World Theatre Day: 27 March 2022

 

[From the World Theatre Day website: “Since 1962 World Theatre Day has been celebrated by ITI Centres, ITI Cooperating Members, theatre professionals, theatre organizations, theatre universities and theatre lovers all over the world on the 27th of March.  This day is a celebration for those who can see the value and importance of the art form “theatre”, and acts as a wake-up-call for governments, politicians and institutions which have not yet recognised its value to the people and to the individual and have not yet realised its potential for economic growth.” 

[Below are a collection of statements about World Theatre Day, which is observed annually, downloaded from American Theatre, the monthly magazine published by the Theatre Communications Group.  (I previously blogged on World Theatre Day on 24 April 2012.)]

“We gather to weep and to remember; to laugh and to contemplate; to learn and to affirm and to imagine”

—Brett Bailey, Stage Director from South Africa, World Theatre Day Message Author 2014

CELEBRATE WORLD THEATRE DAY 2022
by Teresa Eyring
Executive Director/CEO, Theatre Communications Group

“The theater of epic vision, purpose, recovery, repair, and care needs new rituals. We don’t need to be entertained. We need to gather. We need to share space, and we need to cultivate shared space. We need protected spaces of deep listening and equality.”
—Peter Sellars, International Message Author

“There is a beauty about us . . . those of us who have committed ourselves to this… this global family who uses theatre to unearth the best and worst of ourselves; the tragedy of our deepest fears and the comedy of our truest joy. “
—Mildred Ruiz-Sapp and Steven Sapp, U.S. Message Co-Authors

“Theater allows us to see each other, to hear each other….and by listening and witnessing each other, we can finally see ourselves.”
—Jasmin Cardenas, U.S. Emergent Artist Author

New York, NY – The Global Theater Initiative (GTI), a partnership between Theatre Communications Group (TCG) and The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics (The Lab) at Georgetown University, invites all theatres, individual artists, institutions, and audiences to celebrate the 61st annual World Theatre Day on March 27, 2022. Each year, a renowned theatre artist of world stature is invited by the International Theatre Institute (ITI) Worldwide to craft an international message to mark the global occasion. This year the International message has been written by U.S. director Peter Sellars. The U.S. World Theatre Day message has been given by Mildred Ruiz-Sapp and Steven Sapp, co-founders and core members of UNIVERSES, and a video of their address can be found here. The messages have been translated into multiple languages, and all of the messages can be found here.

For the first time ever, World Theatre Day will also feature more than 40 short videos of early-career artists from 30 countries, including the U.S. Emergent Artist message, which will be given by actress and activist Jasmin Cardenas. The videos will play through the day, beginning at 9:00am ET/14:00 Paris, and Cardenas’s video will be available here. Learn more about the Emergent Artists here. 

“Amid the horrors of war, the role of artists in peace-building and cultural exchange has become even more urgent,” said Teresa Eyring, executive director of TCG. “As we take inspiration from the messages of Peter Sellars and Mildred Ruiz-Sapp and Steven Sapp, we must also pay special attention to the voices of artists in their early career. I encourage all theatre people to witness the visions of Jasmin Cardenas and more than 40 of her emergent artist peers from across the world.”

Since 1962, World Theatre Day has been celebrated by the circulation of the World Theatre Day Message. The first World Theatre Day international message was written by Jean Cocteau [(1889 1963), French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist, and critic]. Succeeding honorees have included Arthur Miller (1963), Ellen Stewart (1975), Vaclav Havel (1994), Ariane Mnouchkine (2005), Sultan bin Mohammad Al Qasimi (2007), Augusto Boal (2009), Dame Judi Dench (2010), Jessica A. Kaahwa (2011), and Anatoli Vassiliev (2016). In 2021, the International World Theatre Message was given by Helen Mirren, and the U.S. World Theatre Message by Olga Garay-English.

To celebrate World Theatre Day 2022, GTI recommends sharing the international and U.S. messages on or around March 27 through online media; tweet about World Theatre Day using the hashtag #WorldTheatreDay; following TCG, The Lab, The Global Theatre Initiative, and ITI on social media platforms for updates and sharing World Theatre Day-related posts; and posting your own message to your network about World Theatre Day, championing the power of theatre to strengthen cultural exchange and mutual understanding across borders. Social handles for GTI: Facebook; for TCG: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn; for The  Lab: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.

