J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board awards third fellowship in theater to Preeshl

The J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board has awarded a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Theatre fellowship to Artemis Preeshl, assistant professor of performing arts.  

Artemis Preeshl, a visiting assistant professor of performing arts, will work with Pakistani actors and students at the undergraduate and graduate levels through a new fellowship from the J. William Fulbright Foreigh Scholarship Board. 

Preeshl will lecture on American plays and lead workshops in expressive actor training, commedia dell’arte (Italian physical comedy), improvisation, and Fitzmaurice Voicework with university, semiprofessional and professional actors at Pakistani institutions. She will participate in specialized Pakistani academic programs and conferences, assist in the development and/or assessment of Pakistani academic curricula or educational materials to deepen engagement with American plays, characters, author and context in class and rehearsals, and/or conduct academic training programs on public speaking and presentations at Pakistani institutions.

The J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board first awarded a Fulbright Senior Researcher fellowship to Preeshl to learn Bharatanatyam dance, choreograph Liquid Gems, a seven-dance Bharatanatyam and Western fusion suite, and write an direct Pancha Ratna (Five Gems) at Kalakshetra, the “Julliard” of India in 2010-2011.

During her residency, Preeshl performed “Tisram Aliripu & Janat Janali: Women of ‘The Mahabharata’ & ‘Ramayana’” at Fulbright South and Central Asian Conference in Goa, shared about Fulbright at the Building Partnerships: The Fulbright Experience conference in Chennai, taught acting, movement, voice, and directing for actors and community members and public speaking for the Fulbright High Commission and advised the Floating Cloud Theatre Company on their play about Sri Lanka’s civil war from the Tamil perspective through the U.S.-Indian Educational Foundation’s South Asian Travel Grant in Sri Lanka.

On sabbatical from Loyola University New Orleans, Preeshl lectured on Shakespeare’s contemporaries and directed a stage reading of “Much Ado About Nothing” in a commedia dell’arte style with graduate students at the University of Madras.

Preeshl expressed gratitude to Elon University for its support to further her goal of creating peace through education through the Fulbright programs. Preeshl teaches acting, movement, dialects, improvisation, reconstucts Anna Sokolow’s lost dance for Elon’s Spring Dance Concert and coaches verse and dialects for Elon’s upcoming production of “Twelfth Night.”