Full-Time Teachers
Susan Parenti – Composition, Language, and Performance
Susan Parenti composes and writes as means towards social change.
Parenti received her Bachelor’s degree in composition at Northwestern University; 2 year study of composition/orchestration at l’Accademia di SantaCecilia in Rome Italy with composer Goffredo Petrassi; Master’s and Doctorate in composition at the University of Illinois with composer and activist Herbert Brün.
With Herbert and other conspirators she has founded the Performers’ Workshop Ensemble, House Theater, and School for Designing a Society.
Her current interests: to teach English as a second language to Americans, as a part of self-care and self-defense efforts in public health programs; to take experimental composing out of music schools and into the field of Communication, where it will valiantly hold its own amidst and against its dubious colleagues: public relations, advertising, propaganda, violence, power-over and other legally protected forms of communication. Parenti is co-writing a book with Patch Adams, MD: The Politics of Care.
Selected Publications
Parenti, S. (2008.) Redesigning the U.S. Health Care System: Think Universally, Design Locally. Alternative Voice 6(1): 36-42.
Parenti, S. (2007.) Re-Designing the Character of the ‘Care Actor’ (.pdf)
Parenti, S. (2006.) Re-Designing the US Health Care System: The Third (4th, 5th, 6th) Category (.pdf)
Parenti, S. (2001.) I and My Mouth and Their Irresistible Life in Language. Non Sequitur Press: Champaign, Illinois.
Parenti, S. (2000.) The Politics of the Adjective “Political” and other Plays. Non Sequitur Press: Champaign, Illinois.
Mark Enslin – Composer, Performer, Actor, Activist, Organizer, Teacher
He studied music at Webster College and has a doctorate in music composition from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he studied primarily with Herbert Brün. Also at UIUC, Enslin taught in Unit One, a living/learning program–such courses as Music in Protest and the Art of Acting as Audience–and in the Campus Honors Program with the Performers Workshop Ensemble. As an actor he has had lead roles in Pirandello’s The Vice and Brecht’s Puntilla. Enslin has held teaching residencies at the Federal University of Bahia in Brazil and the Youth Factory for Alternative Culture in Seoul, South Korea.
Selected Publications
Coming soon: poems in Cannot Exist 2008.
Enslin, M. (1995.) Teaching Composition: Facing the Power of the Respondent. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. School of Music.
Parenti, S., M. Enslin, and H. Brün. (1995.) Recontextualizing the Production of “New Music” In Sakolsky, Ron & Fred Wei-han Ho, Eds. Sounding Off! Music as Subversion/Resistence/Revolution. Autonomedia: Brooklyn, New York, 226-233.
Brün, H., et al. (1980.) To One of Those Who Do In Deed Leave Traces. Perspectives of New Music 18: 107-133.
Enslin, M. (1980.) poems in ALLOS: Other Writing (pp. 85-91). La Jolla, CA: Lingua Press.
elizaBeth Simpson — Social Desire and Design
elizaBeth has been doing performance art incorporating vocal composition, puppetry, fire spinning, street theater, and storytelling since 1994. She has studied Theater of the Oppressed with Augusto Boal, Story Circles with John O’Neal (Free Southern Theater), and consensus/group dynamics with numerous teachers. Her creative work specializes in projects which engender collaboration with people who would not call themselves “Artists”. She is a co-director of the Berkeley, CA/Urbana, IL-based Creative Intervention Agency, which offers tools from across the arts/organizing spectrum to generate strategic artistry towards collective empowerment, and teaches anti-oppression workshops throughout the country in both academic and community settings. Recent accomplishments include a position as Activist-In-Residence at Goddard College in 2006, receipt of the American Society for Cybernetics’ Heinz von Foerster Prize in 2007, and receipt of the 2009 Here and Now grant from the Urbana Public Arts program.
Selected Publications
Simpson, E. (2009) “Creating Criminals.” Patterns Winter 2009: 12-13
Simpson, E. (2007) “Not Racist is Not Enough.” Athanor: Semiotica, Filosofia, Arte, Letteratura, special issue on “White Matters / Il Blanco al Centro Della Questione,” ed. Susan Petrilli, n.s. 17.10: 81-84
Simpson, E. (1994) “Self-Service.” Self-Service Press: Springfield, Massachusetts
Melanie Hinojosa — Clown, Philosopher, Dialectician, Performer
Melanie writes and studies philosophy toward a desirable society in which theory and practice coexist. She insists on the importance of the material life of an idea, and takes action to realize her desires in the current society. She is a person who can be relied upon to make something happen and to formulate a theory for its happening. Her passion is seeking out and fulfilling the roles and ideas that are missing.
She initially attended the SDaS in Summer 2006, before her first semester of college. She became passionate about the SDaS and her first year of college at University of Oregon was deficient in comparison. In 2007, she attended the fall session of the school, and transferred to Evergreen State College to work with a teacher by the name of Arun Chandra, who was a composer and a student of Herbert Brun. Though she was his student, Melanie taught dialectical philosophy to her teacher, Arun for the next two years. She received the Heinz Von Forester award for her essay and presentation on the relationship between dialectics and cybernetics in 2009 at the American Society for Cybernetics Conference. Since graduating from Evergreen, she has worked for Patch Adams MD and the Gesundheit Institute (a sister-organization to the SDaS) as the Development Director and has lead numerous humanitarian clown trips.
Melanie has worked to braid together the work of Gesundheit Institute and the School for Designing a Society through various projects, namely the “Clowning and Caring” humanitarian trips, which she dreamed up and composed. These trips consist of both theoretical and practical exploration of clowning and caring, a combination of daily clowning and daily workshops led by teachers of the School for Designing a Society.
Jacob Barton — Composer, Multi-instrumentalist
Jacob’s work focuses on microtonal practice and theory. Jacob studied composition at Rice University, where he instigated the Seventeen Tone Piano Project concert series. At the School for Designing a Society, Jacob co-invented the udderbot (a slide woodwind instrument) and began experimenting with composing in the domain of everyday life. A resident of Urbana, Jacob co-founded ODDMUSIC-UC, a compositional co-op and instrument library at the Independent Media Center.
Ya’aqov Ziso — Composer, Social Change Activist 
Lived in Romania, Israel, USA. Collaborated with Herbert Brun’s Composition Seminar & Performers Workshop Ensemble.
SDaS’ desires and projects attract Ya’aqov no end.