 Hello. Hey friends. Here we are. It's such a profound joy for me personally, for all of us at the lab, to welcome each and every one of you to this inaugural event, the gathering. We've never done this before, and the culmination of our first Cross Currents Festival. I want to also welcome the folks listening in around the world through our good friends at HowlRound, who we have such a long deep relationship with, and say hello to those people. I have the really immense pleasure and privilege of knowing almost all of you in one way or another, but for the few who I don't, I'm Derek. And with my colleagues, Cynthia Schneider, I co-direct the lab for global performance and politics with a mission to harness the power of performance to humanize global politics. At the core of all of our work is a deep belief in the importance of relationship building, the power of our art form in all of its manifestations to bring people together across differences, to occasion necessary conversations about difficult issues, to offer an antidote to the starvation for community and connection so many of us feel. We've been half-joking, but it's actually, the sensation feels very real to me that this feels kind of like a global theater wedding. The tent being, I think, the kind of coup de grace of that notion. I personally am from a small biological family, and I've always marveled at friends who speak of these great big family reunions where whole strands of the family previously unknown to them assemble. And this event feels a bit like that, a reunion of people many of whom don't yet know each other, but who from where we at the lab sit have an enormous amount to gain from coming together. And it really means the world to us that you have journeyed here today and for the next few days. Many of you from great distances, Sudan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine and Israel, Australia, Lebanon, Cambodia, more than a dozen European countries and so many regions of our own country and of our own city, our own metropolitan area of Washington. We gather in a very specific place, with a very specific history, at a very specific moment in time. The group of people assembled here have many differences, but one thing we have in common, I'm certain, is a sense of caring deeply about the welfare of our world and striving to impact that world in our practices. As we gather, if someone were to ask the question broadly, how are things going in the world? I think virtually everybody would find a great deal to lament, to worry over, to grieve and to rage about in this moment. So why are we here? Why have you traveled this distance, carved out time in your work week on a Wednesday afternoon? I can assure you that not a single person attending or involved with this gathering is here for the money. No one knows this better than me and I know how much is happening here with how little, thanks to each of you. The impulse that brings us together is rooted in action. We're doing something by gathering. This is meant not only as a reflective space, but with the hope of it being a catalytic space. The impulse is rooted, I dare say, in love, not in the soft, mushy sense, but in the sense that it's tied to resistance in a world, we can howl in this space, in a world with so many challenges around us that seem inextricably linked to human capacity for greed, violence, and hate. We come together to notice others and to be inspired by others who we may not have noticed previously as we toil in our own often stress-laden, isolated, under-resourced, exhausting spaces of practice. It's one of my beliefs that as much as we sometimes pat ourselves on the back in the arts for our largely progressive, open-minded ways of seeing the world, that our cultural spaces are still filled with hierarchies of judgment and silos that often keep even those of us who are doing transformative work in great alignment with each other from being aware of each other's work. I've come to feel that while at its core, theatre's power is in its singular potential to break down us and them, we still have those insidious categories of us and them. And we reinforce that with the notion that there is a difference between work that is good and work that does good. With the sense that real art is in the domain of people with a certain kind of training or a certain kind of access and that there is another usually considered inferior kind of socially engaged art. And my observation across the many performances I'm privileged to witness in radically different contexts from leading theatres and opera houses is that there are brilliant works in those spaces as well as in prisons and in refugee camps and in high school auditoriums and in civic centers that do good and are good and in both places, in all of those spaces, there is work that is doing less good and not so good. So I think a lot of, for me, what this gathering is about is an attempt to try to come together imagining a space free of some of those cultural hierarchies and silos. Here in D.C., we have temples of politics and temples of culture, as we often say at the lab. And much of the work of the lab is about trying to create dynamism across those spaces to allow people to come together on equal footing. That is why this event is not a summit. We're not perched above anything. We mean what we say that each student who is here or who may be listening somewhere is every bit as important to this gathering as the Nobel Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner and Booker Prize winner and Tony award winner and ambassadors and secretaries of state that we're honored to welcome here in the next few days. It's also not a retreat. We're not here to withdraw our forces, but rather to gather them fueled by one another. That has been one of our values in shaping these four days and this shaping is an imperfect science. I assure you we have made a lot of mistakes and we will continue to make them over the next few days. We've produced and hosted other events, but nothing like this and some moments will be smoother than others and many of you have already defied our well calculated predictions about which events you were going to be wanting to be part of and what conversations would most interest you. So you may not all get into your first choice events, especially if you didn't sign up right away, but just part of the vision of this gathering is that there will always be more to experience by looking next to you, going to the tent, having a drink, connecting. So we've tried to be led in all of our choices by our values of equity, diversity and inclusion, of working against real and perceived hierarchies of experimentation, of community. We are also of course in many ways constrained by material realities, resources, the configurations of space and bandwidth, but every single person who's been part of putting this together and you'll meet them all shares these values of wanting this to be as fruitful a few days as it can be for you. We'll be breaking bread at the tent beginning with dinner this evening and with all the subsequent meals. I want to mention that the program, we're going to try really, really hard. I'm probably