Announcement

 Announce­ment and Call for Proposals

The con­ven­ers of Per­form­ing the World, the conference/festival of the grow­ing inter­na­tional per­for­mance move­ment, are excited to announce that the fifth Per­form­ing the World will be held in New York City from Octo­ber 2–5, 2008. The event will show­case inno­v­a­tive prac­tice and schol­ar­ship and pro­vide a rich con­text for learn­ing and per­form­ing together.

A New Loca­tion, A New Kind of Conference

Per­form­ing the World ’08 (PTW ’08) builds on the momen­tum of 2007’s PTW 4, which brought together 300 prac­ti­tion­ers, schol­ars and com­mu­nity activists—educators, youth work­ers, researchers, psy­chol­o­gists and ther­a­pists, health and help­ing pro­fes­sion­als, busi­ness peo­ple, artists and activists from 27 coun­tries. PTW ’08 is bring­ing the inter­na­tional per­for­mance move­ment to the streets of New York—and intro­duc­ing the per­for­mance move­ment to the com­mu­ni­ties of New York City.

For the first time, the All Stars Project, an orga­ni­za­tion rec­og­nized for its highly suc­cess­ful performance-based outside-of-school devel­op­men­tal pro­grams for young peo­ple and its Castillo The­atre, joins the East Side Insti­tute as a co-sponsor of the con­fer­ence.  PTW ’08 will be based out of the All Stars’ per­for­mance and devel­op­ment cen­ter on 42nd Street near Times Square, and will be hosted by young peo­ple from around the city. Work­shops and per­for­mances will take place there and at the­atres, schools and other venues through­out Man­hat­tan and other bor­oughs. New York­ers from vir­tu­ally every neigh­bor­hood will open up their homes to out-of-towners, not only to save on hotel costs, but also to incor­po­rate the diver­sity of fam­ily and neigh­bor­hood into the expe­ri­ence of the week­end and to build person-to-person ties between ordi­nary New York­ers and per­for­mance activists and schol­ars from around the world.

Pro­pos­als

PTW ’08 invites pro­pos­als from all who are involved in per­for­mance work that is related to cul­tural, eco­nomic or psy­cho­log­i­cal devel­op­ment, community-building, social jus­tice, cit­i­zenry, indi­vid­ual and social trans­for­ma­tion, social entre­pre­neur­ship, etc. We are look­ing for a vari­ety of pre­sen­ta­tion types, includ­ing work­shops, con­ver­sa­tions, demon­stra­tions, dis­cus­sions and pan­els. We encour­age a play­ful­ness and exper­i­men­ta­tion for all pre­sen­ta­tions, espe­cially with regard to the­ory and data.

This year’s theme, “Yes­ter­day, Today, Tomor­row,” encour­ages par­tic­i­pants to attend to his­tory and process—their own and that of the per­for­mance move­ment. We are par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in examinations/explorations of the shift from a cog­ni­tive to a per­for­ma­tive approach to under­stand­ing, inter­act­ing with and (re)creating the world as embod­ied in the work of the par­tic­i­pants and/or those they with whom they work/play/ study. Also of inter­est is the per­for­mance movement’s inter­ac­tion with and impact on the “big issues” fac­ing the world— poverty, war and peace, sus­tain­abil­ity, democ­racy, glob­al­iza­tion, cul­tural diver­sity and cre­ativ­ity, the list could go on. The sec­ond day of PTW ‘08 will be devoted to “An Inter­na­tional Cel­e­bra­tion of Youth” and we encour­age those inter­ested to sub­mit pro­pos­als rel­a­tive to youth, youth per­for­mance and youth devel­op­ment for that day.

Fields of Interest:

A sam­pling of con­ver­sa­tional themes, pan­els, work­shops and performances: