Courageous artists working in conflict regions describe exemplary
peacebuilding performances and groundbreaking theory on performance for
transformation of violence.
Acting Together: Performance and the Creative Transformation of
Conflict is a two-volume work describing peacebuilding performances in
regions beset by violence and internal conflicts. Volume I: Resistance
and Reconciliation in Regions of Violence, emphasizes the role theatre
and ritual play both in the midst and in the aftermath of direct
violence, while Volume II: Building Just and Inclusive Communities,
focuses on the transformative power of performance in regions fractured
by "subtler" forms of structural violence and social exclusion.
Volume I: Resistance and Reconciliation in Regions of Violence focuses
on the role theatre and ritual play both in the midst and in the
aftermath of violence. The performances highlighted in this volume
nourish and restore capacities for expression, communication, and
transformative action, and creatively support communities in grappling
with conflicting moral imperatives surrounding questions of justice,
memory, resistance, and identity. The individual chapters, written by
scholars, conflict resolution practitioners, and artists who work
directly with the communities involved, offer vivid firsthand accounts
and analyses of traditional and nontraditional performances in Serbia,
Uganda, Sri Lanka, Palestine, Israel, Argentina, Peru, India, Cambodia,
Australia, and the United States.
Complemented by a website of related materials, a documentary film,
Acting Together on the World Stage, that features clips and interviews
with the curators and artists, and a toolkit, or "Tools for Continuing
the Conversation," that is included with the documentary as a second
disc, this book will inform and inspire socially engaged artists,
cultural workers, peacebuilding scholars and practitioners, human rights
activists, students of peace and justice studies, and whoever wishes to
better understand conflict and the power of art to bring about social
change.
The Acting Together project is born of a collaboration between Theatre
Without Borders and the Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts at the
International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life at Brandeis
University. The two volumes are edited by Cynthia E. Cohen, director of
the aforementioned program and a leading figure in creative approaches
to coexistence and reconciliation; Roberto Gutierrez Varea, an
award-winning director and associate professor at the University of San
Francisco; and Polly O. Walker, director of Partners in Peace, an NGO
based in Brisbane, Australia..