already breaking this rule, but it's really important to me to stick to the time constraints for the next four days in the program, which is because there's no chance we will feel finished at the end of any of our sessions. But in fairness to the amount of things we're trying to squeeze in, we hope and we've designed this so that conversations can continue and even that people who want to have a separate conversation parallel to the program, we can find a space and facilitate that and continue that conversation. We have an incredible team and they're not all in this room now because they're doing other things, but I'd like you to just ask a few of them to stand just to be sort of recognized now, both for the incredible work they're putting in, but so you can recognize them and continue to get to know them, led by our lab programs manager and cross-currents producer, Teddy Roger. And Lily Hughes, who's the associate producer of the Gathering, is Lily in this space right now? But you met her at registration and she's worthy of applause. This title doesn't even begin to cover what he does. This is our incredible graduating senior lab programs assistant, but our kind of catch-all everything, Ali Pajwani. He's up there. Thank you. The cross-currents production manager and TD, who all of you who are engaging with performances, has been working with Michael Donne, he's in the back. Our lab operations assistant, Shade T. Tavartiskaya, I think is out there. She's amazing. And then that is not everybody. We have Austin Eau Claire, who's been doing PR with us, and Laura Appelbaum, and then this incredible team, Catherine Max, Adam, David, Daniel, Ariana. There are others, I think, who are making all of this possible. So there is much a part of this, and we'll be getting to know them over the next few years, but give them all a hand, please. And then also, and you'll meet them as part of this session, our amazing lab fellows who are sort of assisting us. They are our heart and soul in so many ways, and they are also your hosts with us in this gathering. So please ask them for support when you need it. Stand, guys. They're here. They're five, and we have ten fellows, five who are here more virtually at the moment. So just to finish, I just would remind us that the word gather has a number of connotations. We come together, we assemble like we are congregate. We bring together and take in from scattered places and sources. We harvest, reap, glean. We embrace or unfold, like gathering a child in your arms. We develop a higher speed of something, like gathering pace or momentum. We intensify something. We understand, we think, we surmise. I gather from what you were saying. We summon up, we gather our thoughts or ideas, we refuel, and we draw and hold together, like gathering fabric. So I hope that these next four days have some aspects for all of you of all of these elements. Above all, and it feels like this already, I think this really should be and needs to be a celebration. In this place, in this time, as challenging as many of the issues we are all engaging and will continue to be engaging with are, and without being facile about those challenges as we connect, I think we can simultaneously notice and celebrate the small miracle of being held together in this global community over these next few days. As part of this first session on why we are here, we wanted to spend some time acknowledging different aspects of where we are, where we have gathered, some of the implications of that history, what has transpired in this place. We're honored to have Emily Johnson, who as many of you know is an extraordinary dancer, writer, choreographer, among other things, who organized the very impactful First Nations dialogues that are ongoing. And along with Jason Tamiru, with us from Maltaus Theater in Melbourne, Australia. I'm a proud Yorta Yorta man, as he calls himself. And Kelsey Lawson, a Georgetown student and president of our Native American Student Council, will lead us in a ritual of land acknowledgement, which I'm sorry to say is not yet a regular practice in my experience on this campus, and I hope this will be part of changing that. First, it's now my honor to hand the stage over and to introduce an extraordinary friend of mine and of the labs for more than a decade, a frequent visitor to Georgetown, member of the labs think tank, host of ours in Sudan, UNESCO Ambassador for Peace, Vice President and General Secretary of International Theater Institute, and the founder of Albu Gha Theater Company in Sudan, one of the world's most significant examples of transformative theater in zones of conflict. My friend Ali Madi Nori, who lead us in an offering. Thank you guys so much. Now we try to complete the wedding. He talked to my friend about the wedding. So I'm going to leave the very simple things. Maybe it's to look new, but I believe very much we are here from different places. We came together to be together. I think I believe I'm flying like almost 24 hours to reach here. Not to give this short speech, but to see you and to take from you something, to continue my people to Africa. I'm sure all of us here are an artist, all the effort for the welfare of the human being. And you quite surely know how the difficulties in the conflict have been working for the last 15 years to use the performance art in solving the problems, building the peace dialogue. So let us play together. I want you to stand up for the mind. Each one holds his hand. Yes, like that. Find a friend, find a friend. If you can close your eyes, that will be good. If you hear the God will see you, but close your eyes. So I will play Ferris in Arabic and I will translate it. I need you to close the frame with me. Each paragraph we sing, I mean. Let us try. I mean. I mean. Where are you? I mean. I mean. Yes, give me energy. I mean. I mean. What we have is our art, our performance. So please help us to bring peace to the whole world. I mean. I mean. I mean. Oh God, we are fighting for the human being, for the welfare of the human being. So help us. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I hope we are sharing the idea to solve the problem. I mean. I mean. I hope with our performance we can help the development in the poor country. I mean. I mean. Every child finds a chance to get his education. I mean. I mean. And he's full pride to have what he wants. I mean. I mean. I mean. Thank you. In the same place. I mean. Kelsey is in the middle of exams. I'm a Yupik woman who grew up on Denina and Canaiti land in Alaska. And I live now on Manhattan in Lenape, OK. And I moved to New York City about five years ago. And it took me a long time, a few years to build a relationship with Lenape land and people and ancestors. And my life is very much the better for it. And I work and I live in acknowledgement and respect to this ongoing relationship and to my dependence on Lenape land. And so the rest of what I have to say here comes from this place and from this experience and from knowing how long it takes to build a relationship. And I also know how important it is to do so. I stand here with you on the unceded homelands of the Piscataway Indian Nation. And I