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Performing at Performing the World 2012

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9 months ago
by admin in

 

Per­form­ing the World (PTW) is as much a per­for­mance fes­ti­val as it is a per­for­mance con­fer­ence. PTW is full of per­for­mance in many forms—plays, one-person shows, sto­ry­telling, dance and music. Here’s a small sam­ple of some per­for­mances we haven’t high­lighted in pre­vi­ous newsletters.

 

Plays

 

  • Per­form­ers With­out Bor­ders, a group of stu­dent actors from the Uni­ver­sity of Col­orado, share their devised inter­ac­tive shadow play, Energy Jus­tice: The Musi­cal, which uses solar pow­ered lights and music by three-time Emmy Award win­ner Tom Wasinger. The play has toured schools in the Navaho Nation as part of an effort to bring clean energy to the 18,000 Navaho fam­i­lies liv­ing with­out electricity.

 

  • The Prover­bial Loons, the Castillo Theatre’s impro­vi­sa­tional musi­cal the­atre troupe, per­form dur­ing Per­form­ing the World, cre­at­ing musi­cals based on inter­views of audi­ence mem­bers before your very eyes.

 

One Per­son Shows

 

  • Renowned play­wright and actor Car­lyle Brown per­forms his one-man play about the mad­ness of war—and the mad­ness that sur­rounds it. Set in 1968, Ther­apy and Resis­tance tells the story of the Viet Nam War draft resis­tance move­ment and the attempts of one draftee to get a defer­ment as a manic-depressive schiz­o­phrenic with para­noid tendencies.

 

  • South African-based Anto­nio Lyons’ one-man play We Are Here explores a diver­sity of male voices as they nav­i­gate their iden­ti­ties and soci­etal roles rel­a­tive to women, vio­lence, HIV/AIDS, self esteem, par­ent­ing, etc.

 

  • Joseph Galata, who has spent three decades work­ing with for­mer street gang mem­bers, teens with sub­stance abuse his­to­ries, ado­les­cents afflicted by vio­lence, poverty, domes­tic and com­mu­nity abuse, presents a 30-minute per­for­mance piece based on a true story of a 15 year old boy incar­cer­ated in an adult prison and exe­cuted in the Nevada gas cham­ber at the age of 17. The per­for­mance will be fol­lowed by an inter-active work­shop, which focuses on the use of the­atre, music, dance, media and lit­er­acy arts with chil­dren, teens, par­ents, and pro­fes­sion­als to end the cycles of vio­lence and crime that result in youth imprisonment.

 

Sto­ry­telling

 

  • Stephanie Pul­ford, a doc­to­r­ial can­di­date in mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia Davis, and sto­ry­teller Paige Greco revisit the con­cept of nar­ra­tive, and apply it to the for­mat of a sci­en­tific talk. They will demon­strate how good sto­ry­telling makes sci­en­tific infor­ma­tion more acces­si­ble and inter­est­ing to sci­en­tists and non­sci­en­tists alike.

 

  • Avra­ham Kluger, a pro­fes­sor in the Orga­ni­za­tional Behav­ior Unit of the School of Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion at the Hebrew Uni­ver­sity of Jerusalem, will lead a story telling work­shop, fol­lowed by a con­ver­sa­tion about how sto­ry­telling can bring­ing strangers together, pre­vent vio­lence and cre­ate bonds in schools, com­pa­nies and organizations.

Dance

 

  • New York City-based chore­o­g­ra­pher Gina Gib­ney shares her company’s model of uti­liz­ing move­ment to empower and heal women liv­ing in the domes­tic vio­lence shel­ters. The work­shop will include a per­for­mance of “Here to Tell” a dance that Gib­ney chore­o­graphed for San­dra Man­ick, a sur­vivor and domes­tic vio­lence mentor.

 

  • A col­lab­o­ra­tion between jazz pianist Chris Rey­man and dancer San­dra Hendrix-Lopez, “Per­cep­tions” is a col­lec­tion of three impro­vi­sa­tional pieces that reflect on the rela­tion­ship between per­former and audi­ence, as well as the tran­sient nature of iden­tity, soci­ety and reality.

