Rattlestick Theater and New York Theatre Salon Present The 2023 Global Forms Theater Festival

Rattlestick Theater and New York Theatre Salon have announced the fourth edition of Global Forms Theater Festival (GFTF) - an eleven-day celebration filled with workshop productions, readings, online panel discussions, and more. The festival, which showcases and supports the works of immigrant theater artists living in the United States, explores humanity, freedom, home, and isolationism through a multicultural lens. Since the inception of the festival in 2020, Rattlestick has partnered with over 300 artists from over 40 countries. The theme of this year's festival is Green Theater exploring sustainable theater practice. All events are free to attend and open to the public.

"Green theater is not just a trend, it is a responsibility. As global citizens, we must recognize the impact our actions have on the planet and take steps toward sustainable practices. Through the power of art, we can inspire change and create a better future for all. Let us be better tenants on earth, not just for ourselves, but for generations to come. This year's festival provides an excellent opportunity for immigrant artists to share their unique perspectives on the topic." - Yue Liu, Lead Producer Global Forms Theater Festival

In 2020, Rattlestick and New York Theatre Salon formed the Global Forms Theater Festival, designed to meet urgent, specific needs of immigrant artists during the pandemic. Rattlestick's mission - to produce ambitious plays that inspire empathy and provoke conversation that will lead to positive social change - asks that we foster dialogue and produce work addressing the difficulties faced by immigrant artists, who are often ineligible for funding and are vastly underrepresented on New York's stages. Immigrant artists face the extraordinarily time-intensive and expensive task of applying for artist visas, and the Global Forms Theater Festival provides important paid production opportunities to showcase these applications. The Global Forms Theater Festival is made possible by the Ford Foundation and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.

The Global Forms Theater Festival consists of these four (4) key programming sections:

(1) Global Stage - (Workshop Productions)
This year's Global Stage features workshop productions of The Discarded - by Tianding He (China), The Sacrifice of Cassamba Becker - by João Victor Toledo (Brazil), and Steppe - By Masha Makutonina (Ukraine).

(2) Global Learn - (Knowledge-sharing sessions)
Global Learn is a series of three virtual Knowledge-Sharing Sessions curated around this year's GFTF theme, Green Theater. Presented over Zoom, these educational workshops will be delivered by a range of immigrant artists from all over the world, exploring the intersections of design, movement, and healing through a climate lens. Curated by immigrant artist and producer James Clements (Scotland), these workshops are designed to inform, excite, and connect.

(3) Global Share - (Artist video series)
Global Share presents a series of artist-made videos that showcase distinctive aspects of their cultures. These videos both celebrate cultural practices and incorporate this year's environmental theme. Curated by immigrant artist Dorothea Gloria (Philippines).

(4) Global Gab - (Panel discussions)
Global Gab is a virtual, cross-cultural conversation series. Currently in its 3rd season at Rattlestick, Global Gab continues to bring relevant and thought-provoking conversations to the immigrant artist community. This series is curated and hosted by Jody Doo (Singapore.)

The three (3) workshop productions of the Global Stage programming are:

The Discarded - by Tianding He (China)

The Discarded is a thought-provoking, experimental, work-in-progress performance that combines live theater, object performance, and multimedia installations to shed light on the impact of waste and migration on individuals and communities. Inspired by the themes of George Büchner's Woyzeck, The Discarded presents a poetic and experimental performance that explores the intertwined journey of a piece of garbage used by a New Yorker and sold to developing Asian countries to become new products, and an Asian immigrant who immigrated to New York and eventually becomes a garbage collector. Both of them travel across the globe, experiencing deconstruction, ambition, self-doubt, and revelation. These two stories seem unrelated at first, but as the journey goes on, their trajectories begin to overlap. The performance invites the audience to engage with the characters on a deeper, more personal level, as they confront the realities of waste, migration, and the human condition.

Tianding He (she/her/ta), originally from China, is a theater director, object performance deviser, and arts leader based in New York City. She is the founding artistic director of B·O·N·D International Virtual Performance Festival, and an arts leader of NYFA's Incubator for Arts & Culture Leaders of Color in the Tri-State Area. She is passionate about exploring innovative ways of storytelling that encompass a range of bodies, including those from minority communities such as Asian, female, immigrant, and disabled communities, as well as non-human objects. Through her work in object performance, physical theater, and cutting-edge technologies, she hopes to challenge the anthropocentric ideology that permeates society.

Tianding has directed various performances in venues and festivals including, HERE Arts Center, La Mama, Dixon Place, Margo Feiden Gallery, Soho Gallery, and Williamsburg Arts Nexus in NYC and Brooklyn, Pao Arts Center in Boston, Shanghai Theatre Academy in China; Rattlestick Global Forms Theatre Festival, Object Movement Festival, Irvine Writer's Festival, Wuzhen International Theatre Festival in China, B·O·N·D International Virtual Performance Festival, Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance, International Virtual Toy Theatre Festival, and UNFIX Festival. Additionally, she has produced Off-Broadway shows at Theatre Row and IATI Theatre and line-produced at HERE Arts Center, and has explored the embodiment of alienated female experience through selected photography projects.

She received her first MA degree in Performance Studies from NYU, a second Masters in Theatre from Hunter College, and PhD from UC Irvine and UC San Diego.

The Sacrifice of Cassamba Becker - by João Victor Toledo (Brazil)

Conceived during the global coronavirus pandemic, The Sacrifice of Cassamba Becker is a monologue written and performed by João Victor Toledo. The play, whose central character is Cassamba Becker--the grande dame of Brazilian Theater that made a garbage dump on some beach in Brazil her home--discusses urgent issues such as poverty, consumerism, global warming, and political crisis. The Sacrifice of Cassamba Becker is at its heart a political-marginal imagination that wants to rethink the present moment to envision something broader and sexier, in order to transform the garbage of the world into housing, transform sacrifice into freedom, and thus imagine a place where it's finally worth living.

João Victor Toledo is a theatermaker from Brazil, who loves the stage, carnival, and meditation. He holds a BA in Theater Studies and History from the Free University of Berlin and an MA in Performance Studies from the University of New York (Emerging Scholar Award). Over the years, João has cooperated with several theater and dance companies such as Constanza Macras|DorkyPark, ZU-UK, Bryckenbrant, and Teatro do Osso, and has performed at the Vienna Festival, the Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and the São Paulo International Theater Festival (MITsp - Plataforma Brasil).

Steppe - By Masha Makutonina (Ukraine)

Steppe is a one-act play that tells an intergenerational story of an unexpected friendship against the backdrop of an ecological disaster. The story is inspired by the effects of war in Ukraine on the Chalk Flora Nature Reserve and the unexpected revelations that appear in places of purgatory. In a lobby of an administrative government office, partially under reconstruction, two people wait. Dmytro is a 50-year-old environmentalist who has been taking care of Kreidova Flora Nature Reserve in Ukraine before the war forced him to leave. Daryna is an economics student who is here to obtain her indefinite stay. Over the course of three brief visits to the government center, they strike an unexpected friendship.

Masha Makutonina is a Ukrainian director, actor, and creative producer from Odesa, Ukraine, now residing in New York. She graduated from Middlebury College where she spent the majority of her time directing film, theater, and dance. Since March 2022 she has been working on creative projects uplifting Ukrainian voices and culture. Notably, she co-produced and curated the UnitedforUkraine concert at Middlebury Art Center as well as created a series of video works depicting the emotional experience of coping with the war in your home. Masha believes in the power of theater and stories to change and heal, therefore she's thrilled at the opportunity to be a part of the Global Forms Theater Festival and share with you one important story.

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