THE MIRROR - CHAMBER MUSICAL THEATER presentation at American Corner

The Course

Nikolina Kne ževic teaches the course English as a Foreign Language at the English Department, University of Novi Sad . Students of Sociology, Philosophy, Psychology, History, Pedagogy, all the Language and Literary departments at the Faculty of Philosophy take it as an elective course. The course aims at developing integrated language skills (speaking, reading, writing and listening).

It is a communication-based course where the activities imply a lot of active participation in class. The activities are designed so they help students gain sufficient language knowledge to manage everyday situations, as well as to express some more complex, abstract ideas through verbal communication. The former has practical implementation as a primary goal. The latter, along with practical use, also aims at developing critical thinking in students, which is carried out through discussions on the topics concerning cultural issues.

Active participation is a prerequisite to the course and it affects the overall grade the students get upon the completion of the course. Their attendance is also mandatory. Students take a written exam after the first year. After the second year they have both written and oral exams.

It is also required that they give either an individual or a group presentation in class. The topics they choose are either among those done within the course, or are related to them. The presentations turned out to be fairly inspiring for students, making them do a little research and fashion it in the manner they found most suitable for the contents they intended to deliver. Some of the projects were quite imaginative reflecting students' active engagement and critical reasoning. The topics were as diverse as biographies of celebrities; family values; values in contemporary society; media; commodity; film; gender issues; substance abuse, etc. Oftentimes, they would use different pieces of software in quite imaginative ways. What is more, some of them tended to implement the knowledge they gained within their field of specialization. Each presentation was followed by the Questions-and-Answers section, which usually provoked stimulating debates. This kind of class activity proved to be for students a self-esteem booster in terms of their academic engagement.

The reason for Nikolina's insisting on students' presentations is the assumption that some of them might pursue a career in academia, which implies participation at conferences, so they need to develop presentation skills. Others might find positions in different contexts, but they will nevertheless need experience in public speech (as teachers, social workers, counselors, interpreters, etc.).

The Theater

Some students who are taking Nikolina's course are actively partaking in the activities of the group called THE MIRROR - CHAMBER MUSICAL THEATER (KAMERNO POZORI Š TE MUZIKE OGLEDALO – KPMO). It is the only non-verbal theater in Novi Sad and the Novi Sad area. It is one of the most prestigious alternative theaters in Europe using the workshop model in staging procedure (primarily Peter Brook's methodology). KPMO has performed broadly all over Europe . It also gave performances in Asia ( Kirghizstan ).

The theater sees its mission in helping young people get together and achieve self-realization through theater, thereby contributing to the cultural development of their immediate surrounding. They actively participate in the cultural arena of the city embracing the policy of inclusion, thus dealing with the issues concerning marginalized groups. In the performances staged in KPMO participate, among the others, young people with different physical and mental disabilities (many of them with cerebral paralysis). In the last couple of years, KPMO staged performances in which young people with sight and/or hearing impairment took part. There were also participants with mental disabilities. One of the basic principles on which KPMO builds its policy is that anybody and everybody has the right to participate in artistic production.

Currently the theater is staging the play entitled Face By Meter which is exploring issues related to hypocrisy and whose premiere should take place in June 2006. During the initial stage, the theater hosted guest lecturers coming from different backgrounds – a psychologist, a lawyer, a journalist, a historian, a caricature artist, a playwright, a manager, a composer, a ballet dancer and a dramatist. They all contributed to illuminating the hypocrisy phenomenon from different perspectives through lectures and workshops. This was a preparatory phase which was followed by the staging itself.

Apart from its theater activities, in April 2006, KMPO started the project entitled The Entrance Doors. It is imagined as a series of artistic practices(performances, talks, colloquia…) aiming at criticizing cultural institutions that do not have access for the people with disabilities.

As subprojects, within the KMPO there is the Academy of Liberal Arts with its appealing contents: face painting, redesign workshop, theater workshops for children and youth, music workshops for children and youth, Feng Shui, Thai massage, etc.

Interzone – annual international festival of contemporary music was held for the seventh time this year in Novi Sad .

The Presentation at American Corner

Nikolina happen to be volunteering at American Corner in Novi Sad as the moderator of the Conversation Club. American Corner is a cultural project which emerged as a result of the cooperation between the Cultural Center of Novi Sad and the Public Affairs of the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade . The purpose of this facility is to increase mutual understanding between Serbia and the U.S by making available information about the U.S. in a variety of formats including books, videos, CD-ROMs, talks, presentations and meetings. As part of the program, Conversation Club is held on a weekly basis offering for the public conversation in English free of charge.

As the moderator, Nikolina tries to get the participants involved as much as possible (as long as it coincides with their willingness and eagerness to partake actively). As a result, many of them have had their own presentations about the countries they visited, interests they have or their own production including documentaries they have made, research they have done as part of their Ph.D. or M.A. Normally, they tend to cover cultural issues and cast light on them from cross-national and transnational perspectives. They would compare, contrast, describe, praise and criticize different cultures, preferably having someone speak who has been to the country in question.

At the American Corner, the issues of general socio-political importance are being discussed. It seems that politics of inclusion has been commonplace to greater part of the discussions we have had. It is a small wonder that the presentation held by The Mirror at American Corner was so warmly welcomed.

In December 2005, KPMO gave a presentation there. Thus, the students who were taking the course with Nikolina, and who at the same time work within the KPMO were given an opportunity to do it in a public space instead of doing it in the classroom. It was supposed to entail the remission of the presentation in class, as well as a chance to obtain a better final grade. It was required from them to give the whole presentation in English.

They needed to conceptualize the topic and to relate it to their actual activities. In this case they chose to explore the issues concerning marginalized groups and they related it to the experiences the actual members of the theatre group had had as physically and/or disabled persons.

They were expected to make sure that members of their group appear at the meeting, that everybody is given an opportunity to speak for themselves, thus raising the public's consciousness of the people who are forced to live their lives in different conditions.

They were also expected to prove that their language competence is sufficient to provide them with a better grade (this applied to those who were taking my course, whereas the others did not need to prove any particular level of language competence, but rather to merely take part regardless of their language skills).

The Presentation

A group of 12 young people, mainly with physical disabilities, held a theater workshop. It was meant to demonstrate the methods used in the theater's artistic production. Participants in the Conversation Club also took part in the workshop. It implied creative engagement of the participants which was quite warmly welcomed. The responses were surprisingly imaginative and endlessly amusing. Apart from the workshop, there was a screening of the theater play – a KMPO's production – entitled The Skyscraper's Space . It is a collage featuring the elements of non-verbal, physical theater, along with those used in musical or literary theater. The premiere of the play was in June 2004 in Serbian National Theater (The Chamber Scene). Later it was played in other towns of Vojvodina, but also in Republika Srpska and Macedonia.

Many of the presenters were in wheelchairs. Some had speech impediments. However, they all did a miraculous job leaving the audience (which is anybody who happened to come to the American Corner) breathless and nearly euphoric. A crew from the local TV station happened to be passing by. When they saw the meeting through the window they stopped and shot a news report, so the event was broadcast on the local TV station. It should have further impact on the community‘s treating people with special needs.

The impact was manifold. First, it exposed the public to the activities of the group of people who make fantastic accomplishments regardless of the difficulties they come across due to their disabilities. Secondly, theyencouraged other people to take more active part in the socio-cultural arena (in the audience was a woman with physical disability, who was evidently thrilled by the opportunity she was faced with).

The whole work of the group was made more public due to the TV broadcast, which enormously helped this marginalized group get more visible. Getting more sensitized to the people with special needs surely leads to a more humane social context one would expect to see in the days to come.