Event Description:
ART & SOCIAL CHANGE: EXPERIMENTS IN COMMUNITY
featuring Theatre of the Oppressed NYC, Shanta Thake, Taylor Mac, Heidi Latsky, and Urban Bush Women
Performing art has long been a platform for expressing outrage at injustice. Experience some of NYC’s most exciting artist/activists at BPAC in honor of Arts Advocacy Day and the Weissman College of Arts and Sciences Art-A-Thon.
11 – 12:30 - Theatre of the Oppressed NYC Popular Theatre Troupe
TONYC engages the audience in a Forum Play, using theatre as a medium for communal problem-solving around injustices experienced by homeless and jobless New Yorkers.
12:30 – 2 – Activist Artists Share Their Work
Playwright, actor, singer-songwriter, performance artist, and social critic Taylor Mac, choreographer and disability rights advocate Heidi Latsky, Joe's Pub Director Shanta Thake and Urban Bush Women, who are developing a work about race, gender, and economic inequality in the lives of African-American women at BPAC, offer examples of their activist work.
About Shanta Thake:
Shanta Thake is the Director of Joe’s Pub at The Public, the intimate, genre-blind cabaret venue which currently hosts over 800 shows and welcomes more than 100,000 unique patrons annually and is consistently hailed as one of New York City’s most prestigious showcase venues for both emerging and established artists. In addition, Ms. Thake is the co-producer of GlobalFEST, North America’s most important world music festival and non-profit organization whose mission is to foster cultural exchange and to increase the presence of world music in diverse communities worldwide. She is a co-creator of Weimar New York, and is a member of the Middle Church Jerriese Johnson Gospel Choir. She has been the recipient of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Emerging Leader award as well as Theater Communications Group’s Leaders of Color grant. Ms. Thake received a BA in Theater as well as a degree in Management from Indiana University and currently lives in Brooklyn.
About Taylor Mac:
Taylor Mac ("judy") is a playwright, actor, singer-songwriter and performance artist. Mac is the author of seventeen full-length plays and performance pieces, which have been performed at Lincoln Center, Celebrate Brooklyn, Curran Theater, MOMA, the Sydney Opera House, and more. judy is currently the resident playwright at the Here Arts Center and is
a New Dramatists alum.
About Heidi Latsky:
Heidi Latsky is an artistic director, choreographer, performer and founder of Heidi Latsky Dance (HLD). HLD is committed to reflecting the diversity that it serves and actively follows the disability rights movement by embracing ‘nothing without us'—that is, its practice in choreography and performance and its composition of board leadership and staff has the representation and full, direct involvement of disabled people.
About Urban Bush Women:
Founded in 1984 by choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Urban Bush Women (UBW) seeks to bring the untold and under-told histories and stories of disenfranchised people to light through dance. We do this from a woman-centered perspective and as members of the African Diaspora community in order to create a more equitable balance of power in the dance world and beyond. UBW galvanizes artists, activists, audiences and communities through performances, artist development, education and community engagement.
General Admission: $15
All Students: Free (IDs must be shown at box office)
March 7th, 2017, at 11am
Rose Nagelberg Theatre
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