Tag Archives: Matthew Spangler

September Newsletter: Dr. Spangler Wins the Leslie Irene Coger Award for Distinguished Performance

Dr. Matthew Spangler teaches at San Jose State University on Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2017. (James Tensuan/San Jose State University)

Dr. Matthew Spangler teaches at San Jose State University on Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2017. (James Tensuan/San Jose State University)

By David Goll

Dr. Matthew Spangler enjoyed a summer of achievement in 2017—based on a mixture of long-running professional successes, recurring events, and brand new honors.

In August, Dr. Spangler, associate professor of Communication Studies, became the first San José State University faculty member to win the prestigious Leslie Irene Coger Award for Distinguished Performance. Since 1994, the National Communication Association has bestowed the honor annually to teachers, directors, producers or performers who’ve created a body of live performances. He will receive his award during the Washington D.C.-based organization’s annual conference in Dallas in November.

“I’m honored and flattered to receive this award,” said Dr. Spangler, a member of the SJSU faculty since 2005. “We in this field are not in it for the awards, but it’s very nice to be recognized.”

The award was announced roughly at the same time as the 15th production of his stage version of The Kite Runner—the former number one New York Times best-selling novel by Khaled Hosseini—was wrapping up its eight-month run at two different theaters in London’s famed West End theater district. Dr. Spangler adapted the novel, which was also turned into a successful 2007 movie, for the stage and was first performed at San José State that same year and then by theater groups throughout the U.S.

The professor/playwright said he has modified the play over the years by adapting the script to better reflect current events, including adding new characters to keep “The Kite Runner” relevant. The British production gave added emphasis to the experience of Afghan characters emigrating to the East Bay city of Fremont.

Two graduate students working towards Master’s degrees in Communication Studies, Jenni Perez and Abigail Nuno, were among a small group of San José State students who made the trip to London last December to view the production.

“Being given the opportunity to see Dr. Spangler’s play in London was without a doubt one of my favorite experiences during my time in the graduate program,” Perez said. “…I was introduced to the cast of the play and had the chance to hang out with them afterward. They wanted to ask our opinions of their American accents.”

Describing it as one of her favorite novels, Perez said she was transfixed seeing the book turned into a stage play.

“Though I always hoped to watch ‘The Kite Runner’ play in person, I never imagined my first time would be in London of all places,” she said.

Nuno said other than losing feeling in her toes from the December chill of London; she has great memories of the trip to Europe.

“The theater was gorgeous and the play was a great representation of the book,” she said. “It was awesome to see a crowd of people just as passionate about the story as we were. My father also came to London with us and went to the play. He had never read the book and still enjoyed it as much as we did.”

Both Nuno and Perez said they’re inspired by their professor.

“Dr. Spangler is an instructor who is very passionate about immigration,” Nuno said. “He has many accomplishments in the field, so he likes to tie them into our class.”

After the London productions, which drew audiences of about 100,000 from December to August, Dr. Spangler said that “The Kite Runner” is touring the U.K. until June.

It was a busy summer—Dr. Spangler also presided over his third National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for School Teachers, from June 25 to July 9, since 2014. This year’s event for 25 K-12 teachers from throughout the nation, titled “The Immigrant Experience in California Through Literature and Theatre”, featured talks by well-known academics and such authors and playwrights as Khaled Hosseini, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Luis Valdez. Also included were field trips around the Bay Area, including to Angel Island—known as the Ellis Island of the West—because of its immigration station operating from 1910 to 1940 that processed 500,000 immigrants.

Dr. Spangler and his former colleague, Dr. David Kahn, professor emeritus from the SJSU Television, Radio, Film & Theatre department, received a $168,000 grant from the NEH to stage the Institute. Participants’ airfare was covered, as well as lodging at the Fairmont San José hotel and a small food allowance. It was one of about two dozen such gatherings sponsored by the NEH.

“We get 150 applications for 25 spots,” said Dr. Spangler, who also teaches courses on immigration. “All of the instructors are teaching immigration issues in their classes, in a variety of subject areas.”

Luis Valdez, writer and director of such acclaimed films as “Zoot Suit” and “La Bamba,” is considered the founder of modern Chicano theater and film. A former SJSU student, Valdez was joined as a speaker at the Institute by his son, Kinan Valdez. The elder Valdez is the founder and artistic director of El Teatro Campesino, the renowned San Juan Bautista theater company, where his son is also an actor and director.

Spangler’s ‘The Kite Runner’ Adaptation Opens in London with Positive Reviews

Matthew Spangler, a professor of communication studies in SJSU’s College of Social Sciences, created a theater adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s Kite Runner that is currently on stage in London’s West End. The show opened on Dec. 21 and runs until March 11. The performances are at Wyndham’s Theatre, an 800 seat venue off Leicester Square. The play has so far garnered more than two dozen reviews, including the few publications highlighted below:

“The best page-to-stage show since War Horse. . . . Matthew Spangler’s adaptation held the crowd spellbound. . . . Heartbreakingly good stage version of a popular story earns its place in the West End.”

★★★★★

The Stage Magazine

 

“The Kite Runner soars.”

