conference announcement

Please post and forward

PERFORMING THE WORLD 4
The East Side Institute Presents "Performing the World 4," Oct. 12-14, 2007
Tarrytown, New York

"Performing the World 4" Attracts Grassroots Innovators, Researchers, Scholars & Activists from Dozens of Countries Working to Beat Poverty through Peaceful Cultural Change

Register Today!


The East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy invites you to attend its fourth biennial conference, Performing the World 4: The Performance of Community and the Community of Performance (PTW4). The conference, to be
held from October 12-14 in Tarrytown, New York, is expected to draw hundreds of presenters and attendees from dozens of countries who will showcase out-of-box, performance-based projects and research they have created to address issues of intractable poverty, disease, illiteracy and ethnic violence.

A SAMPLING OF PTW4 PROGRAM OFFERINGS

Confirmation pending

1. Youth Development

"Youths and HIV/AIDS message: The impact that the lack of dialogue around sex, negotiating healthy relationship and inappropriate boundaries has on the work of HIV/AIDS service providers"
Keith Cunningham / Canada

"Soweto Children's Musical Games as Play and Performance"
Susan Harrop-Allin / South Africa

2. Community and Youth Theatre

"Making Plays through Performatory Play"
Dan Friedman, Brian Mullin / New York

"Different is Beautiful: Building tolerance among youth in multiethnic regions in Serbia"
Svetlana Kijevcanin / Serbia

"Afro-Brazilian Dance and the instrument of capoeira" Edmilton Reis, Vania Silva Oliveira and troupe / Brazil

"MYethiOPIA - Stories from the AIDS Education Circus in Ethiopia"
David Schein

"Story telling: Meeting our sacred clown"
Julie Vaudrin-Charette / Canada

"Love Drunk"
Gerard Veltre, Gemma Bishop / Australia

"Theatre of Liberation Community Project"
Simon Christopher De Abreu / Canada

3. Community Development

"Transformance: Learning to perform personal and collective self-determination"
Dan Baron-Cohen, International Drama Education
Association / Brazil

"Communities of Practice and Performance: Improvising and creating community in the public space"
James Oliver, Jackie Sands, Julie De Simone / UK

"Performing Citizenship: Constitutional education and youth development in South Africa"
Betsi Pendry, Stompie Selibe, Fanito Masike, Ice Ngubane, Chiliza Nkabinde

"Exploring Music as a Catalyst for Social Change Through the Lens of the Marginalized Merasi (musician) Caste of Rajasthan, India" Caitie Whelan / Rhode Island

"How Performance Art Interventions Contribute to the Field of Conflict Resolution"
Dena Hawes / Virginia

4. Education

"Improvisational Teaching: Pre-service elementary teachers in the pedagogical dance"
Kristin Bratt / Pennsylvania

"Changing the 'Language Games' of Schools, Organizations and Institutions"
Volker Bunzendahl / Denmark

"'Hey, I have an idea for a game!' Creating improv activities that support learning and development"
Carrie Lobman, Matt Lundquist / New York

"Using Story Acting and Play to Create Community in Classrooms: An interactive workshop for teachers"
Debora Wisneski / Wisconsin

5. Social Work

"Improvisation in Psychology and Social Work Education (What is there to Teach?)"
Nancy Feldman, Rafael Mendez, Murray Dabby / New York

6. Therapy

"Traumatic Performances: The Art of Silence; The Sin Eater; The Bystanders"
Jennifer Hartley / UK

"Support Groups for the Humdrum"
Linda Duvall / Canada

"Performing Recovery"
Margo Edwards / Canada

"What We've Learned About Social Therapy Group Over the Last 35 Years"
Christine La Cerva, Joyce Dattner / New York, San Francisco

7. Health care

"Culture and Health: Ethnic differences in health"
Prem B. Kuwar / Nepal

"Tricksters in White Coats: Hospital clowning in the international play zone"
Nancy Smithner / New York

"Safe Sex, No Wahala!"
Gbenga Windapo / Nigeria

"Drama in the Hospital"
Karelisa Hartigan / Florida

A SAMPLING OF PTW4 PRESENTERS

Reflecting the focus on community building, 35 presenters work in the area of community development. Another 41 are educators, youth workers, and therapists working with refugee children. Others include artists, social scientists, researchers, health and helping professionals, social workers, psychologists, social entrepreneurs, business professionals, and activists. A sampling of presenters (confirmation pending) include:

Youth Development

Pamela Ateka (Kenya), founder of the Community Focus Group working with children orphaned by AIDS.
Jeff Smithson (NY), a professional clown, improviser and Hospital Outreach Specialist for Paul Newman's Hole in the Wall Gang Camp.

