Announcements: NoPassport Conference – DREAMING THE AMERICAS: UTOPIA IN PERFORMANCE (NYC)

NoPe – NoPassport Conference

DREAMING THE AMERICAS: UTOPIA IN PERFORMANCE

NoPassport and Nuyorican Poets Cafe present a two-day conference with the support of The Armenian Dramatic Arts Alliance, Idiom, The Internationalists, 50/50 in 2020, Conni’s Avant-Garde Restaurant, New Perspectives Theatre Company, and the Lark Play Development Center, and the cooperation of New Dramatists.

Initiated and Curated by Caridad Svich
Co-curated by Daniel Banks & Daniel Gallant

Join Migdalia Cruz, Teresa Eyring (TCG), Conni’s Avant-Garde Restaurant, Jeff Janisheski (O’Neill Theater Institute), Catherine Filloux, Karen Hartman, Randy Gener, Melanie Joseph, Brian Knep, Oliver Mayer, Chiori Miyagawa, Jeff McMahon, J.T. Rogers, Ian Rowlands, Alberto Sandoval-Sanchez, Octavio Solis, Saviana Stanescu, and more distinguished artists for the 4th annual NoPassport “Dreaming the Americas” Conference held this year at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York City with pre-conference event at New Dramatists on February 25th from 6-8 PM.

This coming year the two-day conference will focus on a wide range of contemporary works for theatre & performance, viewing utopian spaces from a variety of formal perspectives. Keynote speeches will be delivered by Erik Ehn and Henry Godinez. There will also be a book launch for the release of five new volumes from NoPassport Press from Migdalia Cruz, Karen Hartman, Chiori Miyagawa, Octavio Solis amd Saviana Stanescu.

Conference @ Nuyorican Poets Café/NY
Fri. February 26, 2010 11:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m.
& Sat. February 27, 2010 11:00 a.m. – 6:30 p.m.
TWO-DAY PASS Registration/cover required: $25
Pre-registration available online now here

Venue has limited seating. Early registration online Recommended.
For further information & full schedule contact [email protected]

Facebook event page

NoPassport was founded by playwright Caridad Svich in 2003. It is an unincorporated theatre alliance & press devoted to cross-cultural, Pan-American performance, theory, action, advocacy, and publication. Caridad Svich and NoPassport is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions in behalf of [Caridad Svich & NoPassport] may be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

http://www.caridadsvich.com/NoPassport/upcoming.html

Current Schedule–Program is subject to change

FEBRUARY 26, 2010 Panels:

11:00 AM WELCOME/OPENING REMARKS
with DANIEL BANKS (DNAWORKS), DANIEL GALLANT (Executive Director, Nuyorican Poets Cafe), CARIDAD SVICH (Playwright; founder, NoPassport)

11:30 AM-12:50 PM APPLIED THEATRE: GENOCIDE DRAMA IN COMMUNITY
Moderators: BIANCA BAGATOURIAN (Playwright & President of Armenian Dramatic Arts Alliance) and MEGAN MONAGHAN (Dramaturg, via Skype)

Panel: MARCY ARLIN (Immigrants Theater Project), STACIE CHAIKEN (Writer-Performer), ERIK EHN (Playwright), CHRISTINE EVANS (Playwright), CATHERINE FILLOUX (Playwright), J.T. ROGERS (Playwright), DAWN AKEMI SAITO (Writer-Performer), KELLY STUART (Playwright), *This is an Armenian Dramatic Arts Alliance session.
1:00-1:45 KEYNOTE: ERIK EHN: UTOPIA IS THE SHADOW OF DISASTER
ERIK EHN is Head of Playwriting at Brown University, and former Dean of California School of the Arts.
We are in the middle of an extraordinary time, if utopia is understood to include moral diversity (heaven and hell). The ways in which we are being disregarded, forced into strange shapes, misunderstood, privileged, urged – are now (briefly) the fracture that permits growth. Making art in holy shadow in obedience to disaster.

