Social Theater in Sudan

In November ensemble member Anna Zastrow spent two weeks working with American Voices on a social theater project. Here is her story.

I am back in New York after an amazing two weeks teaching theater in Sudan. It was an intense, beautiful and profound experience.  I worked with a group of young men and women burning to express themselves creatively within a challenging political and cultural environment.

Quick country background: Sudan is a country in north-east Africa that recently split into Sudan and South Sudan.  Sudan (the North) has been ruled by one regime since 1989, which instituted Sharia law, and has been branded by the U.S. as a sponsor of terrorist organizations.  The country has suffered financial sanctions for over 15 years.  This September the government cut subsidies, prices rose sharply, and the people took to the streets in protest, which regime forces quickly quelled, reportedly resulting in 200 deaths.  It is a somewhat precarious time for Sudan…

Enter our cultural diplomacy program.  For this project I joined American Voices and its YES Academy (Youth Excellence on Stage), a cultural exchange program focused on countries emerging from conflict and isolation.  (Bond Street Theatre and American Voices know each other well, and indeed BST has often referred artists to AV.)  The YES Academy Sudan program was sponsored by the US Embassy and the Sudanese Ministry of Culture.  The program offers training in American cultural forms such as jazz, rap, hip hop and musical theater.  This time they included a social theater component: I was brought on to teach physical theater to university students and children and create a performance piece on a social issue relevant to them.  We had 10 days to hone their skills and to create and publicly perform a theater piece.

This was the first high-profile artistic exchange between the U.S. and Sudan in many years, or perhaps ever – and we were watched closely by the Sudanese government.  They sent a government “minder” to keep an eye on us. His name was Obay. I am not kidding. And he was from the Office of Central Thought.  (You can’t make this stuff up.) In the end, Obay turned out to be an ally who greatly advocated for our program (not everyone in the government was keen on this project).

A representative from the Ministry of Culture also came by to see how things were going.  He seemed genuinely concerned about how the rest of the world views Sudan, and committed that this artistic exchange will have a real influence on improving Sudan’s image and relationship with the U.S.  I’m glad that he values the arts and its potential power! He asked me to tell everyone that everything you heard about Sudan isn’t true.  (They are not terrorists.)   So if you see Obama, be sure to let him know.

For myself, what I value is not the political impact, but the human connection.

I worked with a group of wonderful people and we had a truly beautiful exchange.  Indeed, everyone I met in Khartoum was friendly, hospitable and good-humored. One of the things that touched me about Sudan was how keen the people are to connect with Americans and for us to have a positive view of their country.  I was met with a huge smile and the immediate question: “How do you like Sudan?” and “Why don’t you stay longer?”

The students in my theater group were primarily drama students from the University of Sudan. I was really impressed with them – so talented, expressive and 100% gung-ho. It is so satisfying to teach students who are hungry to learn and who appreciate everything you give them – and who give you all the more in return. Over the course of 10 intensive days, we created a really strong bond.  All the more so because of the sensitive subject matter of our work and the controversy this created.  

We were faced with a challenge:  how create a show in which they can speak out on what matters most to them – social justice, economic opportunity, spiritual fulfillment, freedom to express – without criticizing the government?  I was tasked with doing social theater but under no circumstances to criticize the regime!  But bringing up any social issue can be viewed as criticism.  We cloaked our message in comedy and mime.  But it was still obvious and possibly too obvious.  Concerns were raised by some of our producers about what was safe to say. Despite warnings, the students were adamant to proceed with what they had created.

This was challenging to navigate. I was not sure how serious the situation was going to get. For them or for me. I half-expected an Argo-like escape to the airport at the last minute. On dress rehearsal night rumors floated of possible protests and government-placed fire trucks at the ready to hose us down at any moment. Would we even be able to do the show?

Then, on the day of our actual performance, the whole event was shut down. The imam of the main mosque denounced the event and that’s no small matter in Sudan. After much negotiation between our producers and government representatives, the show was back on again. But all the hold-ups delayed everything and we started late. Our students waited and waited for their turn to present.  Finally they got to go on -- everything was going great -- the audience loved it, they whistled, clapped and laughed in recognition of what was presented -- and then we had to cut their performance short! The authorities mandated the show end at a certain time. I had to physically get up there on stage and stop them. 

