NAIROBI, KE — ForumCiv brought together 20 artists from Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania for its first joint East African Artivism Fellowship. Participants worked on civic storytelling, systems thinking, legal awareness, digital activism and safety, then created projects addressing police brutality, disability inclusion, gender violence, food sovereignty, land rights and statelessness. More than 600 people applied.…
Through press conferences, conventions, rallies, and speeches, political leaders use narrative, character, emotion, music, visual design, and symbolism to shape public feelings. So does theatre. Political performances and theatrical plays can also share examinations of justice, power, war, identity, responsibility, and communal life. Both can be entertaining. Both can be unnerving. Only one type of…
VOLTERRA, IT — Inmates at Italy’s oldest prison share why theatre performances have become essential to their rehabilitation For nearly 40 years, inmates have worked with theatre-makers as part of the Compagnia della Fortezza project. When theatre director and playwright Armando Punzo stepped inside the Volterra prison, one of Italy’s oldest jails, in 1988, he had…
WELLINGTON, NZ — “The artistic brain is critically aware and innovative and amazing and represents a kind of smartness that’s regime changing,” says Kerryn Palmer of Victoria University’s theatre department. “Theatre is the one industry that’s been dying for 4000 years, but is yet to succumb because we’re the passionate people who see the value in…