It was with heavy hearts that we learnt last week that dear ICAF friend and collaborator Sally Gordon had passed away. Since 1984, Sally Gordon had been the founding director of a community-based theatre company called El Teatro de la Realidad (Theatre of Reality). The theatre performed plays based on the lives of the participants, around themes of interest to the community such as immigration, gang warfare, domestic violence and incest.
Sally and El Teatro de la Realidad participated twice at ICAF, once in 2001, and again in 2008 and were featured in Community Theatre: Global Perspectives written by Eugene van Erven.
In honour of their long-term friendship and collaboration, Eugene has written an obituary of Sally and the times they spent together, published on his blog. For now, we will include the first lines that we believe encapsulates Sally and her work:
“She was without a doubt one of the most feisty, principled, unrelenting, reliable and generous community theatre activists in the United States, if not in the world. She worked tirelessly for many decades to create original performances with vulnerable people in some of the toughest contexts in Los Angeles. I admired her courage and tenacity very much and I am sure she will be terribly missed by those whose lives she touched.” Eugene van Erven