The Global Voices Panel at the National Institute for Directing & Ensemble Creation

Art2Action, Inc. and Pangea World Theater presented the Panel: Global Voices – Artists Responding to a Shifting World livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Wednesday 18 July at 1:30 p.m. - 3 p.m. PDT (San Francisco) / 3:30 p.m - 5 p.m. CDT (Minneapolis) / 4:30 p.m. - 6 p.m. EDT (New York).

Art2Action, Inc. and Pangea World Theater are proud to present an extraordinary conversation, featuring several of the international theater directors who are participating in the 2018 National Institute for Directing and Ensemble Creation – including world-renown dramaturg Rustom Bharucha, Syrian director Kholoud Sawaf, recent recipient of the Order of Canada Margo Kane, director of Nicaragua’s most important theater Lucero Millan, South African theater professor and Zulu artist Ntokozo Madlala, and more. Tune in for a revolutionary global conversation!

Moderator:
Andrea Assaf

Panelists:
Rustom Bharucha
Margo Kane
Ntokozo Madlala
Lucero Millan
Kholoud Sawaf

BIOS:
Andrea Assaf is a performer, writer, director, and cultural organizer. She has a Master’s degree in Performance Studies and a BFA in Acting, both from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. The founding Artistic Director of Art2Action Inc., she is currently an Artist-in-Residence at the University of South Florida School of Theatre and Dances, and serves as the National Coordinator of the National Institute for Directing and Ensemble Creation (a partnership with Pangea World Theater). Her original work, Eleven Reflections on September, has been featured at Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) as part of the CAATA National Asian American Theatre Festival, La MaMa, The Apollo Theatre, the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, and internationally. Other original works include Outside the Circle (with Samuel Valdez), and Fronteras Desviadas/Deviant Borders with Mujeres en Ritual Danza-Teatro. Directing credits include Speed Killed My Cousin by Linda Parris-Bailey (The Carpetbag Theater), breaking letter(s) by Suhier Hammad, and more. Awards include: 2017 Finalist for the Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism, 2011 NPN Creation Fund commission, 2010 Princess Grace/Gant Gaither Theatre Award for Directing, and 2007 Hedgebrook Residency for women authoring change. Andrea serves on the Board of the Consortium of Asian American Theatres & Artists (CAATA), is a voting member of Alternate ROOTS, and a member of RAWI, the Radius of Arab American Writers.

RUSTOM BHARUCHA trained as a dramaturge in the first batch of dramaturgy students at the Yale School of Drama between 1977-1980. In 1981 he received his Doctor of Fine Arts from the School of Drama and proceeded to teach and conduct workshops in different parts of the world, including India, the Philippines, South Africa and Brazil on themes relating to the politics of touch, violence, empowerment and income generation. A renowned writer in the fields of interculturalism, secularism and oral history, he has written a number of books, notably Theatre and the World, The Politics of Cultural Practice, Chandralekha: Woman/Dance/Resistance, The Question of Faith, In the Name of the Secular, Rajasthan: An Oral History, Another Asia and Terror and Performance. He has been a Fellow of the International Research Centre/Interweaving Performance Cultures in Berlin, the Project Director of Arna-Jharna: The Desert Museum of Rajasthan and the Artistic Director of the Inter-Asian Ramayana Festival at the Adishakti Theatre Laboratory in Pondicherry. Recently retired from his job as Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies in the School of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, Rustom is working on an edition of Performing Ramayana, co-edited with Paula Richman, and looks forward to conducting a number of workshops on new dramaturgical models for theatre and social transformation in different parts of the world.

Cree-Saulteaux performing artist, Margo Kane is the Founder and Artistic Managing Director of Full Circle: First Nations Performance. For over 40 years she has been active as an actor, performing artist and community cultural worker. Her desire to share artistic performance that has meaning for her people is the catalyst for her extensive work, travels and consultation within Indigenous communities across Canada and abroad. Moonlodge, her acclaimed one- woman show, an Indigenous Canadian classic, toured for over 10 years nationally and internationally. The Sydney Press (AU) during The Festival of the Dreaming praised it as being ‘in the top echelon of solo performance.’ She developed and runs the annual Talking Stick Festival and an Aboriginal Ensemble Performing Arts Program in Vancouver. Recent directing and performance credits include Thanks for Giving at Arts Club Theatre in Vancouver, Artistic Director for the City of Vancouver’s Canada150+ summer Festival, The Drum is Calling and Burning Vision in Barcelona for the Grec Theatre Festival. In 2016, she received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of the Fraser Valley, a Mayor’s Arts Award in Theatre in Vancouver, a 2017 GVPTA Career Achievement Award at the annual Jessie Theatre Awards in Vancouver and most recently the Order of Canada from the Governor-General.

