AICT - IATC

AWARDS - Kapila Vatsyayan for the IATC Thalia Prize

It is our pleasure to announce the Thalia Prize laureate Ms. Kapila Vatsyayan, Ph.D, India. This prize of honour will be handed over during the 2012 congress of the IATC in Warszaw in April.

Kapila Vatsyayan is one of India's most important writers on the subject of Indian Theatre and Indian Dance. To theatre lovers in the Western world her writing has opened new windows to Indian performing arts, early in her work popularizing Indian performing arts and multi-culturalism. Born in 1928, she has lived a life dedicated to the arts generally and to theatre and dance in particular. Her influence as a scholar and critic of Asian theatre has been deep and exemplar and deserves wide recognition.

She has authored 15 books which have become classics in the field, such as Classical Indian Dance in Literature and the Arts (Sangeet Natak Akademi, 1968), Indian Classical Dance (SNA, 1972), Traditional Indian Theatre: Multiple Streams (NBT, 1972), Traditions of Indian Folk Dance (Clarion, 1975), The Square and the Circle of Indian Arts Roli, 1983, Bharata - The Natyashastra (Sahitya Akademi, 1996) and numerous volumes on Indian regional dance. Her writings through the 70s and 80s particularly put the entire area of Indian dance and theatre on the world map and she has been a leading figure in this area ever since. In the decades ot the 20th century when globalisation and multi-culturalism was highly influential on the stages of the western world her clear analysis and insightful understanding of the Indian tradition enlighted the way to true exchange avoiding ”cultural tourism”.

A long-time director of the Indira Gandhi National Centre of the Arts in New Delhi, she has worked closely with the Indian government in a variety of areas as a Government Secretary in cultural development. Since 2004, she has been a member of Unesco's Executive Board and earlier taught at major universities around ther world including the Universities of Pennsylvania, California and Michigan as well as at Banaras Hindu University, Manipur University and Kolkata University in India. She has lectured in China, Japan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Russia, France and the UK. She has been awarded numerous honorary doctorates and has been awarded India's highest honour, a Padamshri.

Margareta Sörenson's speech >........... Kapila Vatsyayan's Acceptance speech on the occasion of the award of Thalia Prize >

Dear colleagues,
As promised, the IATC is proud to announce that its web journal
Critical Stages / Scènes critiques No 5 is now on line at criticalstages.org . The special topic for this issue is "Theatre and Exile". We count on you to circulate this announcement. Quoting Yun-Cheol Kim, Editor-in-Chief of the Web journal and President of the IATC: "34 authors from 20 countries have written 45 articles for this 5th issue. There is no journal that has such international resources." Enjoy the reading!
Best regards,
Dr Michel VAIS, Secretary General

New websites



The new website of the UK Critics' Circle	ATCA's blogspot, taken care of by Jeffrey Eric Jenkins

IATC WAS ESTABLISHED IN 1956

The IATC draws together more than two thousand theatre critics, through some fifty National Sections. Founded in Paris in 1956, the IATC is a non-profit, Non-Governmental Organization benefitting under statute B of UNESCO.

The purpose of the IATC is to bring together theatre critics in order to promote international cooperation. Its principal aims are to foster theatre criticism as a discipline and to contribute to the development of its methodological bases; to protect the ethical and professional interests of theatre critics and to promote the common rights of all its members; and to contribute to reciprocal awareness and understanding between cultures by encouraging international meetings and exchanges in the field of theatre in general.

The IATC holds a world congress every two years, seminars for young critics twice a year, as well as symposiums, and contributes to juries. English and French are the association's two official languages, and its place of incorporation is Paris.

Please send any post mail either to the president, to the secretary general or, for subscriptions and payment of dues, to the general treasurer.

Copyright..IATC - International Association of Theatre Critics / AICT - Association internationale des critiques de théâtre..2012