Centre For Indigenous Theatre

Centre For Indigenous Theatre

Founded in 1974 by the late James H. Buller, the Native Theatre School was started with the vision that Aboriginal people could create change in Canada through theatre. Buller was a noted opera and musical comedy singer.

While earlier in the Canadian Navy before founding the school, Buller competed as a popular boxer known as "Gentleman Jim". He wanted to see aboriginal actors, playwrights and directors flourish across Canada and create a network of aboriginal theatre companies. He believed that the Native Theatre School was the way to develop theatre professionals who could do that.

In 1994 the Native Theatre School was renamed the Centre for Indigenous Theatre to reflect the organizations greater commitment to the pre-professional training, professional development and promotion of aboriginal theatre in North America and around the world. In 1995, the centre announced the development of its first new program in support of aboriginal theatre, the James Buller Awards for Aboriginal Theatre Excellence.

1998 marked the launch of the Centre for Indigenous Theatre's newest and most ambitious program. Based on the Native Theatre School model, the Centre opened the new Indigenous Theatre School, the first full-time, 3-year theatre training program in North America with a curriculum that integrates training in acting, voice, movement and traditional aboriginal cultural classes in dance, song and oral history.

The Centre for Indigenous Theatre is located in Toronto, Ontario.

Read more about Centre For Indigenous Theatre:  Notable Graduates, Notable Faculty

Famous quotes containing the words centre, indigenous and/or theatre:

    In the centre of his cage
    The pacing animal
    Surveys the jungle cove
    And slicks his slithering wiles
    To turn the venereal awl
    In the livid wound of love.
    Allen Tate (1899–1979)

    What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground,—and to one another; it is either winged or it is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as much to be expected as rustling leaves.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Glorious bouquets and storms of applause ... are the trimmings which every artist naturally enjoys. But to move an audience in such a role, to hear in the applause that unmistakable note which breaks through good theatre manners and comes from the heart, is to feel that you have won through to life itself. Such pleasure does not vanish with the fall of the curtain, but becomes part of one’s own life.
    Dame Alice Markova (b. 1910)