NEW ORLEANS – Loyola University New Orleans announced professor Artemis Preeshl is the recipient of a Fulbright Specialist in Theatre grant. Preeshl, associate professor of theatre arts and dance in the College of Music and Fine Arts, will use the grant to teach at the University of Madras in India this fall. The grant was awarded by the United States-India Educational Foundation.
“I am delighted to return to India during my sabbatical this year,” Preeshl said. “My further research on Indian culture will enhance the common curriculum course I teach at Loyola, South Asian Performing Arts, which I plan to offer again next year.”
At the University of Madras, Preeshl will teach in the Department of English and direct the University of Madras’ Curtain Call ensemble, which invites students from different institutions, backgrounds and disciplines to interact "theatrically" about aspects and issues that concern them. Preeshl plans to incorporate American theatre techniques as she coaches contemporary and classical scripts with Curtain Call and will draw on recent performances and experiences with Loyola students while in India, she said.
"Having worked with the Mass Communication and Journalism students at the University of Madras in 2011, I believe that the students will engage closely with the scripts through experiential learning by acting in roles in the plays that they are reading," Preeshl said, adding that she plans to do "mirrored stage readings" similar to those practiced in certain theatre courses at Loyola.
In 2010, Preeshl received a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research grant at Kalakshetra Foundation that allowed her during the 2010-11 academic year to offer a series of guest lectures in acting, movement and voice at the University of Madras. Since then, the university, among other institutions in Tamil Nadu, has invited Preeshl to serve as a foreign examiner for doctoral candidates.
As a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Researcher, Preeshl also wrote and directed her screenplay, Pancha Ratna (Five Gems), which won honorable mention in Best World Cinema at the DIY Film Festival in 2012.
In April 2011, Preeshl received a South and Central Asian travel grant from the Fulbright Commission to work with Floating Cloud Theater Company and with the United States/Sri Lankan Fulbright Commission teaching voice, movement, acting and directing in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
