Theatre
The only son of Yoshiyuki Kanze, the 4th head of Kanze Kyuhkoh-kai, Mr. Kanze was taught and trained by his father, and made his professional debut at the age of three. He then went on to study at the Keio University. He is a board member in Kanze Kyuhkoh-kai and member of the Japan Nôgaku Association (Tokyo Branch).

Kuwata Takashi, Teacher, Noh Theatre

Kuwata Takashi is an actor and teacher of the Kanze School of Noh.

Richard Emmert, Teacher, Noh Theatre
Richard Emmert is a certified Kita school Noh instructor, who has studied, taught and performed all aspects of Noh performance in Japan since 1973. He has also composed and arranged music in Noh style for several English Noh plays which in which he also served as an actor and director. Emmert is the co-author of seven Noh Performance Guides published by the National Noh Theatre in Tokyo. He teaches Asian Theatre and Music at Musashino Women's University in Tokyo.

Gopalan Nair Venu, Teacher, Kutiyattam
Gopal Venu received his training in Kutiyattam from Gurus Ammannur Madhava Chakyar and Ammannur Parameswara Chakyar in the traditional GURUKULA SYSTEM. He is active in the field of Kutiyattam as a performer, researcher and director. Venu has also written several books on the traditional art-forms of Kerala. Venu was nominated as one of the four honorary directors of “World Theatre” along with eminent Swedish theatre director Peter Oskarson and Peking opera master Ma Ke. In 2000, Venu’s brainchild the International Acting Laboratory or Abhinaya Kalari was inaugurated.

Kum. Kapila Venu, Teacher, Kutiyattam
The legendary master Guru Ammannur Madhava Chakyar initiated Kapila into Kuttiyattam at the tender age of seven. Kapila staged her debut at the age of eleven performing Purappadu in Nangiar Koothu. She regularly performs at important festivals and other venues both in India and abroad. She has also been invited to conduct workshops at the Rietberg Museum in Zurich and has participated in the World Theatre Project in Sweden. Kapila has performed the major female roles including Sakuntala in Abhijnana Sakuntalam of Mahakavi Kalidasa.

T.R. Sooraj (Sooraj Nambiar), Teacher, Kutiyattam
Sooraj was initiated into Kuttiyatam at the age of nine by Guru Ammannur Madhava Chakyar and made his debut in 1991 at Natana Kairali. Sooraj performs most of the important roles of the important Kutiyattam and also performs Chakyar Koothu. He has performed widely within India and overseas. He has also traveled to present his solo performance and was one of the two actors representing India at the World Theatre Project, Sweden. He presently works as a Kutiyattam Artist at Natana Kairali performing leading roles in the traditional works as well as newly composed Kutiyattam plays.

Guest Directors

Phillip B. Zarrilli, Director, Attempts On Her Life (September 2007)
Phillip Zarrilli is currently Professor of Drama at the University of Exeter (UK) where he teaches his psychophysical intensive training as part of the BA and MA (Physical Performance) programmes of study, and where he supervises traditional research and research through practice toward M.Phil and PhD degrees.

Phillip is internationally known for training actors and dancers through Asian martial arts and yoga, and for critically-acclaimed, award winning productions of Beckett's plays.

As a director, Zarrilli has worked closely with bharatanatyam dancer/choreographer Gita Kolanad. Their production of Walking Naked opened in Chennai in 1998, and toured through the USA, UK and Korea up to 2002. Zarrilli also worked with Theatre Asou, Austria, on Speaking Stones (text by Kaite O'Reilly), which opened in September 2002, and has gone on to the Maski Festival, and Wroclaw Grotowski Centre, Poland, and with Sangalpam Dance Company (UK) on an adaptation of a 7th-century Sanskrit farce, The Dance of the Drunken Monk. He is also well known for his directing and performing work in The Beckett Project, an ongoing collaboration with American actress Patricia Boyette that has received acclaim in the US and Europe.

Russell Cheek, Director, Devised (March 2006)
An actor, director and corporate trainer, Russell Cheek has performed for theatre and television while performing, writing and directing for groups like the Asian Education Foundation, Charles Stuart University and the Castanet Club. Upon graduating from the Ecole Jacques Lecoq, Russell became a founding member of Parapluie International Theatre Company (Paris) and The Theater Am Turm, Frankfurt, Germany. He has also produced and self devised several performances, while being part of “The Change Dynamic” a corporate consultancy firm that served clients in Australia, France, Belgium, NZ and Canada.

Phillip B. Zarrilli, Director, The Beckett Project (August 2006)
See above.

Patricia Boyette, Assistant Director, The Beckett Project (August 2006)
Patricia Boyette, is associate professor at the University of Wisconson-Madison Department of Theatre and Drama, and a preeminent theater scholar-performer in the US. Trained at the American Conservatory Theatre, the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, and the Stratford Festival, Boyette has performed extensively in the United Kingdom and across the United States, attracting critical acclaim in works spanning from Shakespeare to Tennessee Williams to Noel Coward. She has also directed a number of plays.

Patricia is also well known for her endeavour to research, develop and perform a series of Samuel Beckett plays written for female actors. Her investigation into acting methodology in Beckett's work is being conducted in collaboration with Billie Whitelaw, the renowned English stage player who originated the female roles in the premiere runs of several Beckett productions.

Click here to view a list of past faculty and visiting teachers.