FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
CONTACT: Elizabeth Fischtziur - (425) 352-3636 - efischtziur@uwb.edu
BOTHELL, Wash. - The University of Washington Bothell's Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Program presents "Theatrical Facilitation in the Balkans and Middle East" with Sonja Kuftinec on Thursday, April 24, 6:30-8:30 p.m. on the UW Bothell campus in the North Creek Events Center.
Kuftinec has been creating theater with youth in the Balkans and Middle East for over ten years. In this talk, she addresses what theater might offer in spaces of violent conflict and territorial dispossession, focusing on the ethics of facilitation.
Through particular case studies of youth in performance, Kuftinec will explore the following questions: How does theater allow participants to encounter each other through ethical relations rather than ethnic oppositions? How can this encounter go beyond recognizing particular identities to address conflicts rooted in the control and distribution of resources? How can theater avoid creating an "aesthetics of suffering" that figures participants as victim-subjects? How can documentation of the theatrical process resist a "narrative of hope" that elides dissent and difference? And how might scholarship about a dialogical performance process engage a collaborative ethic?
This event is free and open to the public.
Kuftinec is Associate Professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Minnesota as well as a director and a dramaturg. She has published widely on community-based theater. Her book Staging America: Cornerstone and Community-Based Theater (2003) received honorable mention for ASTR's Barnard Hewitt Award in theater history. She is currently completing a book entitled Theatre, Facilitation and Nation Formation in the Balkans and Middle East.
Since 1995 she has developed collaborative theater projects with youth in the Balkans and Middle East. Her co-production of Where Does the Postman Go When all the Street Names Change? won an ensemble prize at the 1997 International Youth Theater Festival in Mostar. Kuftinec also works as a conflict resolution facilitator with Seeds of Peace, an organization that brings together youth from the Middle East, South Asia, and Balkan regions.
Her scholarship on community-based performance and "theater of reconciliation" contributes to the literature and practices of critical pedagogy, ethnic/religious identity, intergroup dialogue, peace activism, youth agency, community arts, development and social change.
This event, co-sponsored by the UW's Simpson Center for the Humanities, is part of the 2007-2008 New Formations of Cultural Studies series, a project related to the ongoing work of the Cultural Studies Praxis Collective (CSPC). For more information on the CSPC, see www.simpsoncenter.org/cspc.
The series focuses on cross-methodological and translocal research projects designed to generate new scholarship on the multiple locations of cultural studies. New Formations of Cultural Studies marks the launch of a community-based Master of Arts in Cultural Studies (MACS) at the University of Washington Bothell in Autumn 2008. For more information about MACS, visit http://www.uwb.edu/IAS/macs.
About UW Bothell: The University of Washington Bothell was founded in 1990 to serve King and Snohomish counties and north Puget Sound area students seeking bachelor's and master's degrees. UW Bothell offers degree programs in applied computing, business, nursing, education, computing and software systems, interdisciplinary arts and sciences, cultural studies, and policy studies.
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