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ABOUT WORLD THEATRE DAY

World Theatre Day was created in 1961 by the International Theatre Institute (ITI), and is celebrated annually on March 27 by global ITI centers and the international theatre community. Various national and international theatre events are organized to celebrate an international message and remarks from national cultural leaders. The Global Theater Initiative (GTI), a partnership between Theatre Communications Group (TCG) and the Laboratory for Global Performance & Politics (the Lab), encourages U.S. theatres, individual artists, institutions and audiences to celebrate the occasion annually on the 27th of March.

Since 1962, World Theatre Day has been celebrated by the circulation of the World Theatre Day Message through which, at the invitation of ITI, a figure of world stature shares their reflections on the theme of Theatre and a Culture of Peace. The first World Theatre Day international message was written by Jean Cocteau in 1962. Succeeding honorees have included Arthur Miller (1963), Ellen Stewart (1975), Vaclav Havel (1994), Ariane Mnouchkine (2005), Sultan bin Mohammad Al Qasimi (2007), Augusto Boal (2009), Dame Judi Dench (2010), Jessica A. Kaahwa (2011) and Heather Raffo (2018).

In GTI’s role as the U.S. center of ITI, a U.S.-based author is chosen to circulate a national message for World Theatre Day in addition to the international message. Past U.S. honorees have included Indigenous Direction (2019), Kwame Kwei-Armah (2017), Ping Chong (2016), Diane Rodriguez (2014), Jeffrey Wright (2011) and Lynn Nottage (2010). 

To learn more about World Theatre Day, visit the official website at www.world-theatre-day.org.

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INTERNATIONAL MESSAGE 2022: PETER SELLARS

Dear Friends,

As the world hangs by the hour and by the minute on a daily drip feed of news reportage, may I invite all of us, as creators, to enter our proper scope and sphere and perspective of epic time, epic change, epic awareness, epic reflection, and epic vision? We are living in an epic period in human history and the deep and consequential changes we are experiencing in human beings’ relations to themselves, to each other, and to nonhuman worlds are nearly beyond our abilities to grasp, to articulate, to speak of, and to express.

We are not living in the 24-hour news cycle, we are living at the edge of time. Newspapers and media are completely unequipped and unable to deal with what we are experiencing.

Where is the language, what are the moves, and what are the images that might allow us to comprehend the deep shifts and ruptures that we are experiencing? And how can we convey the content of our lives right now not as reportage but experience?

Theater is the artform of experience.

In a world overwhelmed by vast press campaigns, simulated experiences, ghastly prognostications, how can we reach beyond the endless repeating of numbers to experience the sanctity and infinity of a single life, a single ecosystem, a friendship, or the quality of light in a strange sky? Two years of COVID-19 have dimmed people’s senses, narrowed people’s lives, broken connections, and put us at a strange ground zero of human habitation.

What seeds need to be planted and replanted in these years, and what are the overgrown, invasive species that need to be fully and finally removed? So many people are on edge. So much violence is flaring, irrationally or unexpectedly. So many established systems have been revealed as structures of ongoing cruelty.

Where are our ceremonies of remembrance? What do we need to remember? What are the rituals that allow us at last to reimagine and begin to rehearse steps that we have never taken before?

The theater of epic vision, purpose, recovery, repair, and care needs new rituals. We don’t need to be entertained. We need to gather. We need to share space, and we need to cultivate shared space. We need protected spaces of deep listening and equality.

Theater is the creation on earth of the space of equality between humans, gods, plants, animals, raindrops, tears, and regeneration. The space of equality and deep listening is illuminated by hidden beauty, kept alive in a deep interaction of danger, equanimity, wisdom, action, and patience.

In The Flower Ornament Sutra [a text designed to inspire luminous visions and exalted experiences of mind and reality through its use of lush, psychedelic, evocative imagery], Buddha lists ten kinds of great patience in human life. One of the most powerful is called Patience in Perceiving All as Mirages. Theater has always presented the life of this world as resembling a mirage, enabling us to see through human illusion, delusion, blindness, and denial with liberating clarity and force.

