Borders and Their Shadows: An International Festival
Theater & Performance Studies Show #1
Department of Performing Arts presents Borders & Their Shadows: A Festival of Plays on International Themes featuring free Concert Readings, with reservation system and more details to come!
Professor Christine Evans, Festival Curator
Professor Maya E. Roth, Artistic Director, Davis Center for the Performing Arts
This Festival features free Concert Readings of new plays by women writing across borders, offering imaginative entry points to the cascading human and social consequences of forced migration. Readings feature guest artists from five countries, students, faculty and alumni. Forums with International Artists & Scholars interact with Play Readings September 19-22. Play-readings only September 26-29.
The Festival is generously funded by the College Dean’s Office for TPST’s Home Season in the Davis Center, Georgetown’s Global Humanities Initiative, and the Swedish Embassy, with co- sponsorship by the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics. Sponsorship for individual artists follows their events.
American Triage
by Marisela Treviño Orta
Devine Studio Theatre
Thursday, September 19, 7:30pm*
Friday, September 27, 8pm
*Preshow Forum on 9/19 6-6:45pm, followed by refreshments in lobby; Post-Show Talk with Playwright & Director
In American Triage by Latinx Playwright Marisela Treviño Orta, teens Lalo and Fatima struggle to keep their family and faith intact when their parents are deported after immigration raids sweep through their city. But when Lalo turns to his guardian angel for help he sets into motion events that threaten to further fracture his family.
FREE, REGISTRATION REQUIRED
Tomorrow Will Take Care of Itself
by Stefanie Zadravec
Devine Studio Theatre
Friday, September 20, 7:30pm*
Thursday, September 26, 8pm
*Preshow Forum on 9/20 6-6:45, followed by refreshments in lobby; Post-Show Talk with Playwright & Director
Tomorrow Will Take Care of Itself, by Slovenian-American Playwright Stefanie Zadravec, is set on Australia’s prison island, Nauru, where asylum-seekers are detained indefinitely. Young aid workers are drawn into a complex web of present need and past history and politics, as Afghan and Iraqi refugees fight for dignity and sanity amidst the haunting of the island by spirits.
FREE, REGISTRATION REQUIRED
Torgus & Snow
by Christine Evans
Devine Studio Theatre
Saturday, September 21, 3pm*
Saturday, September 28, 8pm
*Preshow Forum with the Swedish Embassy on 9/21 2-2:45 in Gonda followed by refreshments in lobby; Post-Show Talk at 5:30 in Devine with the Playwright & Director, leading into Light Dinner, and next performance.
In Torgus & Snow by Australian-American playwright Christine Evans, a talking vacuum cleaner, a child-turned-machine, and malevolent trolls interweave in a Nordic fever-dream inspired by Sweden’s “apathetic children” – young refugees who fall into coma-like states when faced with deportation.
FREE, REGISTRATION REQUIRED
The Woman Who Turned Into a Tree
by Lisa Langseth
Performed by Julia Kwamya
Directed by Hilkka-Liisa Iivanainen
Devine Studio Theatre
Saturday, September 21, 7:30 *
Sunday, September 22, 2pm**
*Conversation with Scandinavian Artistic Team, followed by Desserts in Lobby.
**All Playwrights in Conversation 2:45pm-3:45pm, with Closing Festival Reception
In The Woman Who Turned Into a Tree by Swedish Playwright Lisa Langseth, Dafne, a night club hostess and immigrant, does everything to hide her working-class roots. When she is forced to move to a deserted suburb next to a forest, a tree outside her window begins to talk to her. Funny and tragic, this mythic story of loneliness asks what happens when you have lost contact with your innermost self and reach the outskirts of reality… for better or worse.
This performance, first brought to the US by the Bergman Studio and Swedish Arts Council, features NY- based Ghanian-Ugandan- American solo performer Julia Kwamya. Festival events and guest artists for The Woman Who Turned Into a Tree are possible through the generosity of the Finnish Cultural Foundation and Finland’s National Council for the Performing Arts, the Embassy of Sweden and the Swedish Arts Council, and the Georgetown-Arena Stage Partnership.
FREE, REGISTRATION REQUIRED