The students were devastated. After working so hard for 10 days, after all the build-up and anticipation, they were finally getting to perform and have their say – and then to have the rug pulled from under them!  They were so upset they at first refused to leave the stage and were near ready to riot.  And I was immediately whisked away to the airport for my flight.  I had no chance to talk about what happened or say good bye.  The whole thing was heart-wrenching. I took solace in the few shared hugs that spontaneously erupted as I left – intense and heartfelt -- which affirmed for me that even in the face of this terrible breakdown our bond was not broken. It is hard to explain the mix of emotions of the deeply meaningful exchange that had taken place between us, now cut short.

I have since been in communication with them. They are in good spirits and ready to perform the piece again elsewhere.  They sent me the following message: “We are artists and we are strong; we have a message to tell the world and you have shown us how to give it out. . . We will never be able to thank you for the knowledge and time you gave us.” 

This was truly one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had teaching and traveling abroad, and trying to make a difference in the world.  It’s been a privilege to experience Sudan and its people, and to get to work with these beautiful and talented individuals.  I hope to be able to come back soon again.  And next time I will stay longer.

To see photos, click here:  YES Sudan - Highlights

Intern Spotlight: Ruby Hankey

Development Associate Ruby Hankey is a recent graduate from Drew University and proud to be a BST intern!

I am a tap dancer hailing from…well, here!  My first bed was a small dresser drawer on 2^nd Avenue not too far from Bond Street Theatre’s office.  While continuing to enjoy a humble lifestyle, I dream of bigger and better things than my quaint drawer.  Specifically, I have been drawn to international travel working with Sudanese refugees in Egypt, studying French in Paris and teaching English in Greece. 

Growing up, my passions clashed between wanting to be a theatre professional and a diplomat.  A wise man said to me, “Well, Ruby…you’ll do both!” -- a pipe dream to me at the time.  However, after this summer working with Bond Street Theatre, I see that theatre and humanitarian international relations really can work in tandem.  After receiving my BA in Theatre Arts from Drew University and concluding an internship with St. Ann’s Warehouse in May, I wanted to expand my knowledge of how theatre organizations operate in today’s economy and political state.  At St. Ann’s, I had an immensely valuable experience participating in a theater which brings in performers from all over the world.  However, I still had a hunger to observe a company that creates its own theater to take around the world, themselves!

Bond Street Theatre has been on my radar for years.  As many other interns have said, within five minutes of scouring BST’s website, it becomes difficult to turn away from such an admirable mission. Joanna and Michael have toured all over the world, bringing lessons, trinkets, languages, culture, art, stories, hopes and dreams from nooks and crannies of the globe: dusting off news which can often be forgotten in the western world.  They represent the melting pot this city has become: connecting a conversation of the heart and mind across continents.  I knew this was the place for me.  I feel honored to be learning from such a diverse, brave and innovative organization.

Over my three months here, Bond Street Theatre’s staff has trusted me to spearhead the research, organization and preliminary planning of a photography gallery showing for the coming year.  I have experience in event planning and individual giving, so I was willing to take on an adventure to develop a new way to showcase BST’s work domestically.  Quite an adventure it has been!  Diving in to the deep end, I have learned an entirely new program called Adobe Lightroom, looked into nearly every photo gallery in New York City and beyond, researched grants for documentary photography (and identified for myself what documentary photography actually means!), gone to free seminars and gallery opening events, sifted through 30,000 + photos from our collections, schmoozed with gallery administrators and owners, went out to tea with photography artists, learned the etiquette differences between the theatre and photography worlds, and written a how-to document outlining the process of my discoveries, developments and procedures.

Although coming in to this internship I had no knowledge of or experience with photography, focusing on this project has given me an invaluable source of knowledge and perspective for a line of humanitarian theatre work which I only knew at surface value.  This internship has opened my eyes to the possibilities of international communication, community development, and my own inventive, ‘go-get-em’ attitude.  I often get a thrill to know that I have the pleasure of working for a company that is paving the way for the future of theatre for social development.  There is not much widespread support or knowledge, overall, for the type of work Bond Street Theatre does, but it warms my heart to see and hear how many people are growing to support it fervently.   I plan to continue to be involved in this type of theatre as an individual, artist, administrator and leader.

