Content here focuses on theatremakers, companies, and projects engaging with politics and political action. A great example of the power of this work is the video series Political Theatre as a Civil Right from the British-Romanian political theatre company BÉZNĂ Theatre.
Eseovwe Emakunu and Dennis U. Obire, co-founders of the Shanty Theatre, chronicle their work in the Adagbabiri Community in Bayelsa State, which is one of the most educationally deprived states in Nigeria. Using a theatre for development model, the group worked with local children to create a performance that demonstrated the importance of education in the social development of a community and nation.
After Russian courts found that Svetlana Petriychuk’s documentary theatre piece Finist the Brave Falcon “justified terrorism” due to its feminist aims, Petriychuk and director Zhenya Berkovich were jailed. Viktor Vilisov discusses the production, clarifying the production’s aims to amplify the experiences of Russian women whose attempts to flea Russian patriarchy has landed them in oppressive marriages to Syrian ISIS fighters.
Greening the theatre is crucial to the sustainability of theatre and the planet. Theatre designers such as lighting personnel, set designers, costumers, property designers, and sound engineers are rethinking and retooling for the purpose of creating a more eco-friendly, sustainable, and environmentally just and responsible theatre practice. In this episode, we bring theatre practitioners (such as designers and eco-scenographers) who are advancing sustainable artistic values in their practice.
Climate justice is not complete without decentering colonial narratives and practices in Africa. For instance, many theatre projects/initiatives on climate action in Africa have been the brainchild of actors from the Global North. Which increases the tendency for such projects/initiatives to reinforce follow the colonial narrative. Although curators and co-facilitators of such projects are sometimes indigenes of African countries, the agendas of foreign interventions are imposed on the creative process.
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.
Andy Field Talks about Forest Fringe—an Independent, Not-for-Profit Space in the Edinburgh Festival
Monday 5 June 2023
New York City
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.
Creatives and book authors Mallory Catlett and Aaron Landsman dig into their new book based on their piece City Council Meeting, an exciting performance, rooted in a commonplace bureaucratic event, that develops dynamic participatory relationships with audiences and local government.
A Conversation with Director Gilbert Laumord, Producer Elvia Gutiérrez, and Festival Director Eddy Compper
Friday 5 May 2023
New York City
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.
Navigating the Space Between Representation and Participation
Thursday 4 May 2023
New York City
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.
Playwright and director Karen Malpede joins Jeffrey Mosser to talk about her career and connections from the Open Theater to Theater Three Collaborative, as well as her partner George Bartenieff, an actor and champion for the avant-garde.
With Stéphanie Bérard (France), Daniely Francisque (Martinique), Elvia Gutiérrez (Mexico, China), Gaël Octavia, and Others
Tuesday 2 May 2023
New York City
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.
The New Role Theatre and Performance Can and Should Play in the New Age of the Anthropocene
Thursday 20 April 2023
New York City
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.
A Conversation with Artists and Students of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago
Friday 14 April 2023
United States
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.
The New Role Theatre and Performance Can and Should Play in the New Age of the Anthropocene
Friday 14 April 2023
New York City
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.
Bob Leonard chronicles his work from the People’s Bicentennial Commission and the Road Company through the founding of the Network of Ensemble Theaters and Alternate ROOTS. Together, Jeffrey Mosser and Bob connect the dots through the middle wave of ensemble-based theatre in the United States.
Glenda Y. Nieto-Cuebas and Erin A. Cowling continue their interview with Octavio Solis, focusing primarily on the development of his most recent adaptation from Spanish Baroque literature: Quixote Nuevo.
The New Role Theatre and Performance Can and Should Play in the New Age of the Anthropocene
Monday 10 April 2023
New York City
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.
Aaron Landsman, Mallory Catlett, and Ebony Noelle Golden Discuss Their Latest Publication, The City We Make Together
Monday 3 April 2023
New York City
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.
An Improvisation Inspired by George Tabori’s Legendary Brecht on Brecht Collage
Thursday 23 March 2023
New York City
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).
Offering Perspectives on Ways Existing Cultural and Non-Cultural Infrastructures Can Open Opportunities for Diplomacy and Soft Power
Tuesday 14 March 2023
Saskatchewan, Canada
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.
Joseph Dunne-Howrie examines the way that three of Javaad Alipoor’s plays infuse the internet into theatrical performance, creating intersecting narratives that interrogate identity formation in the age of global interconnectivity.
The Divine Comedy Theatre Festival in Kraków, Poland explored the theme of “Polish Taboo” across its thirty-two productions this year. Howard Shalwitz, who attended the festival as part of an American delegation of artists building connections between the United States and Poland, shares his experience attending the festival.
Bishop Arts Theater Center presents a talkback following The 1619 Project, One-Act Festival livestreaming on the global, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network on Friday 17 February 2023 at 7:55 p.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 9:55 p.m. CST (Dallas, UTC -6) / 10:55 p.m. EST (New York, UTC -5).
