Oglethorpe’s Fulbright Scholar Lecture:
Can the Classics Stimulate the Performing Arts?

ATLANTA (Aug. 22) – Dr. Miroslaw Kocur, an internationally acclaimed director of Greek and Roman plays, will explore how the classics can stimulate contemporary theatre in a lecture at Oglethorpe University next month. On September 8 at 7:00 p.m. he will present Ritual in Theatre: Why Study the Classics? in Lupton Auditorium. Kocur, an expert on the use of classical plays by modern directors to protest oppression and war, will be available following the lecture for an audience Q&A and artist reception.

   The lecture marks the beginning of Kocur’s tenure at Oglethorpe University as a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence from Poland. He will also be teaching two courses – Advanced Characterization and Theatre History I: Greeks to Restoration – and will direct the regional premiere of the exciting new play The Death of Meyerhold by Mark Jackson, which runs November 17-19 in the Conant Performing Arts Center.

   “I am thrilled with the presence and participation of Dr. Miroslaw Kocur in Oglethorpe’s newly instituted Theatre Department,” said Dr. Deborah Merola, the department’s director. “Dr. Kocur will further classical drama scholarship and international perspectives at our university and bring needed experimental actor training into our theatre department. Dr. Kocur is an animated and engaging teacher in the best tradition of Oglethorpe University faculty.”

   Kocur was taught by the great Polish director Tadeusz Kantor and participated in many workshops at Jerzy Grotowski’s famous Polish Laboratory Theatre. He was director of the Second Studio of Wroclaw, former site of the Polish Laboratory Theatre, from 1987 until 1990. Kocur received his Master of Fine Arts degree from the Theatre Academy of Cracow, Poland, in 1986, and his doctorate from the Department of Philology at the University of Wroclaw, Poland, in 1999. He teaches cultural studies at the University of Wroclaw and acting at the Theatre Academy of Cracow.

   Kocur is the author of the prize-winning Ancient Greek Theatre and the recently published The Reign of Theatre: Actors and Spectators in Ancient Rome. His next project is a book on Shakespearean staging practices.