We are so certain of what we are looking at and the way we are looking at it that we are unable to see and feel alternative realities, new possibilities, different approaches, invisible relationships, and timeless connections.

This is a time for deep refreshment of our minds, of our senses, of our imaginations, of our histories, and of our futures. This work cannot be done by isolated people working alone. This is work that we need to do together. Theater is the invitation to do this work together.

Thank you deeply for your work.
Peter Sellars

[Peter Sellars, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (USA) is an opera, theater and festival director who has gained international renown for his ground-breaking and transformative interpretations of classics, advocacy of 20th century and contemporary music, and collaborative projects with an extraordinary range of creative and performing artists.  His work illuminates the power of art as a means of moral expression and social action.  

[Sellars has staged operas at the Dutch National Opera, English National Opera, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Opéra National de Paris and the Salzburg Festival, among others.  He’s collaborated on the creation of many works with composer John Adams, including Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, El Niño, Doctor Atomic, The Gospel According to the Other Mary, and The Girls of the Golden West.  Inspired by the compositions of Kaija Saariaho, he has guided the creation of productions of her work (L’Amour de loin, Adriana Mater, Only the Sound Remains) that have expanded the repertoire of modern opera.  

[Recent (pre-pandemic) projects include a new production of Doctor Atomic at the Santa Fe Opera, a staging of Claude Vivier’s Kopernikus for Festival D’Automne (Paris), and a production of Mozart’s Idomeneo for the Salzburg Festival.  Late in 2020 he conceived and directed “this body is so impermanent . . .” a film created in response to the global pandemic inspired by text from the Vimalakirti Sutra.  Upcoming projects include a staging of the 14th-century Roman du Fauvel in collaboration with musicologist and founder of the Sequentia Ensemble, Benjamin Bagby; a revival of Sellars’ acclaimed production of Tristan und Isolde, its story illuminated and deepened by the transcendent videography created by artist Bill Viola; and Perle Noire, meditations for Josephine, with music by composer and multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey performed by the incomparable vocalist Julia Bullock.  

[Sellars has led several major arts festivals, including the 1990 and 1993 Los Angeles Festivals and the 2002 Adelaide Arts Festival.  In 2006 he was Artistic Director of New Crowned Hope, a festival in Vienna for which he invited emerging and established artists from diverse cultural backgrounds to create new work in the fields of music, theater, dance, film, the visual arts and architecture for the celebration of Mozart’s 250th birth anniversary.  He served as the Music Director of the 2016 Ojai Music Festival.  

[Sellars is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA, the founding director of the Boethius Institute at UCLA, a resident curator of the Telluride Film Festival, and was a Mentor for the Rolex Arts Initiative.  He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Erasmus Prize for contributions to European culture, the Gish Prize, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  He has been awarded the prestigious Polar Music Prize and been named Artist of the Year by Musical America.]

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U.S. WORLD THEATRE DAY MESSAGE 2022:
MILDRED RUIZ-SAPP AND STEVEN SAPP

Steven:  There is a beauty about us . . . those of us who have committed ourselves to this . . . this global family who uses theatre to unearth the best and worst of ourselves; the tragedy of our deepest fears and the comedy of our truest joy. 

Mildred:  Here, is where it happens, should happen; with folks that look like us, who don’t look like us, who believe what we believe, who oppose what we stand for; where we share the experience and the responsibility. We all have our own individual point of entry, we all accepted the call. 

Steven:  Point of entry: I was born of the Hip Hop Generation. A young street dancer, lit by the glowing lights of 42nd Street; and I wanted the world to see where I came from, witness the skills we had homegrown, challenge everyone to stop and witness us. An Usher, a black man, came out of the big Broadway theatre behind us one day and said, “yall wanna come in and see the show?” . . . He snuck us into the back row and told us to be quiet, and we were, because what do you do at that point of entry? I was a boy witnessing the beauty and power of my people on the grand stage. That black man whose name I’ll never know gave me the musical “Dreamgirls”. . . and I accepted the call.