Intern Spotlight: Katherine Connolly

Back by popular demand! The 2013 Summer Intern Spotlight highlights the experiences of our three incredible summer interns. This week, recent graduate Katherine Connolly discusses her many passions and the value of being label-less.

I’m from Maryland, “The Old Line State.”  The Line is the one drawn in 1763 by Mr. Mason and Mr. Dixon,  which eventually became the division between free and slave states east of the Ohio River. And yet by the time the Civil War rolled around, Maryland was part of the Union (with some help from President Lincoln and Union forces). So much for drawing clear lines.

Over a century later,  the ambiguity remains. Maryland is too southern for the North and to northern for the South. The Tourism Bureau will tell you we’re “America in miniature,” with almost every kind of environment except a desert. Maryland is a blurred area, a melting pot of the melting pot.  The No Line State.

Why a Maryland history lesson in a post about the great work of Bond Street Theatre? Well, for those of you who know and love BST the connection shouldn’t be that hard to make. It made perfect sense to me the minute I stumbled across the BST website. Here is an organization that encompasses everything I am passionate about; a theatre that blurs lines and defies categorization. A perfect and exciting mix of traditional theatre, clowning, education, development, empowerment, healing, international collaboration, acrobatics etc. etc.

As a Maryland girl, I am comfortable with blurred lines. In June I graduated from the University of Virginia with a double major in global development studies and drama. To the theatre community I was a development person and to the GDS world I was a theatre person. Even my majors were a mix of disciplines; The drama major included technique and theory in all aspects of theatre, and GDS, an interdisciplinary program, included any class that could justifiably relate to the study of development. The highlight of my education was attempting to draw the lines between the two fields and finding ways to make those connections that BST has understood for decades.

Throughout my internship here at BST I’ve loved discovering all of the hats BST wears. My tasks as a summer intern have mirrored the diversity of BST’s work.  I’ve had the opportunity to build upon my background in political engagement in Afghanistan by providing research and programmatic support for the recent Educating the Electorate Project. I’ve contributed to the domestic focus by working with Heddy, Ilana, and Gretchen to develop marketing materials for the new YAP show, Amelia and Her Paper Tigers. Michael, Joanna, and Olivia have allowed and encouraged me to explore my interests in varied projects from assisting with grant-writing and editing, to researching potential projects in South Sudan and Arab Spring nations, to mapping out the structure of the UN. The more I work in different areas, the more I come to understand the importance of BST’s work.

So if you can’t quite figure out what category to put BST in, I would say you’ve discovered the true gem of BST’s work. This is a group of artists that redefines, bends, blurs, ignores, challenges, engages and defies lines. A no line state of cross-cultural artistic organization. BST thrives on collaboration and imagination. In a world of separation, of borders between us and them, what better approach than artistic collaboration? BST sees a future lying  in the grey areas, and this Maryland girl is honored to be a part of that work.

Katherine taught some of BST's acrobatics to her cousins during their beach vacation.

Intern Spotlight: Charlotte Drover

This week, BST spotlights our Production Intern Charlotte Drover!  Charlotte is a senior at Drew University with a focus in Theatre and Middle Eastern Studies.

In my overactive imagination, I've always fancied myself a xenophile wanderlust Queen: I conquered the world's most temperamental volcano in Sicily, dabbled in Arabic in high school, harboured a rather conspicuous obsession with India, and left my heart and soul in Londontown. I first learned of Bond Street Theatre's fascinating method through my mentor and friend Olivia Harris and readied myself to join with this creative force. My first toe-dip into the vast ocean of applied theatre began my sophomore year with the Drew University -- Marion Bolden Center Collaboration with Newark high school students. I concluded the semester and second Collaboration year with a growing storm of questions to bring to BST: 

What are their international collaborations like? What challenges do they face? How do they overcome those? How can I absorb this as an applied theatre facilitator-to-be? 

Learning the ropes her first time up.