offer my deepest respect and gratitude to Piscataway people and their ancestors from the past and into the future. I say to my hello to all indigenous people present here right now. And to any Piscataway people who might be here right now and who want to be acknowledged, please say so. So I ask you all to join me in gratitude to each other, to this gathering and to everyone who made it happen. And most importantly to this land and the people from this land who hold us. To be honest, I don't have permission to be here. I have not yet been introduced to nor met Piscataway leaders. I haven't yet asked them if I can be here to do this work. And yet I got up this morning, I boarded a train and I assumed a permission. I assumed this position to stand in front of you and to speak. And isn't that something how we all assume permissions? Isn't it something how is it because we're inside this building? Or is it because we're inside this institution? Both spaces dramatically separated from land we assume we can enter. Just come in and do whatever we want. Even though this land is the unceded territory of the sovereign nation of the Piscataway. So I know that we are all here to do good. To do good work, to engage in fellowship and to build kinship across borders and to make good change. So what if we could, as a very powerful group of people, commit to doing our work in ways that do not copy and therefore reinstate violent acts of dispossession? I offer this acknowledgement on behalf of myself, Kelsey and of Jason. I know that we've been brought here for this purpose, but we do not stand in as proxy for Piscataway people. And our presence, as wonderful as it is, does not make absence okay. This acknowledgement is not on behalf of Georgetown University because they have not yet done the work to build proper relations with local Piscataway leaders. And they have not yet fully supported Kelsey and other Indigenous students who are working to include Indigenous students through increased enrollment, representation, and cultural sensitivity on this campus. Kelsey will talk about that a little bit more in some of her other deeper concepts. Jason is here to offer protocol, but the local leaders he should be extending this to aren't together. So that's all myself included do better. And in this effort, I also ask you to stand up. Please close your eyes and take a deep breath. And for a moment as your eyes are closed, let your body relax and let yourself feel completely present in this room. And feel your feet, not on this floor, but actually on the ground beneath us. I ask you as fellow guests here on Piscataway land to pay attention to this land. To offer thanks to this ground for holding you here. And to begin exchange with this ground what you need to exchange. Maybe you've never said hello to this sovereign territory. So maybe it could begin there. I ask that throughout this week you remember this moment, this connection to ground. And when you remember this moment, I ask you to pause and to pledge an exchange. And perhaps that exchange is another moment of stillness. Perhaps it is another moment of appreciation and gratitude. Perhaps also it could be an internal wrestling with the fact that you benefit simply by being here from the fact this land was stolen and from the ongoing processes and effects of the continuation of colonization. And beyond an apology or a feeling of sorrow that might arise and beyond words, I ask you to think right now of actions you will commit to. Actions of reciprocity, actions of change, actions that will support indigenous nations as we build equity. Actions you can offer to Piscataway people so that we support this land rather than just assume permission to take what we want. In closing, take one more deep breath together and bring your energy back up from the ground into this room. And hold those actions in your hearts and in your minds as we go through the week. And open your eyes and you're ready. And I say Koyana, thank you. And here's Kelsey. It's beautiful and incredibly moving. So my name is Kelsey Lawson and I'm a senior in the School of Foreign Service. My major is culture and politics and my major concentration is indigenous studies. At least that's what I intended it for it to be. So first and foremost, I wanted to just reiterate that I think it's important that we pay respects to the Piscataway peoples and call attention to the need for a better established relationship between Georgetown University and the people of this land we're standing on right now. I would like to thank the labs, specifically Ali and Derek, for reaching out to the Native American Student Council and allowing us to participate in this incredible opportunity. Our tiny group of four Native students has been working tirelessly to advocate for more indigenous visibility and recognition at Georgetown. We started circulating our petition aimed at providing support services for Native students on March 18th, and we received upwards of 600 signatures from undergraduates, approximately 400, graduates, staff, faculty members, and even Congresswoman Deb Haaland, one of the first Native Americans ever elected to Congress. Very Georgetown experience, I'm still processing it. We know that the Georgetown community is supportive of our cause and because of this, we need to hold the administration accountable. We delivered our petition to the president's office on April 3rd, and yesterday we were able to meet with the provost and discuss what the university can do moving forward in order to ensure that Native students have a space and community on the hilltop. We were also able to discuss the importance of communication between Georgetown and the Piscataway peoples. While a symbolic land acknowledgement is something that we think is necessary for the university to implement, and something we call for in our petition, we want to recognize that this alone is not enough. Georgetown University is currently proposing to raise 240 acres in the Nanjing Boy Forest, which is an ancestral Piscataway land, in Maryland for a solar project that would power half the school. While green energy is a step in the right direction, there needs to be a recognition of the need for consent from affected indigenous communities. Without explicit tribal consultation, the university is committing an internationally recognized human rights violation. There are alternative sites that can be utilized for the solar project. Renewable energy can be done in a manner that benefits everyone. So I'm urging you to contact the Office of Sustainability at Georgetown. I don't know the exact email address. And just advocate for the rights of the Piscataway peoples. Again, our club would like to thank the lab for hosting us today and for giving us space to engage in this important dialogue. We urge everyone in attendance to be aware of how they can engage in advocacy work pertaining to indigenous communities and their human rights on a local level and be cognizant of what injustices might be occurring to the people whose ancestral lands we're standing on right now. Thank you. The space is never empty. People have told lies that the space is empty. That's not true. The story