Special Guest: Antanas Mockus, former mayor of Bogotá Colombia
We are pleased to welcome Antanas Mockus to PTW ’16. A Colombian mathematician, philosopher, politician and artistic activist, Mockus was Mayor of Bogotá from 1995 to 1997 and from 2001 to 2003. While in office, he created the revolutionary pedagogic-artistic oriented Citizenship Culture approach, whichreduced homicide rates by 40% and improved citizens’ trust, engagement and coexistence. In “Peace, Performance and People’s Power,” Mockus will be joined byJacqueline Salit, president of independentvoting.org, and advocate for the rights of independent voters, for an interview and conversation — taking place in the midst of the hard won peace pact in Colombia — on the role of performance, culture and forgiveness in creating new roads to peace, progress and power for the dispossessed.
Returning to the US from one of the dozens of clown trips he leads each year to hospitals, orphanages, nursing homes and impoverished communities,Patch Adams will premier a new workshop at PTW ’16. The renowned speaker on wellness, laughter, humor and health care will lead “Earth: Zones of Proximal Development, Life in Servant-Leadership.” Patch invites you to experience “Birthing revolutions so happy they can be scary — through thinking and desiring — then exploding in doing, and having lots of fun along the way! There will be lots of doing — maybe even a little misbehaving? Please wear comfortable and relaxing clothes to play in — Alice in Wonderland costumes a plus! And bring something of yours to give to someone in the workshop!”
Performing the World 2016 will also feature performance activists working in refugee camps in Greece, Serbia and Germany. “Creating New Performances With the Refugee Crisis” features session organizer Elena Dina Boukouvala, a performance activist based in Thessaloniki, Greece and London, U.K., who has been working in refugee camps in Greece. With young people in the camps from Syria, Iraq and Pakistan, Elena has organized women’s groups, led cosmopolitan trips out of the camps, and produced multicultural performance events. Masa Avramović and Nina Stamenkovićare co-founders of C31-Centre for Developing Children’s Rights Culture(C31). With support from Save the Children, C31 is creating programs-“spaces of the possible”-with
children in refugee camps and safe spaces in Serbia. Shelley Cheung, is a freelance video and broadcast producer from New York currently visiting refugee camps in Germany and Greece creating a documentary, “She Is Syria,” that will tell the stories of Syrian refugee women and girls. Producing the documentary is Sarah Mardini, a former Syrian national swimmer and human rights activist now based in Germany. She is the founder of Refugee Club Impulse, a fluid and self-organizing team of refugees who work together to introduce themselves and bring, through theatre, new ideas to the countries where they now live.