2:00-2:45 PM CONNI’S AVANT-GARDE RESTAURANT
This special performance/lunch costs $10 (separate from registration and at event only).
Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant (a Village Voice Choice and Time Out New York favorite), is not a locale but a group of bold (if fictional) theatrical performers, devoted to the ongoing celebration of the work of Conni Convergence, the beloved icon of stage and screen. Hailed as “devilish dinner theatre” by The New York Daily News, these unique theatrical-culinary events mix the ingredients of fine food and drink, brash Vegas-style song and dance spectacle, and a loving sendup of avant-garde pomposity. www.avantgarderestaurant.com

3:00-5:00 PM IMMERSIVE THEATRE: SITES OF MEMORY/PRACTICE
Moderators: TAMILLA WOODARD and JAKE WITLEN
Panel: MELANIE JOSEPH (Artistic Director, The Foundry), MALLORY CATLETT (director), ANNA KIRALY (Designer), STEPHEN SQUIBB (C-Artistic Director, Woodshed Collective), , IVAN TALIJANCIC (Artistic Director, Wax Factory), IAN ROWLANDS (Playwright, Advisor, Welsh Arts Council), MELISSA F. MOSCHITTO (Founder, The Anthropologists), CATHERINE PORTER (Peculiar Works Project) *This is an Internationalists session.

5-6 PM DINNER BREAK

6 PM 2nd KEYNOTE: HENRY GODINEZ : NEW HORIZONS FOR NEW VOICES
HENRY GODINEZ is the resident artistic associate at the Goodman Theatre and curator of the Goodman’s Latino Theatre Festival. Born in Havana Cuba, Mr. Godinez is an Associate Professor at Northwestern University, and was recognized as the 2008 Latino Professional of the Year by the Chicago Latino Network.

6:30-7:50 PM NOPASSPORT PRESS BOOK LAUNCH
Moderators: RANDY GENER (Senior Editor, American Theatre) & OTIS RAMSEY-ZOE (Dramaturge)
Panel: MIGDALIA CRUZ, OCTAVIO SOLIS, KAREN HARTMAN, CHIORI MIYAGAWA, SAVIANA STANESCU and ALBERTO SANDOVAL-SANCHEZ (Mount Holyoke College), PRISCILLA PAGE (Univ. of Massachusetts), JOHN EISNER (Artistic Director, Lark Play Development Center), SHARON FRIEDMAN (NYU, Gallatin School)

NoPassport Press presents excerpts from new work (read by authors) and a conversation about the global voice in the age of globalization with five writers who have newly available plays, along with scholars and theatre-makers who’ve written about their work.

8:30 PM CHAMACO – BOY AT THE VANISHING POINT (2004)
a reading of a play by Cuban playwright Abel González Melo. English Translation by Yael Prizant. Directed by Joe Salvatore

@ Off-site venue: New Perspectives Theatre, 456 West 37th Street, NY, NY 10018
Omar Valiño writes, “Chamaco… is one of the most important works of contemporary Cuban theater and, with time, will become even more important. The play brought a new thematic outlook to the theater of the island through its inclusion of, and dialogue with, innovative textual and performative discourses….”

Chamaco is an elegant and brutal portrait of the street, full of desires. Veiled in a common crime narrative, the play reveals transgressions far more disturbing and painful than any illegal acts. González Melo’s vivid characters have an intimate relationship with Havana and its rhythms. They encounter the world as Cubans, grasping at their island’s skewed interaction with tourism, its housing shortages, its limited job prospects, its lively and interactive culture. Yet their palpable loneliness, their distance from each other, and their fervent desire to connect is collective, basic, and utterly recognizable to audiences, in any language.

FEBRUARY 27, 2010 PANELS:

11:00 AM: TERESA EYRING (TCG): CONVOCATION
TERESA EYRING is Executive Director of Theatre Communications Group. Previous positions include Managing Director of the Children’s Theatre Company (CTC) in Minneapolis, Managing Director of the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia and Assistant Executive Director of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. She holds a BA in International Relations from Stanford University and an MFA in Theatre Administration from Yale School of Drama.