goes back a long, long way. We've acknowledged them in the sun, the mountains, the trees, the rivers. We call it our dreaming. It's our story and our law. The great serpent, he created our country. I'm a tribal Aboriginal man. Yorda yorda. Snake dreaming. Engie dreaming. And treaty dreaming. Jajarron. The black crow. Wah. The wraparat. Pelican dream. The law of the land. I'll come to this space. It's not empty. You can feel it. We acknowledge spirit. The spirit's here. I thank you for letting me be here today. I thank you both of you. It's the first time in my life I've come this far. It's been a people of the land. It's really special. We speak for country. We dance for country. We paint for country. We speak. Seeing. We love our country. This is healing. Sticks is a story of my home. 10,000, 50,000 years ago. People call it a didgeridoo. It's a Yiddiqui traditional instrument. This one's not mine. I borrowed it here today. That's how it works. One law of the land. I'm a ceremony man. I'll come here to tell the story to all of you. About theft. About all people from our land. And taking around the world for science. It's important that our people come home. It brings peace to the land. To the children. To our elders. To everyone. That's part of the work that I do. Like a lot of us. So much. That is a very hard act to follow. Cynthia Schneider. I'm the co-director with Derek of the lab. I know many of you, but not all of you. And those of you who I don't know, I hope I'd listen to you. I am the politics and diplomacy side of the lab. And I work with Derek through the lab out of a deep belief in the power of culture and the really misunderstood and under leveraged power of culture in the world today. And it's very moving for me to say this. Oh, really moving to say this in front of Professor Wolle Soienka. Because it was his words in the year 2000 at the White House Conference on Cultural Diplomacy that first sparked this idea for me and really have guided me ever since. Professor Soienka, one of several keynote speakers at this conference on cultural diplomacy, said with reference to the conflict in the Middle East, he spoke about the demonizing nature of politics in opposition to the humanizing capacity of culture and wondered why in efforts to resolve conflict we didn't pay more attention to the humanizing capacity of culture. And I look out here and I see people I know and I'm sure many I don't who are there on the front lines working in conflict areas, whether it's any of you who are Jonathan Hollander using your capacity, your art, to bring people together to enable people to imagine peace again. You can't build peace if you can't imagine what that future is. And that is what the narratives and the performances that all of you create, leverage, enable others to create, which is just as important. You know, I'm really not in favor of this traditional idea of cultural diplomacy. We will thank you, you all are so lucky, bring American things all over the world. That was great in the 1950s. But now is a time where I do believe American other developed countries do have capacity. It's the capacity to leverage local voices. And those are the voices who will be listened to. Those are the voices who will make a difference. And that is what we try to do at the lab. That's why we bring this wonderful production of Chewbuck Girls and many others here and put them before and we try to get them here, put them before the policy makers, the decision makers in Washington. Because while I think it's wonderful that the Department of Education and Cultural Affairs funds artists to go around the world, I think those artists belong on the seventh floor. They belong in the situation room. They belong where the decisions are being made. And that's what we're trying to do. In all honesty, I've been trying to do that for ten years so you can tell how successful I've been. But it's wonderful to try to do it with Derek at Georgetown, at the lab, with our wonderful lab fellows, with our wonderful staff, and our extraordinary Georgetown community. And we are so lucky to have, as part of our community, a person who expresses these ideas more eloquently than anyone else, these ideas of the importance of creativity and imagination. And that is Azar Nafisi. You will know her from her books, Reading Lolita in Tehran, and her fascinating book on Looking in America through Literature of the Republic of Imagination. She's hard at work on a new book now, and kindly has given us some of her time, and we're so lucky at the lab you've had her at Georgetown as a centennial fellow this semester. And so, Azar, would you please come forward and share a few thoughts with us? I'm sorry not to give you a whole program of Azar. We did that with the Republic of Imagination. Thank you so much, Cynthia. I just, over the past few weeks, I've been involved with cross currents and with Derek and Cynthia and all the wonderful people they have worked with. And one person keeps coming to my mind, so I thought I'd just begin by a quotation from our beloved James Baldwin to welcome you by saying that artists are here to disturb the peace. So, you know, begin the disturbance, I think, of those who have been disturbing our peace. You know, I was just watching the news for about 10 minutes before I came here, and the conflicts and the wars and the war that is roiling in our own backyard here in the Democratic America, and then we have 42 representatives from all parts of the world, where those countries that are at war with one another, you have the representatives here who are here despite the conflicts and the wars and not because of them, and who refuse to comply with the limitations, with the impositions that are imposed on them, the limitations of nationality, religion, ethnicity, gender, or race, they rebel against these limitations. Now, against this, they become the voices of those whose voices have been taken away from them, and I was wondering against this uniformity that is being imposed on us, no matter which part of the world we live in, what is the best weapon that artists have, and I thought that the most important weapon artists have is their curiosity. You know, Vladimir Nabokov used to say, curiosity is in subordination in its purest form, and the reason for it is that you constantly, because you're curious, you have to come from out of your skin and go under the skin of others to constantly perceive the world through the alternative eyes of the others, and so that is what artists do constantly. That is why they are such great disturbances of peace. And once you come out of your skin and you celebrate difference and diversity, you discover it is not enough to simply celebrate diversity. You have to also be careful about something that those with authoritarian and totalitarian mindsets create. They use difference in order to oppress us. They use difference in order to silence us. The Jews in Nazi Germany were different from us. Those who were sent to Gulags in Soviet Union were different from us. Even in a democratic country like U.S., Muslims are different from us. Refugees and immigrants are different from us. They're rapists. They're criminals. So