Music

 

  • June Boyce-Tillman, Pro­fes­sor of Applied Music at the Uni­ver­sity of Win­ches­ter, will lead a par­tic­i­pa­tory work­shop in which the par­tic­i­pants will col­lec­tively make music—approaching music through the experiencer/creator of the music rather than the music itself.

 

  • Susan Par­enti from the School for Design­ing a Soci­ety, based in Urbana, Illi­nois, will lead a work­shop that starts with musi­cal per­for­mance after which she invites the audi­ence to respond—their sug­ges­tions incor­po­rated there and then, as they becom­ing co-creators with the musi­cians of the musi­cal piece.

 

Reg­is­ter for PTW

There is no other gath­er­ing like Per­form­ing the World. It brings together peo­ple not only from all over the world, but from many dif­fer­ent walks of life who are using per­for­mance to engage the world’s social prob­lems. PTW is just five weeks away, so reg­is­ter now to make sure you can be there for this remark­able three-day world­wide rendezvous.

Hous­ing the World

PTW 2012 Hous­ing Com­mit­tee is busy secur­ing free hous­ing for the hun­dreds of per­for­mance activists and schol­ars who will be attend­ing. If you live in the New York met­ro­pol­i­tan area and would like to host a per­for­mance activist or scholar from around the world details here.

Three US-Rwandan Collaborations

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10 months ago
by admin in

Among a num­ber of excit­ing inter­na­tional col­lab­o­ra­tions, here are three projects that will bring together North Amer­i­can and Rwan­dan the­atre artists.

Chil­dren of Killers

Award win­ning play­wright Katory Hall’s Chil­dren of Killers will be fea­tured as an evening per­for­mance on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day Octo­ber 5 and 6. Directed by Emily Mendel­son, who has directed and cre­ated devised plays in both Rwanda and Uganda, the play will be pro­duced by the Castillo The­atre in con­junc­tion with its youth the­atre, Youth Onstage!.

Chil­dren of Killers is about a group of teenage friends in a Rwan­dan vil­lage 15 years after the geno­cide. Many of their fathers are being released from prison where they have been serv­ing time for their roles in the mass killings of 800,000 of their Tutsi neigh­bors. How are the young people—who have never met their fathers—going to deal with their return and how are they going to live with, move beyond or trans­form their blood soaked legacy?

Orig­i­nally com­mis­sioned by the National The­atre in Lon­don and inspired by a trip to Rwanda in 2009 where Hall attended a geno­cide stud­ies con­fer­ence and spoke with vic­tims and per­pe­tra­tors of the geno­cide, Chil­dren of Killers was work­shopped by Hall and National The­atre direc­tor Anthony Banks with Youth Onstage! stu­dents in 2010. It has gone on to eight pro­duc­tions in Britain and 40 pro­duc­tions in Por­tu­gal. This will be its Amer­i­can premiere.

Katori Hall comes to Castillo and Per­form­ing the World fresh from the Broad­way tri­umph of The Moun­tain­top, her play about the last night of Dr. Mar­tin Luther King Jr.’s life, which starred Samuel Jack­son and Angela Bas­sett, and from the pre­miere of Hurt Vil­lage at the Sig­na­ture The­atre, a play set in the projects of her home­town of Mem­phis. The Moun­tain­top won the Olivier Award (London’s equiv­a­lent of a Tony) for best play in 2010. Hurt Vil­lage won the 2011 Susan Smith Black­burn Prize. Hall is a PONY (Play­wrights of New York) Fel­low at the Lark The­atre, a mem­ber of the Fel­low­ship of South­ern Writ­ers and of the Ron Brown Scholar Pro­gram. She’s a grad­u­ate of Colum­bia, Har­vard and the Jul­liard School.

When Walls Come Down-TRUTH!

Another American-Rwandan col­lab­o­ra­tion comes to PTW 2012 in the form of The Anne Frank Project. The Project began with stu­dents from the The­atre Depart­ment of Buf­falo State Uni­ver­sity in the United States and actors from the Mashirika The­ater Com­pany from Remera, Rwanda work­ing to cre­ate a per­for­mance piece on geno­cide that could speak to both African and West­ern audi­ences. Together they devised When Walls Come Down-TRUTH! in which two “Annes”—one Jew­ish hid­ing from the Nazis and the other Tutsi hid­ing from Hutu extremists—both speak the words of Anne Frank. Some of the actors involved will share the process through which the play was cre­ated and the impact it has had on both Rwan­dans and Americans.

