Arts in the One World

March 17-21, 2010
Brown University
Providence, RI

The Arts in the One World conference comes to Brown University for the first time in March of 2010. We will look at how the sense of home – the ways it is defined and enacted – is useful as a political and esthetic argument for fidelity, trust, immanence, the safe store of memory and the reconstitution of identity (as against? in dialogue with…? industry and the nation-state). These interrogations build on themes that have been emerging through previous conferences.

Please check back for upcoming information on conference events and speakers.

http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Theatre_Speech_Dance/about/oneworld.html

Home: Composing the Rooted Local

in the

Rapid Global Environment

How the arts and social services compose, consider,

and translate community

We are looking at how the sense of home – the ways it is defined and enacted – is useful as a political and esthetic argument for fidelity, trust, immanence, the safe store of memory and the reconstitution of identity. (As against? in dialogue with? industry and the nation-state.)

AOW is an annual gathering; this is our fifth convening. We pull together students, faculty, practitioners and activists across disciplines, from immediate and international communities, framing presentations and conversations open to the school and the general public. We explore various ways artistic, political, and historical purposes intersect (through reconciliation, the recovery of historical memory, and advocacy for justice).

Our partner in hosting the conference is the Interdisciplinary Genocide Study Center (Rwanda) – where the Tutsi Genocide is researched, testimony is gathered, negationism is resisted, and social space for survivors is afforded.

Wednesday, March 17

5-6 Introductions

6-7 Keynote A

Thursday, March 18 – Rwanda/Uganda: The Current Scene

8-8:30 Coffee

8:30-9 Reflections and Forecasts: a review of Wednesday, a view to today

9-10:30 The Interdisciplinary Genocide Study Center: Jean-Pierre Karegeye, Aloys Mahwa

10:30-11 Break

11-12:30 IGSC Session 2

12:30-2 Lunch

2-4 Contemporary Performance, Rwanda: Hope Azeda, Carole Karemera

4-4:30 Break

4:30-6 Panel

Arts, service initiatives: Africa/Africa-US

Jen Capraru: Isôko

Jesse Hawkes: RAPP, Global Youth Connect

Emily Mendelsohn: More Life

Rachel Yassky, Christopher Talbot: Hope North

Carl Rux: Negerplastik

Ken Urban: Rethinking Political Theatre; or, The Importance of Failure (Sense of an Ending)

Cynthia Croot: on Suzan-Lori Parks' play Venus

4:30-6 Film – Jen Marlowe: Rebuilding Hope

6-7:30 Dinner

7:30-10 Performances, Presentations

Jill Pribylova: Okulamba Dance Company

Colleen Wagner: The Monument

Film – Abigail Disney: Pray the Devil Back to Hell

Friday, March 19 – Palestine, Israel, The Mid-East: Conversations

8-8:30 Coffee

8:30-9 Reflections and Forecasts: Yesterday, today

9-12:30 Michael Devine: Session A – BoxWhatBox (“exercises and etudes in non-traditional performance creation and the training of the artist as intercultural citizen”)

9-12:30 Panel

Neery E. Melkonian: Becoming a Diasporic Cluster: Surviving the Legacy of a Catastrophe, Consolidating Utterances Across Time and Space

12:30-2 Lunch

2-4 Presentations, with Q+A

Jennie El-Far, Tracy Francis: Selections from The Generations Project

Lisa Schelssinger: US/Palestinian performance projects

Ed Mast, Hanna Eady: Seven Days from a Gaza Diary

passages from the diary of Khulood Ghanem

adapted and arranged by Edward Mast

Laura Zam: from Collaterally Damaged

Guitta Tahmassebi – Operation Blackout

4-4:30 Break

4:30-6 Conversations

Brown U Faculty on Israeli/Palestinian relations

Rula Awwad-Rafferty, Neery E. Melkonian, Dorit Cypis: on Zochrot and the Nakba; more

Norma Musih: on the town of Sumeil

6-7:30 Dinner

7:30-10 Performances

Laura Zam: Collaterally Damaged

Crime Against Humanity – Michael Anthony Reyes Benavides, Luis Rosa

Lauren Weedman: Bust (tent.)