we have to understand that there's a difference between just talking about that kind of difference, and the kind of diversity that we talk about. And the best thing that art does is alongside of curiosity, it brings with it empathy. It does literally what the narrator in To Kill a Mockingbird talks about, makes you go under someone else's skin and walk around in it for a little while. And it is this empathy that connects us, Primo Levi when he was freed from the concentration camps used to say, I write in order to rejoin the community of mankind. And that is what empathy, that is what art, that is what literature, that is what works of imagination and ideas are about to rejoin constantly the community of mankind. And so I wanted to end by something that, again, working with Derek and Cynthia and the cross-currents brought to my mind. It was a memory that had been silenced in me for a long time, and it came out through this program, and I want to end by that. I had, when I was in Iran, I had a student whose name was Razier, and she was an Orthodox Muslim girl who was in love with Henry James's women, especially Daisy Miller and the Catherine in Washington Square. And that is how cultures speak to one another, that a young girl in the Islamic Republic of Iran can communicate with a man who was born in 19th century a country called America, that Razier becomes the person who confirms Henry James. Anyway, to make a long story short, after a few years after I had not seen her, one of my students who had been to jail with Razier told me that Razier was in jail with her, and the last days that they were together, they were talking about the great Gatsby and Henry James, and a few days after that Razier was executed. And I always think of this, and think of Razier, and think of someone like Primo Levi who says when he was in the concentration camp, his only hope was that he can tell his French cellmate about Dante. And I think to myself, what is it that makes people who are at death's door who have nothing more to live for? Think of Henry James or Dante. Would Henry James or Dante save their lives? Obviously not. But one thing they had at the death's door was to choose how they will face death, how they will face death with dignity, and what reminded them in the darkest hours of their lives when you know about atrocities that make you despair in being human, what reminded them, what brought hope to them, what reminded them of life, was what celebrates the dignity and the integrity of the imaginary, of life, which is works of imagination, which is all about the individual, integrity and dignity no matter where they come from. So, you know, this is the kind of gathering where water is turned into wine, and I want to drink to curiosity, to empathy, and to truth, and to you. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Kendall Long. I'm here here at Georgetown, double majoring in government and African-American studies. I'm fortunate to say in just 10 days I'll be walking across the city to graduate. On the front end of my Georgetown experience, less than 10 days before class this start, I learned about Georgetown's history of slavery through an email that was sent out by our president, John DeGioia. This prompted a wave of student protests from rallies, sit-ins, and teach-ins pressing Georgetown University's administration to act on its history of slavery, reconciliation, both on campus and in dissident communities. In fall of 2017, this work was actualized when the first known dissident of these efforts enrolled at Georgetown University. Since then, me and Melisaan Short-Colomb will take the stage shortly, have had the pleasure of sharing many laughs together, we've learned together in classrooms, and most recently we've organized together in what's come to known as the GE272 referendum that creates a student-led and student-funded reconciliation fund to benefit descendants. I'm fortunate to be a student here at Georgetown with Mellie. She's a bright light on campus. With her presence, she reminds us of our collective responsibility to be a critical and reflective of our collective history of slavery at Georgetown. And also being from New Orleans, she also happens to be an excellent chef. It's my pleasure to welcome to the stage Ms. Melisaan Short-Colomb. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to Georgetown. Thank you so much for coming. It's a wonderful day. I met Derek and Cynthia in November, December of 2016 when they were coming to New Orleans to meet descendants of the recently revealed Georgetown Jesuit slave sale. So I made dinner and invited everybody to come over. And we had a wonderful evening, food, wine, conversation, and a bond was forged that night in my heart between Derek and Cynthia and myself and the lab. The last couple of years here at Georgetown University have been challenging. I am very much an adult student and out of the habit of all that goes into being a student. I've been a grown-up for a really, really long time. So last semester, I had a class with Derek and with Kendall. And our work was centered around memory and how do we remember and what do we remember and why we remember. So I started working on this little piece in class. That was a class project. And Derek and Cynthia have been nothing but encouraging. So I'm going to read you a few little excerpts today of what I hope will become a larger performance piece and a memorial, a memorial, an honor, and an acknowledgement of the involuntary founders of Georgetown University and the United States of America. How many of you wanted to be a princess when you grew up? My professor asked this of a class of eager students since we grappled with complex theories of Aquinas, Paley, and Freud. I smiled broadly in my internal self. You see, I never wanted to be a princess. I was born a queen. I know this because my grandmother told me so emphatically with no hesitation, trepidation, or fear of misrepresentation. You, child, are a queen. I'm here because others who are not me loved me in the past and prayed me into existence in the present. Queen Mahoney, voice one. Our hearts are a secret treasure map, often lost, sometimes forgotten, discovered again broken and incomplete. There are rivers of fate, mountains of predestination, valleys of grief, and lakes of pure comfort. There are footprints here and trees that cast long shadows from what has been onto what may be. Grandmother's bodies made of tears, fears, hopes, and dreams, a vision, and a fragment of every womb that has come before me came into me as whispered incantations that knit my bones, blood, and spirit to the past and to the future, deep inside a daughter's womb. Precious life to precious life, value to value so necessary and so loved. Our story is forever. My deepest gratitude lies in all that is yet to be discovered. This is worth the treasure. I cannot tell what I do not know and I know so much less than I can carry. My back is strong, my legs are straight, despite the weight of this ignoble weight. My heart is made for treasure and the sound of rain on my moon-bright skin taps out a heartbeat again and again. I have been a wanderer all of my life, although I have