Mildred:  Point of entry: Spanish Boleros and church choir were all I knew I loved. They said that my voice “tenía un gemir”, a sorrow about it, something guttural, tender and at the same time furious. But what to do with that? I was a girl from the project of New York City, possibilities were limited but every now and then, you get a teacher who braves her students on a school trip to a place unknown to them . . . a theatre. We didn’t know what would happen or if we even wanted to be there, but when the lights went out, we paused. The lights come up and we were no longer us, we were no longer together, yet we were. The musical was called “Mama I wanna Sing”. [Mama, I Want to Sing with music by Wesley Naylor, book and lyrics by Vy Higginsen and Ken Wydro; based on the life story of R&B singer-songwriter Doris Troy (1937-2004); premièred in 1983 in Harlem with many revivals nationwide.] And as the girl on stage sang, her voice cried and said everything I wanted to say. And it was guttural and tender and furious, there was deep sorrow, but there was joy in it all. I heard a call, and I accepted. 

Steven:  When we see ourselves, our communities on stage, we are unstoppable, the possibilities endless, there are no borders, ponds or boundaries we dare not cross. We come from The South Bronx and The Lower East Side’s Alphabet City, but theatre invited us to the World . . . and we accepted.

Mildred:  In Valparaiso, Chile . . . we performed in a recently closed prison that was being converted to a performance cultural space. The space still had sections that weren’t touched. Our guide in the facility was an ex-inmate who still slept in his old cell and in the evening had to maintain the site and be a tour guide there. 

Steven:  He took us to his cell to show us his view of the world. It was his safe space, the place he knew for most of his life. How he would look to the moon to quiet his spirit at night. How it kept him . . . human. And he wanted to share that with us. 

Mildred:  And how special and sacred the conversation felt. Later on that night, 10 minutes into our performance, the power went out in Valparaiso, as it often did in the projects of New York City, and we accepted the call to proceed in the dark. 

Steven:  And since we were unaware of the full extent of the blackout, we kept performing, until people began to bring candles to the front of the stage, a glow that helped enhance the mood, and we kept performing. And most of the audience, non-English speaking, took an artistic spiritual journey with us. We were all there alone and together . . .

Mildred:  having this moment that only the people in the room could explain. We were there, in a space that held pain and despair. In this makeshift theatre, we connected in our light, in that way that transcends, in the way that we as human beings, art practitioners look for. 

Steven:  We have had the privilege to teach and learn, give and receive from our theatre family across the world. And if and when we question the call, we look to those shared moments; from Poland to Chile, Colombia, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, Romania, and the U.K., where we visited schools, where the eyes of the kids looked like eyes we have seen before.  

Mildred:  Where we sat with women and their children who hosted us in secret to share their writing, lest their husbands find them out.  Something as simple as sharing poetry and monologues and food and song, was dangerous but worth the risk. This is where theatre plays the part . . . it teaches us and continuously reminds us that we are as different as we are the same, and it’s as dangerous as it is simple. 

Steven:  In Khartoum, Sudan, during the Al-Bugga International Theatre Festival, after each performance, critics, artists, audience and community exit the theatre and enter a tent just outside the wall; where they come together to immediately discuss the work they just witnessed. An exciting exchange of ideas and investment to say the least. Imagine if after every American Theatre performance we all moved to the next room to discuss, debate, explain, challenge, provoke and uplift what we just saw, with the artist and the critic in the midst of it all. Wouldn’t that be something? There, in The Sudan, under a simple tent, it was. 

Mildred:  Our company, UNIVERSES, went there representing the United States, at the core . . . we went there representing the block. There, we dined with Egypt and Nigeria. Sounds fancy, doesn’t it? But we were all from poor communities and moved in comfort. 

Steven:  We found a small quaint cafe by the side of The Nile River, and we sat and stumbled through words and laughed and danced and sang and shared stories the way people who feel comfortable with each other do; as if we’d know each other forever. We sat by the Nile River, simply counting to ten in native tongues from Nigeria, The Philippines, North Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas.

Mildred:  And even the numbers sounded guttural and tender and furious, with moments of deep sorrow, but there was joy most of all. All of us theatre folks, and even the van drivers, brought together by theatre. And something so simple, so basic as counting from one to ten, this simple act, brought deep smiles and tears to folks who felt a kinship, an honor to share it with other like-minded folks. 

Steven:  We do this . . . because there is work to be done; because our worlds are threatened and in despair. 

Mildred:  Because time and time again, artists have stood and stand at the frontlines, fighting for truth and justice immovable by any threat of war.

