Bruce Levitt has been a Professor in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University since l986. He served as Chair of the Department from l986 to l995. Previous to assuming the Chair of the Department at Cornell Dr. Levitt headed the MFA programs in Acting at the University of Iowa and served as program coordinator of the MFA program in Directing at Columbia University.
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At Cornell, Levitt has collaborated in community-based projects with the Lehman Alternative Community School, John O’Neal, Roadside Theatre, Urban Bush Women, Michael Keck, and members of the American Festival coalition. He has co-taught courses in community engagement while also teaching courses in Prison Theatre and The Arts in Incarceration.
Levitt is a facilitator for the Phoenix Players Theatre Group, an organization founded by incarcerated men at Auburn Maximum Security Prison. He has been with the group fourteen years, meeting with them weekly, and assisting them on their journey of transformation through the use of theatre techniques. Levitt has assisted in devising five original pieces that the group has performed for invited audiences. Maximum Will, the group’s second piece was performed in April of 2012 at Auburn Correctional Facility and its development is the basis for the documentary Human Again. The group expanded its membership in 2013 and in May of 2014 performed its third original piece titled An Indeterminate Life. In May 2016, The Phoenix Players presented their fourth original piece, This Incarcerated Life, the full video of which can be found on the Phoenix Players website. PPTG’s fifth and most recent piece, created in 2018: The Strength of Our Convictions: The Auburn Redemption is posted on the PPTG website along with previous productions. Two of his recent articles about the Phoenix Players, co-authored with Nick Fesette, assistant professor at Oxford College, are: Pedagogies of Self-Humanization: Collaborating to Engage Trauma in the Phoenix Players Theatre Group, and Rehearsing Transformation in an American Prison.
Levitt is a facilitator for the Phoenix Players Theatre Group, an organization founded by incarcerated men at Auburn Maximum Security Prison. He has been with the group fourteen years, meeting with them weekly, and assisting them on their journey of transformation through the use of theatre techniques. Levitt has assisted in devising five original pieces that the group has performed for invited audiences. Maximum Will, the group’s second piece was performed in April of 2012 at Auburn Correctional Facility and its development is the basis for the documentary Human Again. The group expanded its membership in 2013 and in May of 2014 performed its third original piece titled An Indeterminate Life. In May 2016, The Phoenix Players presented their fourth original piece, This Incarcerated Life, the full video of which can be found on the Phoenix Players website. PPTG’s fifth and most recent piece, created in 2018: The Strength of Our Convictions: The Auburn Redemption is posted on the PPTG website along with previous productions. Two of his recent articles about the Phoenix Players, co-authored with Nick Fesette, assistant professor at Oxford College, are: Pedagogies of Self-Humanization: Collaborating to Engage Trauma in the Phoenix Players Theatre Group, and Rehearsing Transformation in an American Prison.
Phoenix players theatre groupThe Phoenix Players Theatre Group is a program developed by and for incarcerated persons and Communities in a maximum-security prison. It is a transformative theatre community, which utilizes theatre to reconnect incarcerated people to their full humanity. Experiences gained through PPTG significantly increase incarcerated peoples’ chances of transcending the negative labels and histories of criminality that define them within the greater society.
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