September 30th through October 3rd, 350 artists, activists, young people, educators, scholars, practitioners and business people from 31 countries, all who use performance in their work as a new way of relating to, transforming and understanding the world, will gather at the All Stars Project headquarters at 543 West 42nd Street for the Performing the World Conference; Can Performance Change the World? The All Stars Project and the East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy are co-sponsors of the conference.
One hundred presentations over the three-day conference will showcase work being done with performance in the fields of health, wellness, education, mental health and theatre. Plenary session panelists include: Patch Adams, Founder and Director, Gesundhiet Institute; Andrew Burton, Founder and Artistic Director, Street Spirits, British Columbia; Lois Holzman, Co-Founder and Director, East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy; Woodie King, Jr., Founder and Producing Director, New Federal Theatre; Fernanda Liberali, Catholic University of Sao Paulo and SIAC - Simposio Acao Cidad; and Judith Malina, Co-Founder and Artistic Director, The Living Theatre and moderater Dan Friedman, artistic director of the Castillo Theatre. A second plenary session on "The Performance of Blackness" will be facilitated by Dr. Lenora Fulani, co-founder, All Stars Project.Workshop leaders include Huizhu Sun, President of the Shanghai Theatre Academy; Eva Brenner, artistic director of Projekt Theater Studio in Vienna, Austria; Dan Baron Cohen, an advisor to the Secretary of Cultural Citzenship in the Brazilian Ministry of Culture; Miguel Cortez, director of the Fred Newman Social Therapy Center in Juarez, Mexico; Jim Mangia, president and CEO of St. John's Well Child and Family Center in Los Angeles, CA; and Shahid Nadeen, Pakistan's leading playwright and director and founder and playwright in residence for Ajoka Theatre.Videos