From Scotsman.com

With the worldwide credit crunch at its height, Annie Ryan and Michael West wanted to make a show about what it was like to have the rug pulled from underneath you. Freefall is the much-acclaimed result . . .

AS THE financial markets of the world were collapsing, Annie Ryan and Michael West were planning a piece of theatre. The husband-and-wife creative team behind Dublin’s Corn Exchange Theatre company knew they wanted to make a contemporary play about the times in which they were living  – but the times were changing as they talked.

So change became their subject. “Our work involves a lot of transformations,” says Ryan, the company’s artistic director. “We rarely use props, so we’re interested in how to transform space in front of an audience. We knew we wanted to make something about transformation. Then the whole world turned upside down. We wanted to make a piece about the feeling of what it was like to have the rug pulled from underneath you.”

Ryan, West and I talk in the garden of their mews house in South Dublin while their children – Thomas, nine, and Olly, six – play round about us. When they began working on the play – Freefall, currently at the Traverse as part of the Fringe – in the autumn of 2008, they admit they had no idea how far-reaching the implications of the change would be, either for Ireland or for them personally.

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Open Arts instructor Hannelore Williams directed her first music video!  Enjoy!

White Night, a film made by student Teresa Lee in the Tisch School of the Arts Open Arts Fundamentals of Filmmaking class, will be screened at the Asian American International Film Festival on Friday, July 16. Director Teresa Lee will be available for a Q & A after the screening.

Fundamentals of Filmmaking is taught by Rosanne Limoncelli, director of production for film and new media in the Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film, Television, and New Media at Tisch School of the Arts.

Tisch School of the Arts Open Arts instructor Aida Shahghasemi will be lending her vocals to the presentation of Persian poets at Zoraspace on June 26.

Aida Shahghasemi recently moved to New York City. She is a traveler between Iran and the States in order to play with individuals and ensembles in Tehran, Minneapolis (where she resided prior to New York), and most recently, New York. She learned the Daf from Amir Samadi and has worked on the Persian Classical Vocal repertoire under the supervision of Parissa.

Aida Shahghasemi will be teaching Iran Arts Activism this fall as part of the Tisch School’s Open Arts curriculum. The course is open to all New York University undergraduate students.

Register on Albert today!

Record Executive and entrepreneur Kevin Liles and The Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music Chair Jeffrey Rabhan discuss their summer course and the landscape of the changing music industry.

A new instructor has been added to the roster for East Acts West, the three-month Beijing opera-based program at the Shanghai Theatre Academy offered in collaboration with New York University Tisch School of the Arts.

Xu Jiali has studied Beijing Opera since she was 10 years old and worked for Shanghai Beijing Opera Company for two and half years. Her regular repertoire includes Women Generals of Yang Family, Zhao Jun Goes Abroad and Madness from Losing the Son. In 2003, she went to Singapore to take a three-year course in Theatre Training and Research Program with full scholarship, studying various western acting methods and traditional theatre performances of India, Japan and Indonesia under David Zinder, Robin Payne, Kanze Yoshimasa, William Sun, Cao Lusheng. She directed and performed a solo performance Karaoke Medea, directed Dario Fo’s Michele Lu Lanzone, and made a solo performance Shakuntala integrating Beijing Opera and Indian Kutiyattom Elements. She taught drama at Shanghai Singapore International School after returning to Shanghai, responsible for launching and running the Chinese Culture Room. She received her MA in Enterprise and Management for Creative Arts at University of the Arts London and worked as a translator for several renowned professors such as Richard Schechner. She now works as UNESCO ITI-APB web editor at Shanghai Theatre Academy. Visit Xu Jiali’s Web site for sample performance videos.

Photo courtesy of Xu Jiali's Website http://blog.sina.com.cn/zhulixiaojie .

The Shanghai Theatre Academy is a 64 year-old comprehensive university of performing arts located in downtown Shanghai. East Acts West is an 18-point program offered to NYU and visiting undergraduate students every fall semester.

Tisch School of the Arts summer high school program alumnus Ethan Corn will have his film “In the Beginning” screened at the Harvard-Westlake Film Festival on Friday, March 19 at the Cinerama Dome at the ArcLight Cinemas in Hollywood.

The 7th annual high school film festival kicks off with guest speaker Kathryn Bigelow, the Academy Award winning director of  “The Hurt Locker,” in conversation with Jason Reitman, director of  “Up in the Air.”

Ethan’s film is one of 17 films selected for the festival.

Ten Irish acts were selected to have their music videos made by students in the New York University Tisch School of the Arts Dublin music video program. The bands are Neosupervital, Sweet Jane, The Ghandis, Heathers, Director, David Geraghty, I Phoenix, Deadbots, Delorentos, Vengeance and the Panther Queen.

Louise and Ellie MacNamara of Heathers tells The Ticket, Irish Times “We’re so grateful for this opportunity. The program seems like a really great idea.”

Shooting started this week and the finished videos will be screened at an event in Dublin in December.

You’ve probably noticed that the Special Programs Blog looks and feels a little different.  We’ve relaunched this blog, with increased functionality and social networking capabilities.  We will be updating the site as usual, with news and events from Special Programs.

We hope you enjoy the new site!