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Livestreamed on this page on Sunday 14 July 2019 at 11 a.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC-7) / 1 p.m. CDT (Minneapolis, UTC-5) / 2 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC-4) / 18:00 UTC+0.

Minneapolis, Minnesota
Sunday 14 July 2019

The Afro-Atlantic Playwright Festival Closing Roundtable

Hosted by the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis

Produced With
Sunday 14 July 2019

The Playwright's Center in Minneapolis presented the Afro-Atlantic Playwright Festival Closing Roundtable livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer-produced HowlRound TV network on Sunday 14 July 2019 at 11 a.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC-7) / 1 p.m. CDT (Minneapolis, UTC-5) / 2 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC-4) / 18:00 UTC+0. Add to calendar

As part of the Afro-Atlantic Playwright Festival which celebrates new works by African and African-American playwrights, a closing roundtable discussion will bring together curators Carlyle Brown and Chuck Mike, alongside three participating playwrights, France-Luce Benson (New York City), Zainabu Jallo (Bern, Switzerland, and Nigeria), and Femi Osofisan (Ibadan, Nigeria). 

The festival has been created in partnership with the Camargo Foundation’s Cultural Diaspora Program. While at Camargo, playwrights had the opportunity to meet African-European artists and work with local theater students. The goal was to bring together mid-career and established African and African-American theater artists, in Brown’s words, “from opposite ends of the Africanist Diaspora,” engaging them in debates about identity and authenticity and exploring the different ways in which international boundaries shape the African experience.

The festival is being sponsored by the Camargo Foundation, Carlyle Brown & Company, Playwrights’ Center, Venturous Theater Fund, and Knock Inc.

BIOS

France-Luce Benson (playwright)
Recently named “Someone to Watch” by American Theatre magazine, France-Luce Benson is an award-winning playwright of Haitian descent, currently based in Los Angeles. She is a recipient of a Miranda Foundation grant (DETAINED) and a Princess Grace award runner up (BOAT PEOPLE). Residencies include Djerassi, Space on Ryder Farm, Camargo Foundation, and Sacatar. Additional Honors: Zoetrope Grand Prize (Caroline’s Wedding); Dramatists Guild Fellow, Sam French OOB Festival Winner, NNPN Award for Best Play, NYTW 2050 (Finalist), and a four time Kilroy List Honorable Mention—most recently for DEUX FEMMES on the EDGE de la REVOLUTION - PART I.

Carlyle Brown (director/curator)
A writer/performer and artistic director of Carlyle Brown & Company based in Minneapolis. His plays have been produced at theaters across the country and internationally. He has received numerous commissions, fellowships, and awards, including a 2006 Black Theatre Network’s Winona Lee Fletcher Award for outstanding achievement and artistic excellence, a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2010 Otto Rene Castillo Award for Political Theatre, a 2010 United States Artist Fellowship, a 2018 William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in the American Theater, and a 2019 Helen Merrill Award. A scholar and historian, Mr. Brown has been an artist in residence or visiting professor at several colleges and universities and has worked as a museum exhibit writer and story consultant. Zainabu Jallo (playwright) is a writer based in Switzerland, Nigeria, and Brazil. Her academic and creative work has been conveyed through fellowships at the Sundance Institute Theatre Program, The Institute for World Literature, Harvard University, The Mellon School for Theater and Performance at Harvard, the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin, Residenztheater Munich, Château de Lavigny, and the House of Writers in Switzerland. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts England, and the UNESCO Coalition of Artists for the General History of Africa

Chuck Mike (curator/director)
An internationally-acclaimed theater maker, director, producer, and activist whose works have appeared at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the Royal Court Theatre in London, the Edinburgh Festival, and the National Theatre in Nigeria. His passion for initiating devised performances for social change in rural and urban communities has taken him across Africa, Europe, and North America. A mentee of Wole Soyinka, he has been an artist-in-residence/workshop leader and educator in leading academic and artistic institutions around the world. Founding Artistic Director of Collective Artistes (Nigeria and UK), Chuck has been the recipient of awards from Fulbright/International Telephone and Telegraph, MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, and the American Cultural Specialist program.

Femi Osofisan (playwright)
Nigeria’s Femi Osofisan, aka Okinba Launko, wears many caps—as activist playwright, scholar, poet, novelist, journalist, actor, and so on—and has been crowned with multiple awards both at home and abroad. This is his second visit to the Twin Cities since 1997, when his play Many Colors Make the Thunder King was commissioned and performed at the Guthrie Theatre. This play is the second of a trilogy dealing with the experience of Blacks from the Diaspora who returned to the continent at the beginning of Independence in the early 1960s in order to contribute to the development of the new nations.

 

Zainabu Jallo (playwright)
is a writer based in Switzerland, Nigeria, and Brazil. Her academic and creative work has been conveyed through fellowships at the Sundance Institute Theatre Program, The Institute for World Literature, Harvard University, The Mellon School for Theater and Performance at Harvard, the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin, Residenztheater Munich, Château de Lavigny, and the House of Writers in Switzerland. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts England, and the UNESCO Coalition of Artists for the General History of Africa.

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.

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