not always wandered. The story looms larger and now we must all travel. Even farther, the rain slows, the story comes to a pause. Surely the rain will come again. Queen Mary, 1715. Ending illusions is hard and hurt comes with that, but strength and determination often follow heartbreak and tears. The disruption in the fragile fabric of the lives of 272 people was heartless, cruel, and for the greater good. Just not theirs. They would receive their reward later in the bosom of Jesus and with me standing here today. Through the Georgetown Memory Project, who found me, I was put in contact with other identified descendants. There are over 8,000 of us now. We set about the work of reconnecting our families, Kith and Ken, all over the world, and we are many. Father Anthony Coleman, Society of Jesus, White Marsh Plantation, excuse me, 1850. You are certain that none of you will be sold, nor your children, except such as, accept such as shall show themselves disobedient to the overseer, rebellious and incorrigible for such we will not suffer in this place. You ought to consider this farm and to work as if it belonged to you because we consider you our brethren in Christ. Reverend Peter Haverman, Society of Jesus, 1838. How sad. These days have passed and I am not able to say. The slaves with heroic fortitude are giving themselves to fate and with Christian resignation relinquishing themselves to God. One woman, more pious than the others and at the time, pregnant, most demanded my compassion. She was coming toward me so for the last time she could greet me and seek benediction and she observed as she was genuflected. If ever someone should have reason to despair do I not now have it? I do not know on what day the birth will come whether on the road or on the sea what will become of me. Why do I deserve this? I was saying trust in God so it was. She agreed. I offered myself totally to her. All were coming to me seeking rosaries, metal, a cross so that they would remember me and how with so much obedience they went to the boat. The Queens from White Marsh Plantation Harriet Seven Children from St. Inigo's Plantation Robert and Mary Mahoney and their ten children the largest single family group in a slave sale of over 300 people some of them yet unborn. Harriet Queen I'm sorry, Mary Ellen Queen age 17 and Abraham Mahoney age 16 boarded a boat called the Uncas in 1838 and began their lives in a new place in a new way that ends with me here today. This is the day for which we were made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Thank you so much for having me. Very brief, I promise I'm not going to make a long speech again. The you have these moments when you're planning an event like this and this is, I look out now seeing your faces where just an email comes and it's one of you saying wow, that's a really special contributor and this is one of those people and I just wanted the person who was going to be here to introduce him there's sort of nothing more intimate and powerful I think than as many of us have done than sharing a brilliant student across time and space and one of our amazing lab fellows, Asif Majid is a student who was here at Georgetown and has been working with the University of Manchester and so I'm in his place but I wanted to acknowledge him because he's not able to be here with us and he is a big missing piece of things this week and I just want to bring to the stage many of you know I encountered James Thompson's work first as a graduate student undergraduate and it changed my life and my way of thinking he's been doing incredible things as a sort of at the University of Manchester but we also know him he's a professor of applied theatre but through his work in place of war and long time work around artisan war zones and theatre and communities but his more recent work struck me as an important part of why we're here it's really really beautiful and moving work around performance and care and he's also looking at love so I want to bring to the stage Professor Thompson to talk about care Thank you very much Derek I am really sad not to have been introduced by our mutual friend and student at the University of Manchester called Asif and we obviously wish him well thank you so much for the invitation and I'm really honoured and humbled to be speaking in this opening session I was actually really delighted to be leaving the UK it might seem really strange but I was really really pleased to be leaving the hostile aggressive, divided and bitter atmosphere from my home country to come to this oasis that's British sarcasm I'm afraid but I am really pleased to be here and as many of you will know we live back at home in the UK in a context of an economic policy that has been called austerity and the origins of the word austerity quite simply just mean cruel and of course, austere is also an aesthetic category it also means ugly grim and artless so back home we're living in a time where being economically and socially cruel and artless is our official government policy and this is tied to a time of rabid individualism we're looking out for oneself self-interest, self-fulfillment individual success and so on and so on are the values guiding our society and this leads to disunity, to violence to a sense of entitlement to austere bloody, ugly walls now in light of this networking collaborative events where you come together for mutual support and learning and leaning on each other are more and more important and we shouldn't belittle the significance of being here connecting and meeting and making new friends there's three reasons for me first in a time of austere cruelty networks of solidarity, trust and care are vital to keep people strong, alive and safe but also in a hyper individualized world valuing interconnection interdependence and mutual acts of co-creation collaboration and support is in fact counter cultural and therefore saying I need others to survive and thrive is an act of resistance and finally because I would argue that the best acts of solidarity and care are in themselves artistic they have a craft an embodied skill and a sense of beauty they can be anti austere making friends connecting and holding on to people to create networks is an art practice a good mutually supportive interconnection is an art form it's noisy, fun celebratory, bright and colorful being here in the next few days we are making and sustaining quality relationships as an art making exercise a change of tack my interest in the idea of looking after each other as an art form came from an incident in 2011 when very sadly a number of my colleagues were killed in eastern Congo it's a long story for another time and there is no intention here to dishonor this incident in discussing it so briefly one outcome of this was that a Congolese colleague and friend called Antoine ended living with me and my family in the UK while he had an operation on his bullet wound to his elbow and there he went through a long process of recovery and recuperation in this time he developed an amazing relationship with a physiotherapist who coaxed his arm, his hand and fingers back to life my family and I both commented how the touch the tender