World Performance at the Whitney will conceptually link the events in the 2007-2008 WPP/YRT International Series by offering three symposia, each delving into pertinent and pressing issues relating to the performances. Using performance studies as a guide, three central questions frame the discussions:
How do these performances negotiate the conflicts, so widely evident in
the world today, between geographical mobility and cultural belonging?
What does "Intangible Cultural Heritage" mean and who is now in
charge of defining it for everyone on the planet?
Why is live performance apparently still the hottest medium for the presentation
of these urgent questions?
Symposium on Cultural Dislocation, Universal Human Rights, and Theater
October 25, 2007 4:30-6 pm
WHC Auditorium
Presented in conjunction with the production The Veiled Monologues, written and directed by Adelheid Roosen, this symposium examines the ethical, political, and artistic issues raised in the play. The production relies on testimonies of women living in The Netherlands who were born in Muslim-majority countries, including Pakistan, Iran, Somalia, and Turkey. The symposium will encompass such questions as: given this diversity of nationalities, what relevance does the category “Muslim women” have? How does an American cultural context, in which the experience of immigrant women differs from the European one they have known, affect the work’s reception? What legal responsibility does a government have to its immigrant citizens? Are there such things as universal human rights?
Moderated by Thomas Sellar, Editor, Theater Magazine, Yale School of Drama
Symposium on Intangible Cultural Heritage and the Global Performance Industry
January 30, 2008, 4:30 – 6 pm
220 York St., Ballroom
In 2003, UNESCO launched an initiative to safeguard intangible cultural heritage (ICH), those performing arts, oral expressions, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and skills that communities recognize as part of their cultural heritage.
With representatives from Peru Negro, the UNESCO convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage, New Haven’s International Festival of Arts and Ideas, and arts management firms, this symposium will trace intangible heritage as these practices develop and interact with the global performance touring industry. The symposium will focus on the definition of the term intangible heritage by UNESCO, and the complex strategies for self-selection and preservation employed by groups designated as ICH.
Moderated by Joseph Roach, Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Theater at Yale University
Symposium on Interdisciplinary Performance and Criticism
April 4, 2008, 4:30 – 6 pm
WHC Room 208
In the twenty-first century world of globalization, an artist intertwining India’s Kathakali tradition with modern dance may be programmed alongside an artist performing Brazilian hip hop, and another working with Slovakian folk songs and Grotowski methods. How do critics and audiences approach the increasing diversity, and intermingling, of performance practices? This symposium explores the new methods that critics and critically aware audiences must call upon to assess multi-lingual, multi-cultural, and multi-styled performances.
Moderated by Emily Coates, Artistic Director, World Performance Project at Yale