Synopsis
American historian by day and Canadian jazz musician and playwright by night, Clyde R. Forsberg Jr. has also written five original "jazz-musicals." Originally, the idea was for a history professor who played jazz to use the stage to convey a message of some historical importance, augmented by music, as an experiment to see whether the theatre was not a better medium than the classroom. There is no doubting the important fact that the public cast their vote . . . and quite decidedly in the affirmative, despite it all. Playing It By Ear: The Jazz-Theatre of Clyde R. Forsberg Jr. explores such public events and social issues as the Canadian ice storm of 1998 and the urban-rural divide, Louis Armstrong's "Black and Blue" and the relationship between racism and domestic abuse, the death-rattle of patriarchal authority evident at family holiday gatherings, the penis and vagina as twin taboos, and what Forsberg's seven-year trek along the Silk Road (2003-2010) in search of self understanding and renewal would cost him-but also reward him for venturing outside of the box.
About the Author
Clyde R. Forsberg Jr. holds a Ph.D. in Cultural and Religious History from Queen s University (Kingston) with undergraduate and graduate degrees in Religious Studies, Philosophy of Religion, and Education (Social Studies). His academic writing includes published book and film reviews for the Journal of American History and Church History (University of Chicago), as well as articles on Freemasonry for the Journal of Historical Geography and, related to this, on Mormonism for Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, and the John Whitmer Historical Association Journal. He is the author of Equal Rites: The Book of Mormon, Masonry, Gender, and American Culture, which Columbia University Press published in 2004 as part of their Religion and Culture Series. An assistant professor at Oxford College/Aletheia University in Taiwan, he teaches a wide array of courses on the history of the West, Cross-Cultural Studies, Islam in America, the New Age and Neopaganism, and English. He also directed and performed in the 2009 university production of "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street." Having played and recorded with numerous Canadian and Central Asian jazz musicians, he is the featured international jazz artist every Friday night at Sapere Café in Tamsui, Taiwan, where he and his wife Cholpon and their two children, Acacia and Attila, reside. His academic interests of late have turned to Chinese and Taiwanese religious history. He has recently been co-editing a forthcoming collection of essays on the life and work of the Presbyterian missionary to Taiwan, George Leslie Mackay (1872-1901), by Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
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