SEGAL TALKS: Basil Jones (South Africa)

The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center presented SEGAL TALKS, a conversation about curating, producing, and presenting theatre and performance in the time of COVID with Basil Jones (South Africa), livestreaming on the global, commons-based, peer produced HowlRound TV network on Wednesday 17 November 2021 at 9 a.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 11 a.m. CST (Chicago, UTC -6) / 12 p.m. EST (New York, UTC -5) / 17:00 GMT (London, UTC +0) / 18:00 CET (Berlin, UTC +1).

A giant puppet of a nine-year-old refugee girl, Amal, traveled 4,971 miles (8,000km) from the Turkey-Syria border through Europe to the United Kingdom. The Good Chance team behind The Jungle, the celebrated dramatization of refugee life in Calais, teamed up with the creators of the War Horse puppets to create one of the most ambitious public artworks ever attempted.

The Walk dramatized the stories of refugee children by means of a 3.5-metre-high puppet, Little Amal, who traveled from the Syrian border through Turkey, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, and France in search of her mother. More than seventy towns, villages and cities welcomed Little Amal with art, from major street parties and city performances to more intimate community events. Even the Pope welcomed her.

​In July, Little Amal arrived at the Manchester International Festival where she became the centerpiece of a large-scale participatory event. The production team includes the director Stephen Daldry, who said it would be a “travelling festival of art and hope” and the “most ambitious public art event” ever attempted.

We ask with the New York Times: "Four Months, 5,000 Miles... In a politically divided continent, were any minds changed?​"

Basil Jones is the co-founder and Executive Producer of Handspring Puppet Company. Jones completed his BFA at University of Cape Town where he met future husband, Adrian Kohler. In 1990, Jones set up a nonprofit, Handspring Trust, which produced the award-winning Spider’s Place, an innovative, multi-media science education series for TV, radio and comic aimed at young learners from disadvantaged backgrounds. He set up the Handspring Awards for Puppetry, which recognize and encourage puppet design, direction, and performance in South Africa. The Handspring Trust is involved in a number of projects in urban township and rural areas, using puppetry as a means to educate and empower youth and bring communities together through street parades and performance. He speaks and writes on the subject of puppetry and is deeply interested in growing an international dialogue on the theatre of objects. He received the Naledi Executive Directors Award 2012, a lifetime achievement award from Tshwane University 2006, and an honorary doctorate in literature from UCT 2012.

About SEGAL TALKS
The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center is proud to continue its new global series, SEGAL TALKS. Since March 2020 the series featured over 150 talks with 150 artists from 50 countries. New York, United States, and international theatre artists, curators, researchers, and academics will talk daily during the week for one hour with Segal Center’s director, Frank Hentschker, about life and art in the Time of Corona and speak about challenges, sorrows, and hopes for the new Weltzustand—the State of the World. Segal Talks will continue to focus on Theatre, Performance and The Political, the Segal Center’s 2023 New York International Festival of the Arts Project, and the Center’s Public Park Project. During the pandemic The Segal Center was for a long period globally the only theatre institution creating new, original, daily content for the global field of theater and performance five days a week.

Executive director: Frank Hentschker
Associate producers: Andie Lerner & Tanvi Shah

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.