DAH Teatar Residency at Georgetown Culminates in Oct. 1 and 2 Shows
Renowned Serb theater company known for political, yet personal work gives workshops, performances at Georgetown’s Davis Performing Arts Center
September 7, 2010 — Washington, D.C. — Reflecting its commitment to theatrical performance from around the world, as well as substantive work that engages community, politics, and social justice, the Georgetown University Theater and Performance Studies Program presents DAH Teatar, a collective of Serb theater artists praised by the New York Times for the “poignant intensity” of its work. The Belgrade-based experimental theater company (dah means“breath”), creates work that is at once acutely personal and profoundly political.
DAH Teatar will participate in a residency including open workshops with students and performances of two of their most acclaimed and groundbreaking productions:
- The Story of Tea, a variation on a theme of Chekhov’s Three Sisters that explores the meaning of memory in relation to harsh truth will be performed on Friday, October 1, 2010 at 8 p.m. in the Davis Performing Arts Center’s Devine Studio Theatre. The piece examines questions such as: What happens when the truth about wartime abductions is known and recognized, even on the level of the state, but victims have never been officially mourned and their families receive no condolence? What are the implications of the mass of information provided through the media? What is the role of memory? What are the forms of amnesia in our time?
- Crossing the Line, based on women’s authentic, first-person testimonies about wars that took place on the former republic of Yugoslavia’s soil from 1991–1999, will be performed on Saturday, Oct. 2, 2010 at 8 p.m. in the Davis Center’s Gonda Theatre. The work is drawn from the book Women’s Side of War, edited by the Women in Black organization and created in cooperation with other nongovernmental human rights organizations in the region.
Founded in 1991 during great political turmoil, DAH Teatar first performed outdoors in the center of the Belgrade to protest policies of Slobodan Milosevic at a time when it was forbidden to even mention the war. In 2007, they received the Otto Award for Political Theatre.
Tickets to the Oct. 1 and 2 performances are $20 general; $15 faculty, staff, senior (65 and older); and $5 student. To order, visit http://performingarts.georgetown.edu or call (202) 687-ARTS (2787).
The DAH Teatar residency builds on the Theater and Performance Studies Program’s ongoing relationships with vital, cutting-edge artists from around the world. In Sept. 2009, the Program hosted Belarus Free Theatre, an underground troupe from Minsk, Belarus that performs urgent, political work and is effectively banned in its home country. In August 2010, Georgetown students and young alumni served as the lone delegates to represent the US among dozens of countries and theatrical academies from around the world at the UNESCO World Festival of Theater Schools. “We pride ourselves on developing artist/scholar/citizens here at Georgetown. Our recent experience in Peru has further deepened the Theater and Performance Studies Program’s distinctive commitment to building substantive relationships in the international community, and we continue to look for ways to bring the rewards of those encounters back to our work on campus and in the DC community.”
About Georgetown University’s Theater and Performance Studies Program
Part of Georgetown University’s Department of Performing Arts, the Theater & Performance Studies Program integrates creative and critical inquiry, emphasizing artistic excellence, interdisciplinary learning, socially engaged performance, and the spirit of collaboration. With a dynamic major in Theater & Performance Studies, the Program features a nationally recognized faculty, including leading scholar/artists, and many of the region’s leading professional theater practitioners. One of the country’s only undergraduate programs in Theater & Performance Studies, this fast-growing program has rapidly attracted significant national attention for its distinctive curriculum, which integrates the political and international character of Georgetown, a commitment to social justice, and high-quality, cutting-edge student production seasons. The Theater & Performance Studies Program provides unique focus on adapting, devising and developing new work, theater as social change, cross-cultural performance studies, solo and multimedia performance, ensemble and physical theater, and innovative approaches to design and technology as well as playwriting, directing, dramaturgy, and more. Our major prepares students to go on in the arts, education, public service, and cultural criticism.
A partial and rapidly growing list of theatrical luminaries who have had sustained contact with Georgetown students in the Davis Center includes: Belarus Free Theatre, Theodore Bikel, Irina Brown, The Civilians, Dan Conway, Nilo Cruz, Peter DiMuro, David Dower, Joe Dowling, Olympia Dukakis, David Edgar, Rick Foucheux, Michael Friedman, Marcus Gardley, Ed Gero, Nadine George-Graves, Danny Hoch, David Henry Hwang, Moises Kaufman, Josh Kornbluth, Liz Lerman, Emily Mann, David Muse, Sister Helen Prejean, Heather Raffo, Clint Ramos, Tim Raphael, Stephen Richard, Michael Rohd, Ari Roth, Shannon Scrofano, Christopher Sivertsen, Molly Smith, Tony Taccone, Irina and Paata Tsikurishvili, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Charles Randolph Wright, Karen Zacarias, and Mary Zimmerman.
About the Davis Performing Arts Center
The Royden B. Davis, S.J. Performing Arts Center opened in November 2005 as the only building in Georgetown history designed specifically for arts education. This beautiful $28 million state-of-the-art facility in the center of campus is the academic home to the Theater & Performance Studies Program as well as to two state of the art theatre spaces — the 236-seat proscenium Gonda Theatre and the black box Devine Studio Theatre. The Davis Center provides classroom research and production learning laboratories for hundreds of students at Georgetown every semester, including for first-rate student-produced theater from Black Theatre Ensemble, Mask and Bauble, and Nomadic Theatre, as well as a wide array of music and dance groups in the Department of Performing Arts. In addition, the Davis Center is a hub for interdisciplinary exchange on and off campus, as well as with the wider D.C. community, through our summer festival productions and partnership with Arena Stage, as well as collaborations with Synetic Theater, Sojourn Theater, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, American Opera Theater, D.C. public schools, and many other artistic, scholarly, activist, social service, and cultural groups. The Davis Center Season unfolds in intimate dialogue with the Program’s curricular offerings. In addition to mainstage productions in the Gonda and Devine Theatres, the Program sponsors numerous workshops, readings, master classes, symposia, and guest lectures, placing students from the entire Georgetown community in regular contact with leading professionals from the U.S. and beyond.