Saturday, March 20: Opening out

[All day: Film Festival – including:

Kate Perotti: MOMz Hot ROCKs

Carl Rux: Shirley Clarke: Harlem, Race and Oppression in Cinema Verité

(a conversation)

Nancy Buchanan

Jen Marlowe: Rebuilding Hope

Stella Ma: The Quest for the Moon Fairy

and

Podcast

Heather Woodbury: As the Globe Warms

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These projects will be shown on a rolling basis throughout the day.]

8-8:30 Coffee

8:30-9 Reflections and Forecasts – Yesterday, today

9-12:30 Workshops

Elaine Avila, Kate Weiss: generative theatre exercises, both in the use of creating theatre for social justice in community and as a tool for playwrights.

Michael Devine: Session B – BoxWhatBox (See Fri)

9-10:30 Concurrent Roundtables

Systems (Theaters, Collectives, Social Initiatives)

A: Deborah Asiimwe/Sundance

John Bell/Great Small Works (tent.)

Lisa Dowda/Bond Street Theatre

Jane Hirshberg/Dance Exchange

Norma Musih/Zochrot

B Rhodessa Jones, Theresa Dickinson, Denny Riley/Cultural

Odyssey

Stella Ma/Children's Cantonese Opera (including an exerpt from The Quest for the Moon Fairy)

Susan McEwen/Irish Peace Centres

Nealy Noe/ArtAccess

Barbara Roberts/ActUp: Black on Black Crime

Aryeh Shell/Somos Mayfair

9-10:30 Special Topics

A: Actions for the Individual Artist

Karen Atkinson: The Hybrid Career

B: Art and Personal Identity

Mei Ann Teo: Rebuilding from Within – Mitigating Fundamentalism in Conservative Christian Communities – A Case Study in Reclaiming the Body in the Seventh Day Adventist Bubble

Betsy Shevey: Abuse; Recovery by Means of Creative Arts

Sarah Schulman: The Ties that Bind

C: Lili Bernard: Ceiba De Cuba – The artist’s work, and a conversation on race and civil rights in Cuba (from 9-11)

10:30-11 Break

11-12:30 Concurrent Roundtables

Systems (Theaters, Collectives, Social Initiatives)

A: Orlando Pabotoy, Laverne Duncan, Carlos Silveira

Sha Najak, Shaun Teo, Prashant Somosundram/Migrant Voices

Justine Williams/Glass Contraption: The Marias of Brazil

Christine Young/U San Fran: Theater of Place

Guy Zimmerman: Language and Space (Personal, Political)

B: Jerry Stropnicky/Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble: Higher

Ground

Mary Sherman/TransCultural Exchange

Alvin Tan/Necessary Stage

Hjalmar-Jorge Joffre-Eichhorn: Work in Afghanistan

Kathy Carbone: Libraries and Activism

11-12:30 Special Topics

Students and Activism

Torry Bend

Noam Shuster

Marissa Metelica

Amber Skalski

Liesl Spitz

Tanmay Misra

Murals and Performance

Jane Weissman/Urbecoart: The People's Blackboard: Community Murals & Neighborhood Identity [With Installation]

12:30-2 Lunch

2-4 Concurrent Panels

The Local and International in Continuum

A: John Emigh: I Made Bandem, The Scheilleins (the use of local place markers in New Guinean poetics and performance), Dennis Hlynsky at RISD, and Waterfire's Barnaby Evans

B: Patricia Ybarra: TBA

C: Naum Panovski: Writing and Exile – Dr. Boris Senker, Filip David, Kannan Menon

D: Playwrights Respond to Genocide

Moderator: Bianca Bagatourian, with:

Cynthia Croot

Stephanie Fleischmann

Elaine Romero

4-4:30 Break

4:30-6 Concurrent Panels

A: Art and Peacebuilding

Cynthia Cohen, Barbara Epstein: Alan B. Slifka Program in Intercommunal Coexistence, Brandeis University

Cynthia Croot