Rwanda: Drama and The­atre Edu­ca­tion for Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and Development

Recently returned from a sum­mer of per­for­mance activism in Rwanda, stu­dents in the Applied The­atre M.A. Pro­gram at the City Uni­ver­sity of New York (CUNY), will report on their multi-year project, “Rwanda: Drama and The­atre Edu­ca­tion for Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and Devel­op­ment.” The pro­gram brings teach­ers and stu­dents from the CUNY Applied The­atre Pro­gram to Rwanda to assist stu­dents and teach­ers there in acquir­ing applied the­atre skills. Led by Helen White (co-developer of the Pro­gram with Chris Vine), the group will share their work, focus­ing on the chal­lenges of cross-cultural col­lab­o­ra­tion. White is also the award-winning direc­tor of the CAT Youth The­atre at the Cre­ative Arts Team. CAT has per­formed at the United Nations, Inter­na­tional Fes­ti­vals, and Inter­na­tional and National con­fer­ences, work­ing with other youth the­atres from Tai­wan, Ger­many, Czech Repub­lic, United King­dom, Zam­bia, India, Pales­tine, Nepal, Turkey, Brazil, and Poland.

Africa at Performing the World 2012

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10 months ago
by admin in

The per­for­mance move­ment is emerg­ing and impact­ing in vir­tu­ally every cor­ner of the world. The inter­na­tional scope of the per­for­mance turn in social change move­ments is reflected in the work of hun­dreds who will be trav­el­ing to New York City to share their work at Per­form­ing the World (PTW), Octo­ber 4–7, 2012.

Here are some per­for­mance activists from the African continent:

Botswana

Webo­gang Dis­ele will share her work with the Mophato Dance The­atre explor­ing how per­for­mance can “inter­ro­gate and shift” rep­re­sen­ta­tions of black women to allow them to claim their indi­vid­ual sto­ries, thus chal­leng­ing the dom­i­nate stereo­types found in much African culture.

Nige­ria

Babafemi Babatope, a senior lec­turer in the Depart­ment of The­atre Arts and Music at Lagos State Uni­ver­sity in Nige­ria and his for­mer stu­dent, Oluwa­toyin Olu­funke Omoniyi, will demon­strate Babatope’s suc­cess­ful trans­for­ma­tion of his teach­ing through using a per­for­ma­tory method­ol­ogy and share how that has opened up the cre­ativ­ity and devel­op­ment of his students.

 

South Africa

Trudy Mee­han, a senior lec­turer at Rhodes University’s Depart­ment of Psy­chol­ogy in Gra­ham­stown, doc­u­ments an art project at a psy­chi­atric insti­tu­tion that sup­ported the “in-patients” to per­form an alter­na­tive identity—that of “artist.” Exhibit­ing of the art cre­ated by the patient/artists became a per­form­ing, wit­ness­ing and re-telling ritual.

 

Also from Rhodes Uni­ver­sity, Alexan­dra Suther­land, a senior lec­turer in Drama Stud­ies, will dis­cuss her recent per­for­mance project in a South African prison. She will “inter­ro­gate” her posi­tion as a white, mid­dle class fem­i­nist run­ning a the­atre project within an all male prison and work­ing with black, work­ing class men, most of whom were con­victed of rape.

 

Betsi Pendry is the direc­tor of the Liv­ing Together Insti­tute, based in Johan­nes­burg and active through­out South­ern Africa. She will share scenes from a play called The Rit­ual, about the way for­ward for a national heal­ing process in Zim­babwe. The work­shop is designed as a spring­board for dia­logue, reflec­tion and per­for­mance about the ways in which per­for­mance and play can pro­mote healing.

 

Uganda

From the Gulu Dis­trict of north­ern Uganda, which has suf­fered twenty years of war, comes Pamela Angwech, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Gulu Women’s Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment and Glob­al­iza­tion, a women’s rights orga­ni­za­tion com­mit­ted to alle­vi­at­ing the human rights abuses that threaten women, chil­dren, and the fab­ric of entire com­mu­ni­ties.  She will share her organization’s work using per­for­mance and the arts to help those trau­ma­tized by the war to develop into pro­duc­tive mem­bers of society.

