3,000 views worldwide!

Our videos have now been viewed 3,000 times in the last three months (we're catching up to Psy, the Gangnam guy), in 43 U.S. states and 52 other nations: 
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Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Canada, China, Colombia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Iran, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Martinique, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, the U.K., Vietnam.

YouTube's "Analytics" indicate that the Latin performances are especially popular around the world.

Tim and Sharon want to remind everybody that our workshop, at the APA conference in Seattle, is scheduled for 8.30-11.30am, Friday January 4th. 

2,500 views in 2 months!

Our videos have had 2500 views in just two months!  That isn't Justin Bieber territory, but it's pretty impressive for ancient Roman playwrights. 

The videos have been viewed in 43 of the States, and in 47 countries.  Here is a list of the global viewing locations:

Australia, Canada, the U.K., Spain, Greece, Italy, Germany, Hong Kong, Cyprus, Brazil, India, France, the Netherlands, Russia, Argentina, Sweden, Austria, Belgium, Japan, Norway, Hungary, Ireland, Morocco, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Romania, Bolivia, Switzerland, China, Colombia, Egypt, Finland, Israel, Iran, Cambodia, South Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Turkey, Ukraine, and Vietnam.

U.S. high school teachers are using the videos in their classes, as well.

We invite all our viewers to post questions and comments on this blog--on the specific post for any given video, on this page, or on the Open Thread page (listed in the Labels menu to the right).  We'd love to hear from you, and will be very glad to give answers, replies, and thoughts.

Graduate students at Washington University in St. Louis recently used several of the NEH Institute videos as part of a proseminar on Classics and the Study of Performance.

General Information

This page gives a little information, plus links to more information, about the NEH Summer Institute, "Roman Comedy in Performance," which ran from June 24th to July 20th, 2012, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

This Institute experimented with different types and choices in performance of selected scenes from Roman Comedy, and it produced twenty scenes, which can be found here on YouTube.  Specific posts for viewing individual scenes, and leaving comments or questions, conducting discussion, providing information about resources, teaching, staging productions, etc., are all listed in the menu on the right, as are other relevant post topics.

The co-directors were Sharon L. James and Timothy J. Moore.

Our page on the Institute's official website is here.

Sharon L. James is Associate Professor of Classics at UNC Chapel Hill.  She earned her doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, with a dissertation on parents and children in the Iliad, the Aeneid, and the Divine Comedy.  Since then her specialties have been in women and gender in antiquity, particularly in Roman love elegy and New Comedy.  She has published numerous articles in these fields.  Her book, Learned Girls and Male Persuasion: Gender and Reading in Roman Love Elegy was published by the University of California Press in 2003.  She has recently co-edited, with Professor Sheila Dillon, the Blackwell Companion to Women in the Ancient World (2012).  She regularly teaches courses in Roman Comedy, Latin poetry, and women in ancient Greece and Rome.  She is currently completing a large-scale study of women in Greek and Roman New Comedy.

Timothy J. Moore is John and Penelope Biggs Distinguished Professor of Classics and Department Chair of Classics at Washington University in St. Louis.  He has written many articles on a range of subjects, and is an expert on music in Roman Comedy.  His books include Music in Roman Comedy (Cambridge 2012),  Roman Theatre  (Cambridge 2012), The Theater of Plautus: Playing to the Audience (Austin 1998), and Artistry and Ideology: Livy's Vocabulary of Virtue (Frankfurt 1989).

Information about the Visiting Faculty Experts can be found here.

A general open thread can be found here.

News and publicity

This is the page for news, publicity, notices and information about staged performances.  Please let us know of any programs you're running!

Sharon is putting on a show-and-tell on Friday the 14th of September, in the Murphey Hall Auditorium on the UNC Chapel Hill campus.  Jeanne Neumann, Elizabeth Patterson, and Chris Woodworth will be there, to talk about their experiences in the Institute, their creative processes, and any classes or productions they're thinking about.

So what are you up to?  Post a comment and let us know!

Visiting faculty experts page

This is the page for the Visiting Faculty Experts to make comments.

Our cast of distinguished experts: Fred Franko, Mary-Kay Gamel, Sander Goldberg, Anne Groton, Toph Marshall, Amy Richlin, Niall Slater, and John Starks Jr.

Slapstick Pseudolus

This is the page for the slapstick Pseudolus, with an actual SlapStick!  Please post comments, questions, discussion here.

The slapstick Pseudolus stars Gian Giacomo Colli, Seth Jeppesen, Kenneth Molloy, Ada Palmer, and Dan Smith Jr.  The commedia dell'arte masks are Gian Giacomo's.

The video is embedded here, and the links will take you to YouTube, for the accompanying text and information.  The YouTube video text also has the link to this page.

 Check out the changing scarves and masks, and the quick-change moves of the cast!



YouTube video here.