Political Theatre

In his book The Art of Assembly. Political Theatre Today curator and author Florian Malzacher surveys theatre today to demonstrate its political potential in both form and content. In a time of wide-ranging crisis, The Art of Assembly is a plea for a strong definition of the political and for a theatre that is not content merely to reflect the world’s ills but instead acts to change them.

Environmental theatre in Africa has been a vital medium for creating awareness of and learning about climate change on the continent. Artists are aware that climate change has come to stay, the need to engage the art to discuss issues such as climate change mitigation strategies, anticipatory adaptation modes and climate justice. This episode introduces the series. Guest speakers reflect on the question of environmental theatre and climate justice in Africa.

For over ten years as of this event, Forest Fringe has built a community of artists and playwrights. Each year they return to Edinburgh they experiment with different ways of doing things and new contexts to accommodate even the most unusual experiences. Meanwhile they’ve also started exploring beyond the festival, creating new projects across the UK and internationally, including a festival in an old cinema in the center of Bangkok, a series of performances on night buses across London, and a traveling library of audio experiences.

Join us for a talk with Caribbean theatre director Gilbert Laumord (Guadeloupe) discussing his latest work, Tale of Black Histories (Histoire de nègre), by the late, legendary Caribbean writer, poet, and philosopher Édouard Glissant. Born in Martinique, writer Édouard Glissant and his colleagues at the Institut Martiniquais d’études (IME) wrote and performed this intellectually rich, formally innovative, yet long-neglected unique play themselves in 1971–72.

Join us for a Zoom talk with author and curator Florian Malzacher to discuss the upcoming Segal Center publication The Art of Assembly: Political Theatre Today. The Art of Assembly surveys theatre today to demonstrate its political potential in both form and content.

Join us for a conversation celebrating the unique anthology and latest Segal Center Publication, New Plays from the Caribbean, a most significant and lasting part of the 2019 Caribbean Theater Project ACT (Actions Caribéennes Théâtrales)—initiated and co-organized by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center in New York City, the theatre company SIYAJ from Guadeloupe, and Stéphanie Bérard.

Join us for a Whole Earth Conversation with Andreas Weber (Germany) about the new role theatre and performance can and should play in the new age of the Anthropocene, a geological era shaped by humans rather than by nature. We ask how the significant symbolic, imaginary, and real space of theatre can help artists and audiences realize that a contemporary theatre and performance practice can no longer just represents interhuman conflicts.

In the first episode of our 2023 season, Golden Thread’s Sahar Assaf, executive artistic director, and Wafaa Bilal, artist-in-residence, will be joined by the classes of associate professor Simon Anderson, a British-born-and-educated cultural historian, and interdisciplinary Syrian artist Sami Hussain Ismat, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago.

Join us for a Whole Earth Conversation with Frédérique Aït-Touati (France) about the new role theatre and performance can and should play in the new age of the Anthropocene, a geological era shaped by humans rather than by nature. We ask how the significant symbolic, imaginary, and real space of theatre can help artists and audiences realize that a contemporary theatre and performance practice can no longer just represents interhuman conflicts.

Join us for a Whole Earth Conversation with Thomas Oberender (Germany) about the new role theatre and performance can and should play in the new age of the Anthropocene, a geological era shaped by humans rather than by nature. We ask how the significant symbolic, imaginary, and real space of theatre can help artists and audiences realize that a contemporary theatre and performance practice can no longer just represents interhuman conflicts.

The City We Make Together looks at how we make art with communities, how we perform power and who gets to play which roles, and how we might use creativity and rigorous inquiry to look at our structures of democracy anew. Published by University of Iowa Press, 2022.

Roshan Institute for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park and The Theatre Times present Woman, Life, Freedom: Theatre and Protest in Iran, a virtual roundtable in honor of World Theatre Day. Featuring Azadeh Ganjeh, Nassim Soleimanpour, Keyvan Sarreshteh, and moderator Marjan Moosavi, this conversation will explore Iranian theatre artists’ ethical vision and creative practice in response to the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. This event will feature live captioning and ASL interpretation.

Poems, songs, and play excerpts from Brecht about war, refugees, and singing about dark times are mixed with writings from Heiner Müller about theatre, America, capitalism and the end of revolutions.

This presentation showed a way of conceptual development and essential meaning in the artist’s practice. Through a story of more than ten public sculptures, Ani showed her latest project, erected in Prague, Czech Republic after her evacuation from Prague as a result of the war. This event was made possible with the support of the Artists at Risk Connection (ARC).

The Centre for Socially Engaged Theatre (C-SET) at the Faculty of Media, Art, and Performance at the University of Regina, in collaboration with Theatre Emissary International, presents the online book launch of Re-centering Cultural Performance and Orange Economy in Post-Colonial Africa: Policy, Soft Power, and Sustainability. This book explores the role of national theatres, cultural centers, cultural policy, festivals, and the film industry as creative and cultural performance hubs for exercising soft power and cultural diplomacy. This event will feature live captioning and ASL interpretation.