Emilie Diouf’s research and teaching reflect her interdisciplinary background in African Literature, African American and African Studies, as well as Women’s and Gender Studies. She is interested in the relationship between narrative, migration, trauma, and human rights, particularly expanding the field of trauma studies to include more substantially the voices of African women refugees. Since…
LAPD Mission: Founded in 1985 by director-performer-activist John Malpede, Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) is a non-profit arts organization, the first performance group in the nation made up principally of homeless people, and the first arts program of any kind for homeless people in Los Angeles. LAPD creates performances and multidisciplinary artworks that connect the…
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The Artistic Ensemble is a troupe of 16 diverse men in prison working with 5 outside members. In their explorations to discover how they can reach the public; they also discover more about what it means to be human by connecting with each other. Their creative process is dialogic. Together they explore social inequalities with…
Appalshop is a U.S. nonprofit cultural arts organization based in the mountainous central Appalachian coalfields of eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia. Appalshop was founded in late 1969 by Bill Richardson, an architect, and a group of aspiring young artists who secured funding from the Kennedy administration’s War on Poverty program to engage their neighbours in…
Founded in 2001 by Artistic Director Allison Orr, Forklift Danceworks actively engages diverse communities through the creation of unique dance projects featuring all kinds of people. Using the movement that come from daily life as the choreographic starting point and casting community members as the primary performers in these projects, Forklift presents dances in intimate…
Jan Cohen-Cruz (1950–) is an author, teacher, and practitioner of community-based performance art. She is the Founding Editor of Public: A Journal and served as Director of Imagining America from 2007-2012. Cohen-Cruz writes on the work of performance artists who address social issues. Her trilogy on the topic includes Local Acts: Community Based Performance in the U.S. (Rutgers, 2005), Engaging Performance: Theater as Call…
Michael Romanyshyn is a theater artist, musician and composer. He worked with the Bread and Puppet Theater for 17 years before founding and directing at other theater spaces in New York City and in rural Maine. He has worked with groups of trained and untrained musicians and artists on theatrical and musical projects all over…
Cornerstone Theater Company (Los Angeles) is widely regarded as one of the most important community-based theatre companies in the English-speaking world. Founded in 1986, during the first six years of its existence the company was nomadic and specialized in rural residencies around the U.S., deconstructing and rebuilding classical drama texts together with local residents. Early…
In October 1963, Schumann and his friends Bruno Eckardt and Bob Ernstthal founded the Bread & Puppet Theatre at 148, Delancey Street on the Lower East Side of New York. Working in their house on Delancey Street this young arts collective worked with local children to make thousands of masks and puppets. They came in…