CUNY SPS Alumni, Faculty, Students, and Staff Briefs Briefs: Alumni After a year-long search, the UCI Claire Trevor School of the Arts has named CUNY SPS MA in Applied Theatre (MAAT) alum ARIYAN JOHNSON to its Department of Dance faculty. Johnson specializes in storytelling and creating strong female perspectives using hip hop styles, jazz, and Afro-fusion modern dance. Her hiring demonstrates UCI’s commitment to expand its current offerings in dances rooted in the African diaspora. Women’s Project Theater has selected B.J EVANS as a producer in its 2020-22 Theater Lab. An ‘18 graduate of the CUNY SPS MA in Applied Theatre (MAAT) program, Evans joins WPT artist-scholars as they create bold new works for the stage as well as contribute to the development of plays to be presented at the biennial Pipeline Festival.
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The highly competitive two-year residency has launched the careers of over 350 theatre artists since its founding in 1983.
scher and Lopez) drew on work that was undertaken during their MAAT course studies.
MA in Applied Theatre Alum Publish Articles
The journal Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed published the essays “Joker’s Log 2020: An Odyssey,” by Julian Pimiento (‘19), and “Don’t Poke the Bear - A Project Report” by Grace Cannon (‘19) and Nicole Kontolefa (‘19). These essays were the result of an MAAT independent study that took place in collaboration with Ashleigh Bragg (‘19) and Elise Goldin (‘20).
Alexis Jemal (’21), Brennan O’Rourke (’21), Jenny Hipscher (’21), and Tabatha Lopez (’21) published essays in ArtsPraxis, NYU’s educational theatre journal. The pieces “Pandemic Lessons” (Jemal and O’Rourke) and “Theatre for Liberating Social Work Education” (Hip-
Adeola Adegbola, assistant director of the MAAT program, congratulated the alumni. “We are all so proud of our graduates’ contributions to the larger field of Applied Theatre. They continue to use Applied Theatre tools to incite positive change in their respective communities.”
“Inclusion in the Workplace: Are We Doing Enough?”, an article written by EBONYE GUSSINE WILKINS (MA in Business Management & Leadership ’11), was featured as one of the 5 Top Intriguing Cutter Business Technology Journal Articles for 2020.
CUNY School of Professional Studies Magazine | 2021-22
