Wyatt Smith
Features Editor
Four Wooster students and assistant professor of theatre Jimmy Noriega participated in the exclusive UNESCO/ITI World Festival of Theatre Schools this past September The students — David Grunfeld ’13, Janna Haywood ’14, Colin Martin ’15 and Nora Yawitz ’15 — presented an original play at the ten-day festival, which was hosted in the Romanian cities of Sinaia and Bucharest.
Undergraduates, professors, graduate students, directors and cultural ministers from around the world attended the festival, including representatives from South Africa, Mexico, New Zealand and Iran. The Wooster delegation officially represented the United States.
“You don’t get that opportunity,” said Noriega, “even here in college, to go to see so many people working in different ways. It was phenomenal.”
Noriega was one of only five professors selected by the festival’s organizers to teach a workshop at the festival. Aided by the cohort of Wooster students, Noriega based his three-hour class on a course he teaches at Wooster called the Physical Text.
“After my workshop, I got invitations to go teach acting classes in Costa Rica, Mexico and Iran,” said Noriega. “I don’t know if it’ll be possible … but it’s great to get that type of feedback.”
In order to participate in the festival, Noriega and his students had to miss seven days of classes.
“The [ other] professors were great, letting us miss classes because they knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the students,” said Noriega.
UNESCO — the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — is an international organization that works to promote intercultural dialogue and generally further the aims of the United Nations. The biannual World Festival of Theatre Schools is only one of the organization’s many initiatives, which range from maintaining biodiversity to promoting gender equality.
The play presented by the Wooster delegation, entitled “Encuentro: Peru!!,” was developed during a trip to Peru this past summer. Noriega regularly visits Latin America as part of his research, which focuses on how artists use theatre to respond to moments of crisis and promote social justice, but this was the first time he brought students along. Grunfeld, Haywood, Martin and Yawitz all went on the Peru trip, along with Kevin Glass ’14, who was unable to make it to Romania.
While in South America, the Wooster students created their original play, met local artists, practiced their Spanish and took workshops with Cuatrotablas and Yuyachkani, two of Peru’s most renowned theatre groups. They also found time for sightseeing, such as a visit to the ruins of Machu Picchu.
“The fact that I was leaving the country for the first time had a huge impact on my trip,” said Haywood. “I felt like I had the perfect amount of … freedom to explore and see things the way that I wanted to.” The students performed their newly-created play four times in Peru, at venues like the Scientific University of the South and the Metropolitan Museum of Lima. This exposure brought the play to the attention of UNESCO and their invitation to the World Festival of Theatre Schools.
“We didn’t expect the Romanian trip to happen out of this,” said Yawitz. “Getting that invitation was unbelievable.”
“It was a huge honor,” agreed Noriega.
Yawitz said that she’s already applied techniques she learned while abroad to their thespian pursuits in Wooster. For example, lessons in Peru about physicality and the use of one’s body onstage aided Yawitz while preparing for “Equus,” the theatre department’s fall play in which she played a horse.
“All in all, both trips allowed me to grow tremendously as an actor and person,” said Grunfeld, “while introducing me to two new cultures I had been very interested in for years.”