11:30-12:50 AM THEATRE-MAKING AS AN ACT OF UTOPIA-MAKING: 50/50 in 2020
MELODY BROOKS (Artistic Director, New Perspectives), JENNY GREEMAN (Artistic Associate, NPTC), SUSAN JONAS (Dramaturge), LUDOVICA VILLAR-HAUSER (Director-Dramaturge, VIP of Programming for the League of Professional Theatre Women)

New Perspectives Theatre Company, The League of Professional Theatre Women and 50/50 in 2020 explore what it means to make art in a culture that only values capital. Is the act of creation a radical act? Can theatrical space be viewed as utopian space? The panel will investigate these theoretical questions and move toward practical solutions for reassessing the value of theatre and its makers. In particular, representatives of the newly formed 50/50 in 2020 will share their plan for achieving parity for women artists by 2020.

1:00-2:10 PM IDIOM: Between Art and Theater: Genealogies of Performance
Moderator: STEPHEN SQUIBB (Editor, Idiom) Panel: SHAWN MARIE GARRETT (Columbia University), JOEL BASSIN (Hunter College), JESSE ARON GREEN Artist, Whitney Biennial), ANDREA MERKX (Artist, dance curator) & TBA

The arrival of widespread interest in performance amongst contemporary artists has not immediately translated into an expanded interdisciplinary interest in that other, classically time-based medium, the theater. Nor has the theater, broadly speaking, seen fit to expand its categories to correspond with the sudden promiscuity of its traditional methodology. What is the nature of this reciprocal ignorance? Is it simply a question of incompatible constituencies? No doubt there is a deep divide in each community’s respective method of production – but are we so determined? This panel aims to examine the recent history of performance as it relates to current patterns of production and dissemination, with special consideration given to the divide between contemporary art and theater.

2:15 PM JEFF McMAHON: COUNTER INDICATIONS
Counter Indications, a collaboration between writer JEFF MCMAHON and media designer JACOB PINHOLSTER, is a live performance/installation examining forced confessions, the parameters of what is considered “cruel and unusual” treatment, and the role of influence in determining truth. JEFF McMAHON, Assistant Professor in the School of Theatre and Film at Arizona State University, is the recipient of 8 NEA Fellowships in Choreography. His live works combining live speech and movement with media have been presented since 1980 at P.S. 122, Dance Theater Workshop, The Kitchen, PS 1, LACE, Cleveland Performance Art Fest., Jacob’s Pillow, Highways, and numerous other venues in the U.S. and Europe. He recently completed a writing residency at the Edward F. Albee Foundation. www.jeffmcmahonprojects.net

3-4 LUNCH BREAK

4-6 PM NEW DRAMATURGIES: ARTS AND/IN THE ACADEMY
Moderators: JEFF JANISHESKI (O’NEILL THEATRE INSTITUTE) and ELEANOR SKIMIN (Dramaturge, PHD candidate, Brown University)

Panel: ELAINE AVILA (Playwright, University of New Mexico), RANDY GENER (Playwright), CHARLOTTE MEEHAN (Playwright, Wheaton College), LISA SCHLESINGER Playwright, Columbia College Chicago), MATTHEW MAGUIRE (Playwright, Fordham University), LINSEY BOSTWICK (Big Art Group)

6-6:30 PM CLOSING EVENT: BRIAN KNEP: SPIRITUAL COMPUTING
BRIAN KNEP is a new media artist who uses science and technology to explore change, healing, struggle, and acceptance. Often his works are immersive and interactive, sensing and reacting to the people around them. Knep has exhibited internationally, including solo shows at the New Britain Museum of American Art and the McColl Center for Visual Art and group shows at the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art. His works have won awards from Ars Electronica, Americans for the Arts, AICA/New England and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In 2005 Knep became the first artist-in-residence at Harvard Medical School in a program co-sponsored by Harvard’s Office for the Arts. Knep lives and works in Boston and is represented by Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, NY and Judi Rotenberg Gallery, Boston.

7:00 PM ARTIST RECEPTION hosted by the Lark Play Development Center, 939 8th Avenue @ 55th Street.