 

From the Kam­pala Dis­trict in south­ern Uganda, chil­dren from Hope for Youth-Uganda, led by Peter Nsub­uga, will share how they use tra­di­tional music and dance to tell their sto­ries, engage press­ing com­mu­nity issues like resis­tance to the edu­ca­tion of girls, malaria con­trol, hygiene, pre­vent­ing and liv­ing with HIV/AIDS, and fam­ily planning—as well as their work to bring a Ugan­dan ver­sion of the All Stars Tal­ent Show into being.

 

Zim­babwe

Daniel Maposa is the direc­tor of the Savanna Trust, which brings the­atre into the streets and vil­lages of polit­i­cally polar­ized Zim­babwe to cre­ate a space for dia­logue and devel­op­ment. Maposa will share his work in the town of Wadzanayi, where per­for­mance helped restore rela­tion­ships after the vio­lence accom­pa­ny­ing the 2008 elec­tion and allowed neigh­bors to begin work­ing together again for the devel­op­ment of their com­mu­nity, despite their con­tin­u­ing polit­i­cal differences.

 

 

World Performance Leaders at <span class="caps">PTW</span>

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11 months ago
by admin in

Among the hun­dreds of per­form­ing artists, com­mu­nity orga­niz­ers, the­atre work­ers, edu­ca­tors, schol­ars, youth work­ers, stu­dents, social work­ers, psy­chother­a­pists, psy­chol­o­gists, med­ical doc­tors, health work­ers, and busi­ness exec­u­tives com­ing to New York City for Per­form­ing the World (PTW) are some the world’s most influ­en­tial thought lead­ers and cul­ture changers. Here’s a look at four PTW 2012 pre­sen­ters who are shap­ing the per­for­mance world from the acad­emy to the streets.

Marcelo Bratke

He’s a world famous Brazil­ian pianist who has recorded music from all over the world and per­formed in the most pres­ti­gious con­cert halls. But what’s unique about this vir­tu­oso is his out­reach to Brazil’s fave­las and rural vil­lages to orga­nize and train young peo­ple as musi­cians. In 2007 Bratke cre­ated Cam­er­ata Brasil, a clas­si­cal orches­tra of young peo­ple from impov­er­ished areas who have no aca­d­e­mic musi­cal train­ing, with the objec­tive of giv­ing them a chance of mak­ing a liv­ing through music. To date, Cam­er­ata Brasil has toured over 30 Brazil­ian cities and around the world, includ­ing New York’s Carnegie Hall. Marcelo Bratke will be shar­ing his work—and his music—at PTW this year.

David Dia­mond

Dia­mond is men­tor to thou­sands of per­for­mance activists striv­ing to cre­ate the­atre that engages per­form­ers and audi­ences in the active trans­for­ma­tion of them­selves and their com­mu­ni­ties. His “The­atre for Liv­ing” has its roots in Augusto Boal’s The­atre of the Oppressed, yet works to avoid the dichotomies of “Oppres­sor” and “Oppressed,” in favor of work­ing with the total­ity of a com­mu­nity to develop an “emo­tional intel­li­gence” that allows them to cre­ate some­thing new together. He is the recip­i­ent of numer­ous the­atre and human rights awards includ­ing an Hon­orary Doc­tor­ate from the Uni­ver­sity of the Fraser Val­ley and the Otto René Castillo Award for Polit­i­cal The­atre. He’s the author of The­atre for Liv­ing: The Art and Sci­ence of Community-Based Dia­logue, win­ner of the Amer­i­can Alliance of The­atre and Edu­ca­tion 2008 Dis­tin­guished Book Award. At PTW David Dia­mond will be lead­ing a work­shop unpack­ing the basics of “The­atre for Living.”

