Elm Shakespeare Company Presents BIPOC DIRECTOR'S FORUM

Elm Shakespeare Company continues its free, online event series, Building a Brave New Theater: Exploring Shakespeare & Race in 2020 with a BIPOC DIRECTOR'S FORUM on Thursday November 12 at 7pm on Zoom. Five nationally acclaimed BIPOC directors will join long-time Elm Shakespeare Company actor/director Raphael Massie for a spirited conversation on the joys, challenges and possibilities of directing Shakespeare in America today as a BIPOC artist. Registration is required at www.elmshakespeare.org/bipoc-directors-forum.

Presented by New Haven's Elm Shakespeare Company and generously sponsored by the Elizabethan Club of Yale University and Webster Bank, Building a Brave New Theatre: Exploring Race & Shakespeare in 2020 is designed to understand and amplify BIPOC artists experiences of these plays, and ask important questions being raised after centuries of Bardolatry. Questions such as... Why perform Shakespeare now? What is the difference between Shakespeare's plays and the Shakespeare 'System'? Can that System's legacy be overcome? and... How can a theater company dedicated to the works of this playwright meet this moment and best serve its community?
The BIPOC Directors Forum on November 12 will be a moderated discussion
highlighting BIPOC directors from a variety of backgrounds who have wide ranging opinions about not only the plays but Shakespeare, itself.

L. Peter Callender is the Artistic Director of African American Shakespeare Company in San Franciso. Callender is a graduate of Julliard, an award winning actor & director on and off broadway, and the recipient of the Paine Knickerbocker Paine Award.

Carl Cofield, director of 2019's highly praised production of Twelfth Night at Yale Repertory Theatre, is an actor, director, and the Associate Artistic Director of the off-broadway award-winning Classical Theater of Harlem.

Antonio Ocampo Guzman, is a Master Linklater Voice Teacher who has directed over 50 productions and is the current chair of Northeastern University's Department of Theater and President-elect of the Voice & Speech Teachers Association (VASTA).

Madeline Sayet, Executive Director of the Indigenous Performing Arts Program at Yale University, is an award-winning director, the author of the article Interrogating the Shakespeare System and recipient of the White House Champions of Change Award.

Dawn Monique Williams is a resident artist at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, a former Drama League Directing fellow, a TCG Leadership U Grantee, and recipient of the Princess Grace Foundation Theater Fellowship Award.

Moderator Raphael Massie, a current Associate Artist at Oregon Shakespeare
Festival, a long time actor and director with Elm Shakespeare Company. Massie has directed at Collective Consciousness Theater and taught in the Theater Department of Southern CT State University.

Other upcoming events in the Building a Brave New Theatre series include:
November 19: Becoming Othello, A Black Girl's Journey by Debra Ann Byrd;
December 4: A Conversation with Scholar Ayanna Thompson, 'Whose Shakespeare?
December 17: A Celebration of BIPOC Actors & Exploration of BIPOC Actor Training.

Artistic Director Rebecca Goodheart is passionate about the complexity and importance of this series, "At the end of the day, we at Elm Shakespeare Company, believe there is transformative power in these plays, AND we are committed to engaging not only with their magic and beauty, but with the difficult issues they and their legacy can raise. We want to ask the tough questions, even as we celebrate them, and we are so lucky to have partners like the Elizabethan Club and Webster Bank to help us do both."

Registration is required for all events. For more information on the full series:
Building a Brave New Theatre: Exploring Race & Shakespeare in 2020, visit www.elmshakespeare.org/fall-symposium

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