★★★★

The Independent

“Spangler skillfully balances the scenes in Asia with those of the Afghan refugees seeking to maintain their dignity and culture in the West. . . . It cannot but remind us of the thousands of vulnerable children in Syria today.”

★★★★★

Sunday Express

“The book has to be something I really like,” Spangler said, of working on an adaptation. “When you write a play, you spend a lot of time with it. It takes about a year to write it, then I look for a theatre that wants to produce it and then there’s the rehearsal time. It can be a two-to-three-year process so it has to be a story I really feel connected to and I want to share.”

February 2016 Newsletter: Immigration and Performing Arts Connect

Photo courtesy of Matthew Spangler Dr. Matthew Spangler, center right in gray, and Dr. David Kahn, center left in white, lead participants of a 2014 summer institute, "The Immigrant Experience in California through Literature and Theatre" through a performance exercise. The pair will host the program this summer with a National Endowment for the Humanities grant.

Photo courtesy of Matthew Spangler
Dr. Matthew Spangler, center right in gray, and Dr. David Kahn, center left in white, lead participants of a 2014 summer institute, “The Immigrant Experience in California through Literature and Theatre” through a performance exercise. The pair will host the program this summer with a National Endowment for the Humanities grant.

Matthew Spangler, a professor of communication studies in the College of Social Sciences, and David Kahn, a professor and chair of the Department of TV, Radio, Film and Theatre in the College of Humanities and the Arts, will be leading a summer institute for K-12 teachers and graduate students at San Jose State in July, with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

“The Immigrant Experience in California through Literature and Theatre” will bring 25 teachers and graduate students working toward a career in K-12 teaching to SJSU where they will interact with professors from a multitude of disciplines as well as artists and authors who have explored the immigrant experience in their works. The teachers will explore the written pieces through performance activities and will perform a piece of their own creation by the end of the program.

“The institute combines immigration and performance, and that’s what I do with my scholarship,” said Spangler, who wrote Staging Intercultural Ireland: New Plays and Practitioner Perspectives (co-edited with Charlotte McIvor, Cork University Press, 2014).

“The Immigrant Experience in California through Literature and Theatre” was offered at SJSU in 2014 through an NEH grant, with 150 teachers applying for the available slots. Guest faculty include Maxine Hong Kingston (author of The Woman Warrior) and Andrew Lam (author of Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora), playwright and SJSU alumnus Luis Valdez, ’64 English (author of Zoot Suit and founder of El Teatro Campesino), and theatre artist Ping Chong (author of East West Quartet and creator of “Undesirable Elements” performance series). The program will discuss immigration in an historical context with curriculum around emigration from Mexico, China, Afghanistan and Vietnam to California.

Other SJSU faculty members who are involved in the summer institute include Glen Gendzel, an associate professor of history, and Persis Karim, an associate professor of English.

Spangler, who studied at Trinity College in Dublin and completed a dissertation on Irish author James Joyce, said he became interested in the influence of immigration on Irish arts when there was an influx of movement into the country between 1995 to 2008.

“Ireland has a long history of emigration and it doesn’t have a national mythology around immigration like we do in America,” Spangler said. “Immigration is turning that on its head and demanding Ireland rethink its national identity.”

In addition to his scholarship, Spangler has also adapted books for the stage, including Khaled Hosseini’s Kite Runner and T.C. Boyle’s Tortilla Curtain.

“The book has to be something I really like,” Spangler said, of working on an adaptation. “When you write a play, you spend a lot of time with it. It takes about a year to write it, then I look for a theatre that wants to produce it and then there’s the rehearsal time. It can be a two-to-three-year process so it has to be a story I really feel connected to and I want to share.”

Read more about “The Immigrant Experience in California through Literature and Theatre” online.

Grant: Summer institute will focus on immigrant experience through literature and theatre

Matthew Spangler, a professor of Performance and Communications Studies, and David Kahn, a professor and chair of TV, Radio, Film, & Theatre, received a grant for $168,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The grant will allow Spangler and Kahn to put on a two-week summer institute for 25 school teachers that will explore the immigrant experience in California through literary works and theatrical adaptations. Previous institute faculty included Luis Valdez, playwright and author of “Zoot Suit,” Maxine Hong Kingston, author of “Woman Warrior,” and many others. The institute explores ways in which the immigrant experience to the United States, and California, in particular, has been represented through literary texts. the topics include: (1) the construction of political borders between geographic territories and social borders between groups of people; (2) intercultural interaction between settled and immigrant communities; (3) changing family and gender dynamics within discrete immigrant communities. Participants will explore these topics as they pertain to emigration from Mexico, China, Vietnam, and Afghanistan.

Scholars from the 2014 “The California Immigrant Experience through Literature and Theatre" program pose for a photo.

Scholars from the 2014 “The California Immigrant Experience through Literature and Theatre” program pose for a photo.

Entitled “The California Immigrant Experience through Literature and Theatre,” the institute will be held July 17-31, 2016. Applications are available online for qualifying K-12 teachers.

For more information, visit the Immigration Theatre Institute website.