When I began my first day at BST, Joanna and Michael bounced to greet me with spritely enthusiasm, an eagerness to teach, and Afghan pistachios. They nourished my curiosity of stilt walking, flag twirling, acrobatics, and the dynamics of a physical theatre stage picture. My dance and theatre background enriched, I have learned so much in this whirligig of a dramaturgical and production internship and specified my preference of production execution. 

From Day 1, I was enamoured by the work I was fortunate to do, obnoxiously gushing to my NYC friends and NH family about my assignments. I devour my work: researching the reality of the Afghan woman and her nation's progress towards equality, investigating the horrid detriments of the 1984 Bhopal gas explosion and cataloging the images, video and data which illuminate the disaster's chronic presence for Indian citizens, and distilling the most effective means to measure the impact of theatre within a community. Delicious.

Charlotte shows off her moves!

Yet what I am really savoring is how I'm maturing into a more effective theatre practitioner. On only my second stilt lesson I decided, with a Gemini's reckless nature, to start turning, balancing on one leg, and skipping all on stilts. Two young ladies, neighbors of BST, shyly crept by Shinbone Alley and peeped out a desire to learn to do what I garishly did. Verbose reflection aside, I am really proud of the fact that I was able teach them this skill that I just acquired, and kindling their confidence and passing on the BST good mojo.

Through acrobatics workshops lead by Joanna I am more confident in my ability to articulate why I love physical theatre: its ability to use the body's specificity and eloquence to transcend the barriers of language. I direct a play by Harold Pinter, a playwright who hates language, in Spring 2013, and I will naturally adapt my learning to the production and my final year as Bolden Collaboration mentor.

The other night I cruelly tortured myself by researching what real-world, post-graduate programs in London offered degrees in applied theatre and its cost (adding a few more links to the chain of my school debt and misery). Yet I realized that it wasn't self-torment, but me solidifying my faith in the power of Applied Theatre and what I can offer that field from my BST internship. I've grown into the big girl pants of my ambition by contributing real work for my dream company.

 Although I'm no clairvoyant, I can predict this with certainty: it will be nothing short of an adventure.

The 2012 summer interns!

Foreign Policy: Myanmar Update 3

Another update from Michael in Yangon, where all is still well.  

IT IS BETTER TO BE INVITED THAN TO OCCUPY

We had an interesting chat with one of the young (21) receptionists at our hotel, a very nice, friendly, good English speaker.  On the subject of food I mentioned that Joanna and I were both fond of Japanese food, and she kind of frowned and said that, well, they had a lot of trouble with Japanese people.  I asked, "you mean Japanese tourists who stay at the hotel".  "No," she said, "the Japanese people who invaded my country and did very bad things!"   She then went on to list a variety of hideous tortures, hardly exclusive to the Japanese but certainly used by their thugs when they ran amok in China and SouthEast Asia in the 1940's.  I did let her know that we've had some wonderful experiences touring in Japan and have some very lovely friends who are Japanese, and, well, after all that was several generations ago.  She was not swayed in her opinion. Just one of those reality checks concerning foreign policy: some people just don't forgive and forget.   BUT... we did a check with a number of other locals, and it seems that this kind of thinking not so prevalent. Most everybody else either likes the Japanese or is indifferent.

MAYBE IT’S BETTER TO WALK

Actually, most of the public buses here are Japanese made, with the steering wheel on the right side, like in England/Japan, but they drive on the right side, like in the US.  Which means they have to modify the doors, sealing the ones on the left and cutting new ones in on the right (the sidewalk side).  The buses look like hell, not just from that but being driven hard and fast.  Why? Because the buses are rented by the driver and the ticket taker, much like a taxi is rented from a cab company.  The passengers they pick up that day is their take (after the rental fee) which means the buses race each other to get to bus stops first.  It's pretty crazy.  It's not the kind of free market economy conducive to safety, but it's what they have at the moment.

Follow up Tid-Bit:

I mentioned in a previous email that the locals are happy that internet restrictions have lifted somewhat and they can now get You Tube.  I should add, however, that mostly all they can get is the opening page, not the actual videos which take far to long to download due to the slow connections.  But still, it's a start.