Charles Rojz­man

A renowned French social psy­chol­o­gist, author and inter­na­tional con­sul­tant, Rojz­man is the founder of Trans­for­ma­tional Social Ther­apy, which works with large groups (in the hun­dreds) of peo­ple to talk through the eth­nic, reli­gious or ide­o­log­i­cal hatred that has his­tor­i­cally kept them in vio­lent con­flict. This work has taken him to most Euro­pean coun­tries, the United States, North Africa, Rwanda and Cen­tral and South Amer­ica, and fos­tered insti­tu­tional and social change in edu­ca­tion, social work, crim­i­nal jus­tice, con­flict res­o­lu­tion and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. Rojz­man is a pro­lific author (How to Live Together is an Eng­lish trans­la­tion of one of his books). His work has been fea­tured in the doc­u­men­taries, “Charles Rojz­man, thérapeute social” and “Lis­ten­ing to the Police” an inside look at a work­shop with French National Police train­ers. At PTW Charles Rojz­man will demon­strate his approach and share the breadth of the work of the Insti­tut Charles Rojzman.

Richard Schech­ner

Schech­ner has been a leader in Amer­i­can avant-garde and polit­i­cal the­atre for four decades and is a founder and per­haps the most influ­en­tial voice in Per­for­mance Stud­ies. He toured the South dur­ing the Civil Rights Move­ment with the inte­grated Free South­ern The­atre. He founded and was the artis­tic direc­tor of the Per­for­mance Group and in that capac­ity helped to cre­ate the prac­tice of envi­ron­men­tal the­atre. In the 1970s, work­ing closely with anthro­pol­o­gist Vic­tor Turner, he brought into being the aca­d­e­mic dis­ci­pline of Per­for­mance Stud­ies, which researches per­for­mance in every­day life and the­o­rizes about its sig­nif­i­cance. Schech­ner is one of the founders of the Per­for­mance Stud­ies depart­ment at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York Uni­ver­sity and is long time edi­tor of The Drama Review, the world’s pre­mier jour­nal of Per­for­mance Stud­ies. At PTW 2012, Richard Schech­ner will dis­cuss with the Castillo Theatre’s Artis­tic Direc­tor Dan Fried­man and oth­ers the relationship(s) between Per­for­mance Stud­ies and per­for­mance activism.

From Zimbabwe, Peru and Thailand

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11 months ago
by admin in

Early Bird Reg­is­tra­tion Ends July 1!!!

 

Here’s a few of the 100+ pre­sen­ta­tions, work­shops and per­for­mance com­ing to PTW 2012.

From Zim­babwe…

Daniel Maposa is the direc­tor of the Savanna Trust, which brings the­atre into the streets and vil­lages of polit­i­cally polar­ized Zim­babwe to cre­ate a space for dia­logue and devel­op­ment.  Maposa will share his work in the town of Wadzanayi, where per­for­mance helped restore rela­tion­ships after the vio­lence accom­pa­ny­ing the 2008 elec­tion and allowed neigh­bors to begin work­ing together again, despite their con­tin­u­ing polit­i­cal dif­fer­ences, for the devel­op­ment of their community.

From Peru…

Ursula Car­ras­cal Vizarreta will lead a performance/workshop of “Dance to Sur­vive,” a per­for­mance cre­ated by chil­dren who live on a garbage dump next to the Rimac River in Lima.  The chil­dren are part of the indige­nous Can­ta­gallo peo­ple and their dance builds on their people’s tra­di­tional cul­ture while at the same time putting for­ward their demands for envi­ron­men­tal clean up and their con­cerns about global cli­mate change.

From Thai­land…

Chang Janaprakal Chan­dru­ang will bring stu­dents from the Moradokami Home School, which he leads, where every sub­ject is taught through the­atre and per­for­mance. They will per­form a play they have devised and dis­cuss how they have cre­ated a self-sufficient the­atre com­mu­nity, which is now begin­ning to impact on Thailand’s edu­ca­tional sys­tem by bring­ing drama clubs into more than 40 Thai schools.

More of what’s in store as the sum­mer progresses… 

It’s Going to Be a Great Program!

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1 year ago
by admin in

May 7

It’s been a priv­i­lege read­ing all the pro­pos­als! What a lot of cre­ative work going on all over the world!

We’ll be high­light­ing  pre­sen­ters from now until October. If you’re a pre­sen­ter, send us some news, includ­ing pho­tos if you want, and we’ll get them up so peo­ple can see who you are and what you do.

Reminder!

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1 year ago
by admin in

Pro­pos­als are due on March 19.

You can sub­mit your pro­posal here.

 

Welcome!

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1 year ago
by admin in

Wel­come to our news page.

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