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Livestreamed on this page from Wednesday 4 May to Saturday 7 May 2022.

United States
Wednesday 4 May to Saturday 7 May 2022

The Gathering from the CrossCurrents Festival

Productions, Readings, Discussions, and Workshops Focusing on Climate Change, Immigration, and Indigeneity

Wednesday 4 May to Saturday 7 May 2022

The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. presented The Gathering, livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv from Wednesday 4 May to Saturday 7 May 2022.

In May 2019, the Lab inaugurated our signature event The Gathering as part of our city-wide, international CrossCurrents Festival. Over four hundred visionary artists from over forty countries came together to share performances and ideas addressing critical global issues. We are thrilled to bring this event back to the Georgetown campus with both in-person and virtual engagements this May.

For this year's edition of The Gathering, we are thrilled to be offering free access to diverse programming centered around the contributions of our Global Lab Fellows including productions, readings, discussions, and workshops focusing on climate change, immigration, and indigeneity, with comprehensive livestreaming for all of our community. Access to full schedule of streamed performances can be found on The Lab's website.

Wednesday 4 May

Welcome + Invocation
10 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC -7) / 1:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. EDT (Washington, D.C., UTC -4)

The Lab team welcomes all participants to this four-day intensive with ritual and rhythm. We honor each other and the space with acts of invocation.

Welcome – Derek Goldman, artistic and executive director, co-founder, the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics

Emma Crane Jaster, resident movement artist, Global Fellows program manager, Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, Prassanam/Presence
Shelbi Nahwilet Meissner (Payómkawichum/Kúupangaxwichem) assistant professor of philosophy, Georgetown University. First-generation descendant of the La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians, specializing in Indigenous philosophy, knowledge, and languages
Amb. Cynthia Schneider, co-founding director, the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics
Azar Nafisi, best-selling author (Read Dangerously, Reading Lolita in Tehran); Centennial Fellow, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
James Thompson, professor of applied and social theatre; founder, In Place of War; The Aesthetics of Care. “Care Is Where It’s At”
Ali Mahdi Nouri, UNESCO ambassador and secretary general ITI, International Theatre Institute and Albuggaa Theatre Company
Ersian Francois, general manager and associate producer, Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics
Manuel Viveros, actor, director; inaugural Lab fellow, musician with Chonta’s Sound and Others

Friday 6 May

Performing Dangerously: 10th Anniversary Celebration
4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC -7) / 7:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. EDT (Washington, D.C., UTC -4)

Inspired in part by Azar Nafisi (Lab associate artist and best-selling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran) and her new book Read Dangerously, this special evening of performances celebrates the courage and resilience of performing artists around the world who are creating courageous art in the context of danger. Additional participants include many longtime Lab collaborators such as Belarus Free Theatre; Heather Raffo (9 Parts of Desire); Mélisande Short Colomb with a live excerpt from her celebrated virtual performance of Here I Am; performances from Ukrainian Playwrights Under Siege and Ukraine Diaries; Kenyatta Rogers and Ed Gero as James Baldwin and Studs Terkel; Bill Rauch, inaugural artistic director of the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center; The Lab’s In Your Shoes; live music, and much more.

Resonant Bodies: Dance Party
6:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC -4) / 9:30pm - 10:30pm EDT (Washington, D.C., UTC -4)

Resonant Bodies is an immersive and participatory performance celebrating the body as a culture-bearer and its movement as a tool for connection with the otherwise “other.” Amidst music, projections, and prompts, participants play games, mimic, repeat, respond, and dance. Words are only 7 percent of how we communicate. This is for the other 93 percent. Part of an ongoing research project in embodied listening, Resonant Bodies continues the Lab’s tradition of “Witnessing Across Difference,” In Your Shoes, and Performing One Another, to connect through music and movement, beneath and beyond words. Framing the ongoing work of theatre and dance practitioners worldwide as an intentional tool for working across cultures, this project aspires to build empathy and trust through action and embodiment—replacing analysis with play and sublimating rage in dance. We celebrate reunions, resilience, and all that is yet to come.

Saturday 7 May

Our One Earth: Artists Engaging Climate
11:00 a.m. - 12 p.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC -7) / 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. EDT (Washington, D.C., UTC -4)

Join us in conversations and projects centered around climate and the world around us.

Artists and activists engaging with the climate crisis and our relationships to the land, visioning ways of care share excerpts of their work, methodologies, and visions for the future.

Katie Pearl, assistant professor, Wesleyan University; acclaimed theatremaker; director of Ocean Filibuster
Kiyo Gutierrez, Global Lab fellow, Guadalajara, Mexico
Erfan Nabizada, youth climate activist from Afghanistan
Myiah Smith, Georgetown alum and performer in The Lab’s We Hear You: A Climate Archive
Moderated by Abner Torres Delina Jr., Global Lab fellow, Philippines

The Walk: Artists Engaging Migration and the Refugee Experience
12:30 p.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC -7) / 3:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. EDT (Washington, D.C., UTC -4)

Artists engaging with migration and how we move together across boundaries and borders, share excerpts of their work, methodologies, and visions for the future.

Closing Rituals
2:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC -7) / 5:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. EDT (Washington, D.C., UTC -4)

Come together to celebrate all that we have built in community with one another and look to the future together.

About HowlRound TV
HowlRound TV is a global, commons-based, peer-produced, open-access livestreaming and video archive project stewarded by the nonprofit HowlRound. HowlRound TV is a free and shared resource for live conversations and performances relevant to the world’s performing-arts and cultural fields. Its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and develop our knowledge commons collectively. Anyone can participate in a community of peer organizations revolutionizing the flow of information, knowledge, and access in our field by becoming a producer and co-producing with us. Learn more by going to our participate page. For any other queries, email [email protected] or call Vijay Mathew at +1 917.686.3185 Signal. View the video archive of past events.

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