“Artists can bring to light in a gripping, dramatic way some of the challenges we face…. I think that artists both individually and through their works can illustrate better than any speech I can give or any government policy we can promulgate that the spirit that lives within each of us, the right to think and dream and expand our boundaries, is not confined, no matter how hard they try, by anyregime anywhere in the world. There is no way that you can deprive people from feeling those stirrings inside their soul. And artists can give voice to that. They can give shape and movement to it. And it is so important in places where people feel forgotten and marginalized and depressed and hopeless to have that glimmer that there is a better future…So I’m going to do what I can to continue to increase and enhance our artistic outreach, but this is also a great area for private foundations, for NGOs, for artists themselves, for universities like Georgetown to be engaged in….And I think that the power of the arts … is so enormous, and we can’t ever forget about the role that it must play in giving life to the aspirations of people around the world.”
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Georgetown University, December 14, 2009
The Georgetown University Theater and Performance Studies Program will host an invited convening on Global Performance, Civic Imagination, and Cultural Diplomacy June 14-16, 2012. This dynamic gathering, supported by the Georgetown University Reflective Engagement in the Public Interest Grant, will feature more than 75 theater artists, policymakers, government officials, activists, cultural leaders, educators, and scholars from across the country and around the world, as well as Georgetown University faculty, students, and alums.
A majority of the convening will be livestreamed via #NEWPLAY TV, a knowledge commons stewarded by HowlRound.com / Center for the Theater Commons. The channel is at newplaytv.info and is an international, shared-resource for live events and performances. Its mode of production is open-access and open source and its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and to develop of knowledge commons collectively.
Follow and post about the convening using #globalperformance