race peace
Race Peace
A two-year collaborative project with M.U.G.A.B.E.E., Mondo Bizarro, Junebug Productions, and Roadside Theater. It has been received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Creation Fund from the National Performance Network.
Race Peace, (the working title for this project), has been in discussion for some time. It represents the rare occasion when four theater companies, who have consistently created art from the stories and music of their own cultures come together to create theater that transverses cultural boundaries yet maintains the integrity of each culture. At its core are painful, unanswered questions about the role racism plays in our personal and professional relationships and in society at large. We aim to confront these difficult questions about racism, how they influence our lives, our work and our society. We are particularly concerned to examine ways that our art making can support the effort achieve racial justice.
Race Peace will evolve over a two-year period. This initiative is currently in the research phase. This phase will continue through the end of 2008 and will include facilitated community dialogues, book circles, blogging on the dedicated Race Peace blog, and interviews with individuals throughout the country of different ethnicities to gain a broader perspective of how race and racism affect different people. Over the course of the project we will conduct a series of twenty-four private and public dialogues and workshops both in and outside our respective communities. While the private dialogues will take the form of audio/visual interviews, the workshops will include broader community discussions, improvisational acting, and writing exercises, all of which will lead to the building of the various theatrical vignettes that will make up the final work. Workshops are tentatively scheduled to take place at the following locations:
Alternate ROOTS Annual Meeting, August 5-10, 2008 (Arden, NC)
Roadside Theater (Whitesburg, KY)
Pangea World Theater (Minneapolis)
Irondale Ensemble Project (New York)
Ashe Cultural Center (New Orleans)
If you would like to participate in one of these community forums or would like to be interviewed as part of this project please contact Nick Slie or Carlton Turner.