Elise Griede (Netherlands), a drama trainer with War Child Holland, who has helped develop participatory theatre projects for children in Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Afghanistan.

Education

Volker Bunzendahl (Denmark), a psychologist and educator who brings carnival, dancing, and play to "subvert" the everyday school routine in public schools throughout Denmark.

Laurent Ditmann (Georgia), a vice principal at Decatur Georgia's International Community School, a haven for refugee children from 45 war-torn countries.

Community Development

Edmilton Reis (Brazil), a police captain, who participates with 29 fellow officers in a dance troupe that performs in neighborhoods across the state of Bahia to help allay citizens' fears and suspicions of police brutality and corruption.

Betsi Pendry (South Africa), a therapist, public health worker, and founder and director of The Living Together Project, an organization dedicated to helping communities in Johannesburg cope with HIV/AIDS.

Vera Erac and Aleksandra Jelic (Serbia), psychologists and activists working with the Roma (Gypsy) community in Belgrade.

Community Theatre

Andrew Burton, a community theatre director from British Columbia, who uses interactive theatre to explore issues of drug addiction, racism, sexual exploitation, and family violence.

Kennedy Chinyowa, a post-doctoral research fellow in Theatre for Development, who creates community theatre with disadvantaged youths.

Organizational and Business Development

John Findlay (Australia), an educator and founder of Zing, a consulting company that helps corporate and organizational clients use wireless keyboard technology to facilitate group collaboration and creativity.

Kat Koppett (New York), an improv performer and training director with the Mop and Bucket Improvisational Theatre Company, which helps create customized performances for businesses looking to enhance workplace creativity.


CONVENING COMMITTEE

Dan Friedman, The Castillo Theatre and Youth OnStage!

Lois Holzman, East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy

Sheila McNamee, University of New Hampshire, Durham

Fred Newman, East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy

"Since its genesis in 2001, Performing the World has grown to have real significance for our participants and, more importantly, for the tens of thousands of people they work with every day in obscure villages and urban neighborhoods across the globe," said East Side Institute director Dr. Lois Holzman. "We are bringing together people who are using performance, both on and off the stage, to profoundly and peacefully change our world. They seek to transform themselves and their communities to creatively address the economic, social, and cultural problems they face. Most believe that mainstream models of community development are not working and that traditional funding streams are too restrictive."

Registration is open.

Performing the World (www.performingtheworld.org) is a biennial, three-day international gathering. Begun in 2001, PTW is dedicated to advancing the global performance movement for human development and social change. The first three conferences (2001 and 2003 in Montauk, NY, 2005 in Tarrytown, NY) attracted a total of 1,000 participants from 35 US states and 27 countries in North and South America, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Indian subcontinent. Each participant brings what they have learned back to an average of 1,000 adults, children and families in their communities and countries, totaling more than one million people who reap the benefit of this global performance community. From their many professional locations, they engage the tough social problems of our day - poverty, violence, AIDS, illiteracy, mental illness, intolerance, and social injustice.

The East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy is an international training and research center recognized for its cutting edge approach to human development. The Institute was founded in 1985 in New York City by a small group of professionals and academics who believed that new methods for human development required an independent location from which to build community. The Institute and the network of organizations, institutions and individuals it works with in the US and abroad serve over 500,000 people annually and reaches thousands more through its professional workshops, seminars, conferences and training.

# # #


East Side Institute
email: mmeyer@eastsideinstitute.org (mmeyer@eastsideinstitute.org)
web: http://www.eastsideinstitute.org


This post transferred from the cdb-l mailing list