Steven:  There are stories needing to be told, stories looking to be understood. They are as local as they are global . . .

Mildred:  as complicated and as simple as counting from one to ten in any language. 

Steven:  The revolution is Live and OnStage, 

Mildred:  and we answer the call.

[Mildred Ruiz-Sapp is a poet, playwright, actor, singer, songwriter, and co-founder/core member of UNIVERSES, a New York-based ensemble company of multi-disciplinary writers and performers who fuse poetry, theater, jazz, hip hop, politics, down home blues, and Spanish boleros.  Playwriting/Acting credits include: AmericUS (Directed/Developed by Joan Herrington); Unison (Directed/Developed by Robert O’Hara); Party People (Directed/Developed by Liesl Tommy); Ameriville (Directed/Developed by Chay Yew); The Denver Project (Director Dee Covington); One Shot in Lotus Position (Director Bonnie Metzger); Blue Suite (Directed/Developed by Chay Yew); Rhythmicity (Directed by Steven Sapp); Slanguage (Directed/Developed by Jo Bonney); The Ride (Directed by Steven Sapp).  

[Ruiz-Sapp‘s acting-only credits include: DJ Latinidad (Directed by Mark Valdez); The Comedy of Errors (Directed by Kent Gash); The Unfortunates (Directed by Shana Cooper); Alfred Jarry’s UBU: Enchained (Director Steven Sapp).  Awards/Affiliations: 2020 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation National Playwright Residency Program recipient; 2015 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award (Theatre); Oregon Shakespeare Festival Acting Company Member ( 2012-2017) and Ensemble in Residence; 2008 U.S. Cultural Ambassador w/ the U.S. State Dept./Jazz at Lincoln Center - Rhythm Road Tour; 2008 TCG Peter Zeisler Award; 2006 Career Advancement Fellowship from the Ford foundation through Pregones Theater; 2002-2004 and 1999-2001 TCG National Theater Artist Residency Program Award; BRIO Awards (Bronx Recognizes its own-Singing); Co-Founder of The Point CDC; Former Board Member (National Performance Network - NPN) and (Network of Ensemble Theaters-NET); New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect; BARD College, BA ‘92 (Literature/Language).  

[Publications: UNIVERSES’ The Revolution will be Live! (2021 release - TCG Books); SLANGUAGE in The Fire This Time (TCG Books); BLUE SUITE in The Goodman Theatre’s Festival Latino - Six Plays (Northwestern University Press); PARTY PEOPLE in The Manifesto Anthology (Rain City Projects - Fall 2014); Featured on the covers of American Theatre magazine 2004 and The Source magazine 2000.  Member: Actors Equity Association (AEA).

[Steven Sapp is a co-founder/core member of UNIVERSES.  Playwriting/Acting credits include: AmericUS (Directed/Developed by Joan Herrington); Unison (Directed/Developed by Robert O’Hara); Party People (Directed/Developed by Liesl Tommy); Ameriville (Directed/Developed by Chay Yew); The Denver Project (Director Dee Covington); One Shot in Lotus Position (Director Bonnie Metzger); Blue Suite (Directed/Developed by Chay Yew); Slanguage (Directed/Developed by Jo Bonney); Rhythmicity (Playwright/Actor/Director); The Ride (Playwright/Actor/Director).  

Sapp’s acting-only credits include: The Comedy of Errors (Directed by Kent Gash).  Directing only credits include: Passover by Antoinette Nwandu (Director); Swopera by Carpetbag Theatre (Director); Metamorphoses by Mary Zimmerman (Director); The Architecture of Loss (Assistant Director to Chay Yew); Will Powers’s The Seven (Director - The Univ. of Iowa); Alfred Jarry’s UBU: Enchained (Director - Teatre Polski, Poland).  

[Awards/Affiliations: 2020 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation National Playwright Residency Program recipient; 2015 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award (Theatre); Oregon Shakespeare Festival Acting Company Member (3 Seasons:’12-’14); 2008 U.S. Cultural Ambassador w/ the U.S. State Dept./Jazz at Lincoln Center - Rhythm Road Tour; 2008 TCG Peter Zeisler Award; 2002 TCG National Directors Award; 2002-2004 and 1999-2001 TCG National Theater Artist Residency Program Award; 1998 and 2002 BRIO Awards (Bronx Recognizes its own-Performance); Van Lier Fellowship with New Dramatists; Co-Founder of The Point CDC; New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect; BARD College, BA ‘89 - Theater.  

