We’re looking forward to welcoming everyone to the start of the new academic year. This year, we’re doing something a little different. In lieu of regularly-scheduled theatre classes the first week of school, the Theatre Program will come together as a community in a three-day Teach-In, a series of conversations and presentations intended to lay foundations for the year’s work. The Teach-In will take place from 6:00-8:00 PM Wednesday, August 26 – Friday, August 28. Asynchronous content will be made available each afternoon to help prepare for that evening’s session.
Wednesday, August 26 & Thursday, August 27: The Season Ahead
Challenged by the Pandemic and charged by a time of volatile social change, Fordham Theatre seizes the opportunity to reimagine our production season and our curriculum. This week, we will meet one another, meet our inspiration, and take the leap together, starting with a deep dive into the ideas, questions, and creative approaches our season’s projects will explore.
Thursday evening will also include a screening of the short virtual performance A Farm For Meme written by Virginia Grise and directed by Elena Araoz, followed by a discussion with the artists. For cutting-edge information about the evolving field of virtual performance, please take a look at the research project Innovations in Socially Distant Performance, which Elena has created in collaboration with her Princeton students.
Friday, August 28: Engaging our Changing World and Changing Field
This year, we will continue the rigorous work of responding to the reckonings we face. Our monthly meetings will be a primary site for exploring the ways that we, and artists in our field engage change. We will work together to imagine brave, supportive and transformative conversations. We will consider artistic leaders across generations, experiences of identity, modes of practice, and political locations in a responsive and adaptive framework. Tonight is a taste of this work. Given the leadership of Black artists and activists throughout this year’s cultural and political reckonings, this session invites several to join us and share. This is just a beginning. We will welcome your ideas of artists, works of art, traditions of making, guiding questions, etc. for future consideration so that we may tend to an ever-widening constellation of ideas and expressions that we can learn about and consider, together, as we journey forward.
Guest speakers for this session, including Sarah Bellamy, Artistic Director of Penumbra Center for Art and Racial Healing; the vanguard artistic team of Kaneza Schaal and Christopher Myers; and Denzel Washington Chair, Liesl Tommy will reflect upon their work and their visions at the forefront of this charged time.They will share reflections, provocations, and invitations with our community
We will close the evening with a ritual of dedication, inspired by the work of Black Feminist Scholar Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs.