Theatre-based Intercultural Collaboration in Southeast Asia:
Peacebuilding Opportunities and Obstacles 
Tuesday, November 5, 2:00 – 3:30
Spingold 111
 Presentation by award-winning Thai theatre artist Narumol Thammapruksa (Kop)
PhD candidate at Payap University, Department of Peace Studies
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Narumol Thammapruksa is an award-winning international theatre artist whose 
work focuses on theatre and creative dance as resources for social activism. Her 
most recent work, ‘The Demon Hero” is a mask theatre performance work about 
an unusual demon who sacrifices himself for peace. In addition to engaging in and 
facilitating puppetry, theatre and dance exchange throughout the Southeast and 
East Asian regions and beyond, Kop works actively with the Tibetan independence 
movement and also on issues of gender equity. Her work has been recognized by, 
among others, the Japan Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, the Rockefeller 
Foundation, the Arts Development Association of Taiwan, and the Japan University 
Consortium for Peace and Human Security. She is a member of the Arts and Peace 
Commission of the International Peace Research Association.
Tuesday, November 12, 2 – 4:50 p.m.
Slosberg Music Building Room 215
“I’m Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table”:
Resilience, Cultural Work and Development in the African-American 
Community
Presentation/Performance by musician, educator, activist and cultural worker Jane 
Wilburn Sapp
Jane Sapp is an extraordinary musician and activist who engages communities 
in struggles for social justice through music. She and Cindy Cohen, director of 
Brandeis’ Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts, are working on a book-length 
documentation of her four decades of practice, primarily in communities of 
color in the American South. In this performance/presentation, she will discuss 
the conditions that gave rise to the need for resilience in the African-American 
community, including slavery and life under the Jim Crow regime of segregation, 
and the sources of resilience in the African American family, community, and 
church. Songs will illustrate the power of culture to validate people’s experience 
and nourish their capacity to maintain a sense of dignity in the face of forces 
determined to humiliate them.