Ntokozo Madlala is a UKZN drama lecturer who has worked as a teacher, an actor, director, a Community, Industrial Theatre and Theatre In Education practitioner. She is passionate about directing and about accessing original South African narratives that reinforce and reclaim a sense of belonging and identity. Her directing credits include productions such as Sophiatown by Junction Avenue Theatre Company, focusing on the disruptions on black communities caused by forced removals during Apartheid, Sarafina by Mbongeni Ngema, an epic Broadway Musical about 1976 Soweto Uprising etc. Other productions include Andorra by Max Frisch, Beyond Silence written by elderly township women about their personal lives, co-directed with multi award winning director Mandla Mbothwe, Mzansi storiescreated with South African youth known as born frees, and Crush Hopper which won awards in two prominent South Africa Festivals. She has a great appreciation for Collaborative Theatre Making and for finding relevance of Traditional African forms of Performance for contemporary audiences. She is also passionate about theatre as a tool for social development, education and community engagement. This passion has enabled the supervision of over 50 projects for Pietermaritzburg schools in the last 8 years. She has a burning desire to discover and unearth “beyond apartheid” narratives that help post-apartheid audiences find agency for their own concerns and circumstances. Currently she is excited and challenged by the process of developing the skill of mentoring young directors through academia, a challenge she took on when she agreed to co- ordinate a module for Postgraduate students on developing their directorial skills. This is an area she hopes to develop and sharpen as she engages with the institute.

Lucero Millan – Directora de teatro, actriz, profesora de actuación, promotora cultural y Socióloga. De origen mexicano radicada en Nicaragua desde 1979. Estudia en la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Literatura dramática y teatro y Sociología en Managua Nicaragua. Funda en noviembre de 1979 el Teatro Justo Rufino Garay, uno de los grupos más consolidados y profesionales de Nicaragua y Centroamérica. Así mismo, junto con su grupo de teatro funda en 1986 la primera sala de teatro independiente en Nicaragua. Ha montado 36 puestas en escena Ha viajado con su grupo por más de 25 países alrededor del mundo y obtenido varios reconocimientos por su labor artística. Ha participado con su grupo en importantes festivales internacionales de teatro, entre los que destacamos el Festival de Otoño de Madrid, el Festival de Londrina y Belohorizonte en Brasil, el Internacional Theatre festival de UCLAlive de los Ángeles, el Festival de Cádiz, de Manizales Colombia, Puerta de las Américas en México, entre muchos más. Es consultora en temas de participación ciudadana y teatro. Ha realizado talleres y conferencias en varios países. Desde 1995 años dirige el Fit Nicaragua (Festival Internacional de Teatro (Monólogos, Diálogos y Más...), el evento de teatro más importante de Nicaragua. Ha sido jurado de Casa de las Américas en la Habana Cuba. Es promotora cultural de Arte Contemporáneo. Continúa dirigiendo hasta nuestros días el Teatro Justo Rufino Garay en Managua Nicaragua y el Festival Internacional de Teatro, Monólogos, Diálogos y Más…

Kholoud Sawaf is a native Syrian from Damascus, and has worked in documentary filmmaking and theatre in Beirut, Syria, Dubai, and the U.S. She holds a B.A. in Mass Communication from the American University of Shajrah and an M.F.A. in Directing from the University of Arkansas. She’s adapting and directing an original adaptation of Romeo and Juliet -- R&J Damascus-- in collaboration with TheatreSquared in Fayetteville, AR. The project was awarded a $250,000 grant from Doris Duke Foundation's Building Bridges Program. Directing credits include: Vietgone (TheatreSquared), Merci Maurer, and Veils (ArkansasStaged), Summer 840(Skyline Theatre, United Arab Emirates), Damascus: A Red Rose (Al-Qabbani Theatre, Syria). Kholoud worked with nationally acclaimed theatres such as Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Manhattan Theatre Club, Shakespeare & Company, and Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival.

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 to develop our knowledge commons collectively. 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/WhatsApp. View the video archive of past events.