A Festival for Theatre and Democracy

Please join us for a day-long festival of readings from works that perform democratic processes; panels with artists whose practices rehearse and represent democratic ideals; and artist-led workshops that provide tools for creating theater that uplifts, rehearses, and performs democracy.

The organizing principle of the festival is that both theatre and democracy depend on dialogue to function. Each of the presentations throughout the day will ask the practitioners and participants to experiment in some way with the notion that an argument performed dialogically before a theatre audience offers the distance, space, and time to hear, contemplate, and see better an issue critical to a community.

There seems no better time to flex and strengthen the muscles of argument, listening, contemplation, gathering in community, and exercising one’s power to agree, disagree, persuade, be persuaded, and to witness the strange and familiar. This festival hopes to remind theater practitioners and theater-goers that our participation in this medium can be foundational practice to a more robust democracy.

Schedule of events:

1pm-2pm

Panel - Wherefore is Democracy? Is Theater? With Shannon Steen (UC Berkeley) and Jess Applebaum (CUNY Graduate Center and EdgeEffect)

2pm-3:15pm 

The Pit by Matei Visniec, Translated by Vas Eli, Directed by Ana Margineanu, with Vas Eli, Owen Campbell, Perri Yaniv, Carolina Đỗ, Maria Müller

3:30-5pm 

Panel - A Dialogue for Theater and Democracy With James Shapiro (author The Playbook), Aaron Landsman (playwright, organizer and author of The City We Make Together), Beto O'Byrne (playwright, co-founder Radical Evolution, organizer), Vas Eli (performer, producer), Daniella Kaliada (of Free Theatre of Belarus)

5pm-6:00pm 

Perfect City Toolkit, Aaron Landsman

6pm-7:15pm

The Conduct of Life, by María Irene Fornés, Directed by JoAnne Akalaitis, With Alfredo Narcisco, Elizabeth Marvel, Randy Danson, Orlando Portaboy, Anamari Mesa

7:30-8:15pm

Machine: NYC by and through the Radical Evolution Street Theatre Crew: Ash Marinaccio, Liz Morgan, lisa nevada, Beto O'Byrne, Meropi Peponides, Opalanietet Pierce, Amorarey Sandoz, Sonia Villani

8:15-9pm

Nameless, by D. N. Bashir, with Leah Coloff