Practice
Committee Report
1. All workshops submissions were not passed along to the
TPC. I received three submissions via Glen, and one came directly
to the committee. From this grouping we selected two workshops to
be presented at the January executive meeting and were actively seeking
a third workshop with content that would complement the first two
contributions. However, at the January meeting the Phillip Lortie
education workshop was introduced. That was the first time I had
heard of that workshop and since it appeared that the potential
presenter had been told that his submission had been accepted, the TPC
later agreed to forfeit one of the time allocations to this workshop.
Although the workshop description is sound and would have been accepted
by the TPC, knowing of its existence would have saved a lot of effort
in recruiting a third workshop facilitator. SOLUTION: all
workshop entries need to be dealt with separately from papers and
panels and vetted through the TPC since this committee has been set up
for that purpose.
2. One of the workshop proposals, the Reaney workshop proposed by
David Ferry, shifted drastically over time. The proposal I
presented to the executive shifted constantly over the next few
months. When I asked for clarification of details, on at least
one occasion, I received quite an altered proposal instead. In
addition, the potential presenter was involved in several other things
that affected times and format of the workshop. Furthermore, he
was in contact with a number of other executive members about the
workshop and the other involvements. To make a long story short,
this was a really time-consuming and frustrating process. Far too
much time was spent dealing with one person's needs and requests.
SOLUTION: the request for workshop submissions needs to include the
condition that incomplete sketches of workshops will not be
considered. This way potential presenters will be required to
think about what they want to present BEFORE they submit their
proposal, not after.
3. The ball got dropped when it came to informing potential
workshop presenters that their workshops had not been accepted. I
did not know this until I received an email via Glen from one of those
people. This was quickly attended to but not something that
should not have happened. One of the TPC members had virtually
disappeared during the course of the selection and organization
process. It was not until much later that the reasons for this
were determined and that she informed the other two that she cannot
remain a part of the committee due to changes in her life.
Unfortunately, the cohesion of the committee was affected.
SOLUTION: Although, this work can be done by two people, I think that a
third member needs to be added to the TPC, in order to allow for
original members to move on if they choose and to establish some kind
of continuity within this committee. Are there any takers, or
should I
recruit?
Claire Borody
Theatre Practice Committee