care between them was an act of beauty there was a mutual attentiveness respect and attunement that was astounding and this then encouraged me to wonder why we had used a term from the arts to describe an act of care Antoine eventually returned to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and is now working there in the town of Avira in South Kivu in remembering Antoine and mourning those friends I've become interested in care and the ethics of care as an art form and I've been searching out examples of small and larger scale care which has an embodied crafted and aesthetic quality I have a hunch that the best acts of mutual solidarity affection whether between two individuals or between wider communities in struggle or in the way that people care for the environment their best are art forms themselves I've been searching for acts of artful care and careful art which I think are vital for both our survival and resistance to our deeply care less times beautiful care is an anti-austerity practice and this then returns me to my first opening point I'm really pleased to be here because I'm excited to meet people learn from different practices in cruel times artists in our smallest interactions need to think about the aesthetics of the relationships we build caring for each other is a craft we need to practice to provide respite and ultimately resistance to cruel careless and downright ugly times thank you thank you James we're moving to the final phase of this first session and it is sort of a going to provide a model and a segue for the activity that we're going to do in the second session in between which we will give you a break and so what we've done is we'll be participating in a kind of what we're calling hopeful encounters and these are pair conversations very much in the spirit of what James was just saying and what I think this whole session has gotten at I've come to be a big believer in the power of conversations that happen in pairs in one-to-one ways in different forms of those we have work we've been doing around a process called performing one another and this is kind of a variation on that so what we've done as many of you know for the next session there's a group of people who are present and attending who we've asked to be part of these two person hopeful encounter dialogues which we'll do in multiple spaces after our break and we'll explain and divide but we're going to model that process with our five lab fellows as a way both for you all to see a little bit more clearly what that looks like and to get to know them better incredible so we're going to bring two chairs to the stage um thank you guys um Michael and Vanya um and I think we're going to um because we're streaming we're even though we have and um so uh we can so nice to be here like see all of these things yeah okay and you'll introduce yourself quickly to us and then you'll have to come Faisal okay ready okay can you can you tell us who you are wait my name is Faisal I'm from Palestine oh we decided there's more questions before and we'll come back to this now we're jumping okay actually yeah it's hard to be hopeful sometimes but I think because I was ready for the other question so you know no it's like no no no seriously seriously what's giving me hope I think when I see people laughing and when I see a lot of smiles around because I feel we are communicate better when we laugh and we smile and personally what's giving me hope as Faisal like my new show was selected for Sundance woo so to develop it this year 2019 in July in Utah Utah I said right? so I'm very hopeful about that and I'm looking forward and yeah that's what gave me hope these days yeah that should ask the audience not me I don't know like you know sometimes sometimes it's like when you it was the show called Showtime from the front line it was a story about comedy club in Palestine with the British comedian Mark Thomas so it was a bit kind of I don't know if it's over or not but people were like breaking the stereotype of Palestinian like you know sometimes when you're here Palestine everybody expect yeah boom somewhere or you know there's always a story if you want to reflect that on you one minute I'm in the middle of like you know the audience boom one minute yeah so this is a that was the I lost the point but yeah so where we are showtime from the front line yeah this show what's made breaking the stereotype of Palestinian of who we are and we and that's yeah like you know doesn't have to be always about you know we are we are the bombs no we can we can be funny sometimes so that was the show 10 seconds 10 seconds what else can you what else can you my clown I'm a clown my clown can be helped yeah I will come from sure my name is I go by Lonnie I am a Polynesian West African theater maker I live in New York city right now to be here at the gathering specifically it's amazing this is sort of when I thought about going into theater when I was younger something like this it would have been above my wildest dreams something like the gathering where you know there's such a focus on like what is the art that we're trying that we make actually mean rather than like what is it is that what we do or what is you know so that's something that I'm really really grateful to see as a conversation that's growing now I'm happy to be a part of it right now what gives me hope is this current generation of people and I mean those who are younger than me I think the people who are coming out of high school right now who are going into their undergraduate programs are so much better than I feel like I was at demanding what they understand to be deserved um of them I think they I think are you a club? no but I think you know I think I I feel like I grew up in a time and I'm not you know I'm only a few years older but I feel like I grew up in a time where you got by being a minority who knew their place and who knew how to play the rules and who knew how to fit into certain spaces and I feel like I'm really humbled and inspired by people who are finding ways to live in these places where you know like I don't know any other West African Polynesian people but people who are finding ways to synthesize the places where they currently live and retain those as their own home spaces and also embracing the full complexity that is their own identities and I think that's something that's really amazing one minute yesterday you shared with me that you are this year you did a three show how does it feel like and you said every show is different how do you deal with that as a director as a director actually there's one of the shows is actually going to be performing here on Friday so you guys should all come and see it it's called Apologies to the Bengali Lady and it's written by a phenomenal phenomenal theater artist named Anya Banerjee and it's about Shakespeare's legacy in the Bengal region of India so that's super exciting and that's a shorter straight play that's about really complicated cultural issues the other play that I directed earlier this year was called Better and it was about addiction recovery and immersive theater experience which is another very different piece and it