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John Emigh is a professor in the Theatre, Speech and Dance and English Departments at Brown University, where he has been teaching and directing since 1967. He has directed more than 60 plays in universities and in the professional theatre. In 1974-75, he traveled in New Guinea, South Asia, and Indonesia, where he studied Balinese "topeng" masked dance with I Nyoman Kakul. Since then, he has made several other research trips to Asia, investigating the street jesters and court fools of Rajasthan, the use of masks in Eastern India, and the changing dynamics of performance in Bali. He has written extensively on the masked drama of New Guinea, Bali, and India, as well as on contemporary theatre practice in the West, and has made a film on the life of Hajari Bhand, a Rajasthani street performer. His book, "Masked Performance: The Play of Self and Other in Ritual and Theatre", has recently been published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, and he is currently working on a book length study of the "Prahlada Nataka" - a devotional form of theatre in Orissa, India. Current projects include investigating links between the traditional concerns of theatre and recent findings in the field of neuro-science and preparing a museum exhibit and international conference on the mask and concepts of person for the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi, as well as research on the carnival and Christmas traditions of masked performance in Alpine Europe and Mexico.

As a performer, Professor Emigh has acted with leading Balinese artists and has performed one-man shows based on Balinese mask techniques at schools, hospitals, universities, theatres, and festivals throughout the United states and in Bali and India, including The Performing Garage in NYC, The New Theatre Festival of Baltimore, the Indian National School for Drama, the Tibetan School of Drama, and the Balinese Academy for the Arts. His performances have been written about in "The Drama Review" and the "Asian Theatre Journal", as well as in various Asian journals. He was the founding chairperson of the Association for Asian Performance and chaired Brown's Dept. of Theatre, Speech and Dance from 1987 to 1993.

Download John Emigh's Curriculum Vitae in PDF Format