[Publications: UNIVERSES’ The Revolution will be Live! (2021 release - TCG Books); Slanguage in The Fire This Time (TCG Books); Blue Suite in The Goodman Theatre’s Festival Latino - Six Plays (Northwestern University Press); Party People in The Manifesto Anthology (Rain City Projects- Fall 2014); Featured on the covers of American Theater magazine 2004 and The Source magazine 2000.  Member: Actors Equity Association (AEA)]

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U.S. EMERGENT ARTIST MESSAGE 2022: JASMIN CARDENAS 

“Hola!” My name is Jasmin Cardenas, I’m a 1st generation North American and proud daughter of Colombian immigrants. I live and work as a theater deviser, director, storyteller and actor in Chicago, IL, in the United States of America.

Theater allows us to see each other, to hear each other . . . . and by listening and witnessing each other, we can finally see ourselves. For several years I’ve been working with regular working class people, non-professional artists who go from feeling silenced to finding their voice.

In this country, working people are treated as disposable and are especially vulnerable if undocumented or they’ve spent time in prison. That invisibility shuts you down, but when we play together . . . it’s like life is sparked again. And they are no longer invisible and we see ourselves (nos vemos), we find our power (nuestro poder).

I studied with Augusto Boal [(1931 2009), Brazilian theatre practitioner, drama theorist, and political activist] so we use the technique called Theater of the Oppressed to fight for workers rights. Our collective, WorkersTEATRO amplifies worker’s stories. We perform in public places so that other workers learn about their rights, see that they aren’t alone – experiencing abuse. This is systemic.  Also, we want professional Chicagoans to see that wage theft and exploitation is happening right here in Chicago – not somewhere else in the world, it’s our problem to deal with. No one is disposable and our voices matter. 

Being awarded a LAB FELLOWSHIP with The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics connected me with deep thinking international artists, and together we are raising collective consciousness all over the world.

I know that the power of theater is that we can tap into compassion and empathy and ideally move towards action, locally and globally. Thank You.

[Jasmin Cardenas is a theater-maker who uses teatro and play to create spaces where people can connect, tell their story, and spark change.  A proud daughter of Colombian immigrants, Cardenas was inspired by El Teatro Campesino when she began using Theater of the Oppressed to devise original scenes with working people in the fight for workers’ rights.  Together they co-founded WorkersTEATRO in Chicago, Illinois, to amplify wage worker stories by engaging the public.  

[Recognized for her arts and civic engagement work she was awarded a 2020-2022 international LAB Fellowship by the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University.  In 2020 she added filmmaker to her skills when she produced her first short documentary film about essential workers, Essential?. . . Tengo que Trabajar/ I have to Work.  Screened at Collaboraction’s 2020 PeaceBOOK Festival and 2021 Screening Scholarship Media Festival CAMRA.  

[Recently commissioned by 1st Stage Theater in Tysons, Virginia, Cardenas is currently writing her newest solo play Disposable, a documentary-style theater piece.  Her first one woman show ¿Niña Buena?. . . the joys and challenges of being Latina y Americana, was produced by Links Hall and toured regionally and internationally to Susana Alexander International Theater Festival in Puebla, Mexico.  

[A proud member of Dramatists Guild of America, Cardenas just performed her first bilingual adaptation of a children’s book, Maybe Something Beautiful with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the puppet film version with the Chicago Children’s Theater.  A professional bilingual storyteller, Cardenas has performed at The National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee, and tours as a featured teller around the country.  Winner of the 2018 Outstanding Storyteller ALTA Award, Cardenas was recognized by the Alliance of Latinx Theater Artists of Chicago.  

[A proud SAG-AFTRA actress, she has guest starred on The CHI (Showtime) and Chicago Fire (NBC) in addition to acting on many Chicago theater stages including Steppenwolf (The Compass), Goodman (The Fair, Electricidad), UrbanTheater (Devil Land, Beauty of the Father), Adventure Stage Chicago (Blue House) and Teatro Luna (Maria Chronicles, Generic Latina, Kita y Fernanda).  www.JasminCardenas.com or Insta @1JasminCardenas.]