also had comedy and things like that another ten seconds so just using those two as an example I think what's helped me getting out of those is focusing on the specific point of that piece even though form wise they're different I think there's yeah but yeah I think focusing on what is that piece specifically trying to do has been my saving grace in terms of getting it last thing what did you hope also gives me hope and what gives me hope um beautiful from Cali, Colombia, South America 2017 I live in Louisville, Kentucky where I'm presenting my other certificate in African American theater my MFA in performance theater in University of Louisville Louisville Louisville where should I say the word we need anesthesia okay doing theater and performance I see the face of the people because I most of the time I feel how doing theater I can see how the people are thinking and connecting actually everybody here connecting and you know people can sit next to the other and like you can see in their faces like yes we are connected we are thinking the same thing we are building something we are feeling something it's the same thing do you think there are things that that theater can do that I know you do a lot of different things there are things specifically about theater that you think enable it to do things that maybe other art forms can excuse me there are things that you think theater can do that maybe other forms of art can't as well so what do you think is a short other thing that happened the first time I came to U.S. with a play we haven't seen when I smashed a plantain and take out a huge plantain chip and in that scene I bring my father who came in a wheelchair and at the end of the play we have a conversation there was a Bolivian girl who was watching the play and she talked about how we make her think about her parents and the food that she gets when she was a girl we start after that all the conversation moves about the food I love to cook I was good because theater in that moment moves the conversation to something that everybody knows and we feel comfortable talking about that just to build off of that your relationship with food is something that I think is beautiful and wonderful it says here Manuel loves to cook what is it about food that you feel also is something that's important for people when I am cooking it's like when I'm doing theater I have an idea but in the process usually I finish at the end I do something that I didn't know that I can do this is my idea about the play I want to direct that and at the end it's the other thing better than I thought okay I want to cook salmon tonight and I try to put this maybe I can put this mmm that's good can't do that how much time do you have ten seconds one more time it gives you hope you all this is space thank you I think Manuel and I belong together because he says I love to cook and I say I like homemade meals meant to be you can talk about that I have my first question can you talk hi everybody my name is Caitlin you're welcome to call me Kate my family calls me Kate you guys are family I am an actor and a theater maker currently based in New York City my work is really interested in the relationship between myth and science and when I'm not in New York I'm in various parts of the Middle East working there good my first question is why do you get to a bread place every morning of my life I eat the same thing I eat peanut butter on pita bread yeah it's really unglamorous and coffee of course what gives me hope what gives me hope is people who show up to the work with joy I'm thinking so much about how joy is often seen I think as less muscular than rage or for the uninformed there's a beautiful poem that I love it's called Mad Pharma Liberation Front by Wendell Berry and it says yeah some of you have read it it says be joyful though you have considered all the facts and so that is in my life it's something I'm working really hard to cultivate and I'm trying to surround myself with people like you who give me joy because I think that's what keeps us alive what keeps us energized what keeps us moving forward what reminds us that it is possible to carry on even when things feel like they're in crisis which they often do I'm doing a lot of work as well on the environment it feels like a never ending contention with grief and so to practice joy and to be around people who practice joy most days feels like the most revolutionary thing that I can do one minute last question talking about environment supposing metaphorically this is a campfire everybody doing something like a huge fire what do you bring to burn here and what do you hope to bring to burn beautiful question wow make and burn make and burn have a minute to think about this what do I hope to bring I hope to bring listening I'm trying to I'm gonna be a sponge I'm trying to be open this week and so I suppose maybe that's the thing I'm bringing and also taking but I don't know I guess I guess the thing I'm trying to burn is maybe joy that's my fuel there you go me thanks Manuel who are you what do you do hey my name is Davika Ranjan I am an Indian American I'm a theater maker I'm a teacher oh what brings you hope what gives you hope that was my answer I think they're similar right what brings me joy and what brings me hope I think they're connected and that's people and communities and surrounding myself right James Thompson just said we have people and we thrive and survive we have to have that and just listening to everybody today I'm feeling that hope Jason was talking about how the path has been forged and that made me feel very hopeful so I guess not only the communities that we're around right now but the communities who have come before us and who are still with us which was such a needed reminder today thank you is there a specific community in your life that is bringing you hope in this present it's the lab fellows yeah it's the lab fellows and it's sort of this extended community that we're going to have in these few days what a what a place to be in I'm so grateful to meet all of you who are doing the work that I wish for and that I kind of imagine and is beyond my imagining I'm so grateful I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the work you're doing there's a lot of work in particular around surveillance and migration and how are you finding ways to build communities particularly in places where people may feel like they don't have them surveillance is interesting because it sort of feels like we're watched and we're being seen as a community and it's the most unintended community isn't it but I have the absolute privilege of working with people who are displaced or have migrated as refugees as asylum seekers as immigrants of any kind and it's been a real joy to use theater as a way to bring people together people who have never done theater before who don't identify as actors or performers and it's been really amazing to forge communities in that way of people who come from such different places in the world and in their lives kind of uniting over these games like goofy things and food and that brings me a lot of hope when sometimes situations are really difficult thank you