On September 30th through October 3rd, 500 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, gathered 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 co-sponsored the conference.
One hundred presentations over the three-day conference showcased work being done with performance in the fields of health, wellness, education, mental health and theatre.
A plenary session on "Theory and Practice" included 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; Gabrielle L. Kurlander, President and CEO, All Stars Project; 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" was facilitated by Dr. Lenora Fulani, co-founder, All Stars Project.
Workshop leaders included 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, a leading Pakistani playwright and director and founder and playwright in residence for Ajoka Theatre.
Letters of welcome for Performing the World were received from New York Governor David Patterson; Osmar V. Chohfi, Consul General of Brazil in New York; Daniel Sullivan, Consul General of Canada; Philippe Lalliot, Consul General of France; Felix Augustin, Consul General of the Republic of Haiti; and Asaf Shariv, Consul General of Israel.
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