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[International Theatre Institute (ITI) was formed in 1948, when the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) joined with world-renowned theater experts to form an international non-governmental organization in the field of the performing arts.  The mission of ITI is to “promote international exchange of knowledge and practice in theater arts in order to consolidate peace and friendship between peoples, to deepen mutual understanding and to increase creative cooperation between all people in the theatre arts.”

[Today, ITI consists of approximately 90 Centers worldwide.  An ITI Center is made up of professionals active in the theater life of a country and representative of all branches of the performing arts.  For more information, visit www.iti-worldwide.org.

[The Global Theater Initiative (GTI) was launched in February 2016 by Theatre Communications Group and the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics (the Lab), based in Washington, D.C., at Georgetown University.  

[By combining the unique reach of TCG’s international programming with the Lab’s distinctive experience in humanizing global politics through the power of performance, GTI strengthens, nurtures, and promotes global citizenship and international collaboration in the U.S. professional and educational theater field.  It also honors and intersects with the work so many theater colleagues have invested in cross-cultural exchange and understanding.

[Through the alignment of programming and resources, the GTI partners serve as a hub of global exchange with three core areas of focus: connecting practitioners with resources, knowledge, and partnerships to strengthen their work; promoting cultural collaboration as essential for international peace and mutual understanding; and innovating new strategies to maximize the global theater field’s opportunities and impact.  GTI also serves as the collaborative leadership of the U.S. Center of the International Theatre Institute (ITI/U.S.).

[In addition to TCG’s work with GTI, TCG’s Global Initiatives include: publishing extensive coverage of international work in American Theatre; issuing peer consultation letters for international visa petitions; and advocating for cultural exchange and artists’ rights worldwide.  For decades, TCG has also supported cultural exchange through grantmaking, and by leading delegations of U.S. theater practitioners to festivals worldwide.  

[The Dr. Kerry English Global Connectivity Manager and International Cultural Exchange Grants will help advance TCG’s global initiatives over the next ten years.  To further support this initiative and work of TCG, please contact LaTeshia Ellerson, director of institutional philanthropy, at lellerson@tcg.org.

[The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics harnesses the power of performance to humanize global politics.  Since 2012, we have created and presented innovative, high-quality work from around the world that is at the intersection of politics and performance.  The Lab’s signature approach raises voices rarely heard in Washington, D.C., through compelling, authentic narratives, and engages policymakers, artists, and wider audiences in forums that cast critical issues in a new light.  

[As a signature joint-initiative between the School of Foreign Service and the Georgetown College, The Lab is passionate about helping to train the next generation of innovators to use their artistry and voices to shape new understandings and to humanize others in pursuit of a better, more just world.  

[In Spring 2019, The Lab launched CrossCurrents, a D.C.-wide biennial festival, that will feature dynamic, socially-engaged performances from around the world and will catalyze conversations around critical topics like the global refugee crisis, climate change, and the rise of hate and polarization.  For more information, please visit: GlobalLab.Georgetown.edu or @TheLabGU.

[Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for theater, leads for a just and thriving theater ecology.  Since its founding in 1961, TCG’s constituency has grown from a handful of groundbreaking theaters to over 700 Member Theatres and affiliate organizations and over 7,000 Individual Members.  Through its programs and services, TCG reaches over one million students, audience members, and theater professionals each year.  

[TCG offers networking and knowledge-building opportunities through research, communications, and events, including the annual TCG National Conference, one of the largest nationwide gatherings of theater people; awards grants and scholarships to theater companies and individual artists; advocates on the federal level; and through the Global Theater Initiative, TCG’s partnership with the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, serves as the U.S. Center of the International Theater Institute.  

[TCG is North America’s largest independent trade publisher of dramatic literature, with 18 Pulitzer Prizes for Drama on the TCG booklist.  It also publishes the award-winning American Theater magazine and ARTSEARCH, the essential source for a career in the arts.  

[TCG believes its vision of “a better world for theater, and a better world because of theater” can be achieved through individual and collective action, adaptive and responsive leadership, and equitable representation in all areas of practice.  TCG is led by executive director and CEO Teresa Eyring and deputy director and COO Adrian Budhu.  www.tcg.org.]