Cross-cultural Exchange and Cultural Mobility

Derek Goldman offers an overview of the production of Syria: The Trojan Women.

Paul Adolphsen covers the 40th anniversary of the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa, looking at the works exploring legacy and South Africa's first democratic elections.

One of the stereotypes about the post-Grotowski Polish ensemble theaters is that their processes are rigidly closed and their rehearsal rooms are treated like devotional spaces. There is often a way through a more closed door, but you may have to put on your sweatpants.

I felt compelled to act, to do something, to speak up—but how? What could I, an expatriate American living in Scandinavia, do to break the zone of silence surrounding Belarus? While I was enjoying certain freedoms as a theater artist in this affluent Nordic country, my friends and colleagues elsewhere in Europe—writers, directors, journalists, and more—were being imprisoned and threatened.

In this installment, Lisa Portes reflects on her experience at the TCG Conference and ponders how artistic curiosity can influence a "polycultural American theatre."

In this second installment, Olga Sanchez discusses the act of physically and metaphorically crossing borders at the 2014 TCG Conference.

In this first installment, Luis Alfaro reflects on his experience at the 2014 TCG National Conference: Crossing Borders.

In a volatile, war-torn place, things change quickly and recurring issues of conflict, occupation, and survival dominate—all the more reason to have festivals like this and theaters like Ashtar that persist under such circumstances and create transformative experiences.

Morgan Gould reviews The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise, and also interacts with the idea of revealing her tastes as a critic before reviewing.

Translator Henning Bochert and playwright Carlos Murillo talk playwriting and directing US theatre.

In 2012, eleven young theater students succeeded in starting Ashtar’s first youth festival. Ashtar Theatre, which was founded in 1991 by Iman Aoun and Edward Muallem, describes itself as “a dynamic local Palestinian theatre with a truly progressive global perspective.” Their core programs are drama training of local youth through an extracurricular after school program, Theater of the Oppressed Forum Theatre productions that explore “essential critical topics in Palestinian society” and international collaborations.

These personal experiences of Belarus Free Theatre—what they have endured, and what they are willing to sacrifice for what they believe in—humbles me. I cannot imagine being arrested for doing theater, much less being physically threatened by my own government for a play I wrote or acted in or directed. Would I be able to be as brave as Khalezin and Koliada or the other members of their company?

Mark Jackson reports on the "format and the values" he witnessed in Romania at the Sibiu International Theatre Festival, which is the third largest theater festival in the world.

So what has the drive to make work in Romania taught me? I learned that art that has nothing to lose makes for theater that is fierce and always has something to say.

Who is allowed to draw on cultural tradition in a creative process and still be considered a “contemporary” artist? When does something become “heritage” or “tradition” and what attains status or gains cultural currency? Through this first "Innovate Heritage: Conversations between Arts and Heritage" conference in Berlin, Germany, with nearly forty speakers and artists from over thirty countries, we hope to open dialogue around some of these issues and many more that continue to expand, reconnect and inspire us.

I was young, knew nothing and was impressionable. I remember being fond of Yuriko’s direction. She would say things like, “go forward from here” while pointing to her heart. No one had ever given me direction like that before. That first play was the beginning of my romance with Noh (performed in Japan since the thirteenth-century, it’s the world’s oldest, continually performed, masked lyric drama) and I fell hard.

This week's conversation topic is "How do you translate theater into other languages and into other cultures?" and will be moderated by Playwrights Foundation @pwfoundation—who like all of our moderators, authors, and content producers—self-selected to peer-produce on this commons-based platform! This hour-long Howl will take place on Thursday, April 24 on hashtag #newplay at 11am PDT (San Francisco) / 1pm CDT (Austin) / 2pm EDT (Toronto) / 18:00 GMT / 7pm BST (London).

Alice Stanley Jr. discusses her experience at a workshop of Ariel Luckey's solo performance Amnesia, and the talkback which followed.

This period of shared, relaxed time puts the performers in harmony with the theater, the rehearsal, and their fellow actors. It's like musicians tuning in the same room together. When I participated in this pre-rehearsal hangout, despite my initial antsiness, and not knowing what to do with this unstructured time, I found that my mind grew calmer. The flexible start was a moment of meditation before a strenuous activity: a deep breath before the dive.

Our US union regulations and laws require us to take breaks of a certain time, at a certain time. But nothing requires us to take *exactly* and *only* 5 minutes every hour or 10 minutes every 90. Why not, as an experiment, give them more? Why not make one break longer, and looser? An ongoing series of reports from rehearsal rooms and interviews with theater people in Poland; how US artists can modify or adapt Polish techniques for their own rehearsal kitchens.