This was posted on my facebook wall. Just another reason why I love Rachel Maddow...

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From the blog:
http://dancingperfectlyfree.com/2009/08/10/rachel-maddow-on-dance-art-and-society/

Here’s another reason to love Rachel Maddow: this past Saturday at a free, outdoor PillowTalk hosted by Jacob’s Pillow, the popular television host, radio personality, and political commentator discussed the role that the arts play in our lives and society as a whole. In her characteristically smart, articulate, and witty manner, Maddow shared her thoughts on the importance of the arts and arts education while engaging in a discussion with the talk’s moderator, the Pillow’s Scholar-in-Residence Suzanne Carbonneau. But, Maddow started by boldly stating that she’s not a dance expert, just an appreciator: “I know nothing about dance. I am a fan. I am a fan of dance and of Jacob’s Pillow and a fan of people who know nothing about dance going to see dance.” Here are a few more of Maddow’s statements from the event:

“Sometimes we choose to serve our country in uniform, in war. Sometimes in elected office. And those are the ways of serving our country that I think we are trained to easily call heroic. It’s also a service to your country, I think, to teach poetry in the prisons, to be an incredibly dedicated student of dance, to fight for funding music and arts education in the schools. A country without an expectation of minimal artistic literacy, without a basic structure by which the artists among us can be awakened and given the choice of following their talents and a way to get to be great at what they do, is a country that is not actually as great as it could be. And a country without the capacity to nurture artistic greatness is not being a great country. It is a service to our country, and sometimes it is heroic service to our country, to fight for the United States of America to have the capacity to nurture artistic greatness.”

“Not just in wartime but especially in wartime, and not just in hard economic times but especially in hard economic times, the arts get dismissed as ‘sissy’. Dance gets dismissed as craft, creativity gets dismissed as inessential, to the detriment of our country. And so when we fight for dance, when we buy art that’s made by living American artists, when we say that even when you cut education to the bone, you do not cut arts and music education, because arts and music education IS bone, it is structural, it is essential; you are, in [Jacob’s Pillow founder] Ted Shawn’s words, you are preserving the way of life that we are supposedly fighting for and it’s worth being proud of.” -Rachel Maddow

Before We All Have A Beer
By Anna Deavere Smith
From Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anna-deavere-smith/before-we-all-have-a-beer_b_248245.html


Will we all be having a beer tonight? As soon as the first stones from the edifice of post-racialism began to tumble, the media labeled the conversations of excited onlookers as "a heated national debate about race." That suggests to me that Professor Gates, Officer Crowley and President Obama haven't been the only ones talking. We've all been involved. Maybe theirs won't be the only beer. Will the media folk be raising a toast, for example about a story well told? A word of caution before the wrecking team slaps high fives over their own cold beers in newsrooms, blog rooms, chat rooms, radio stations etc, and erupts in a national "Way da go!" If "way da go" means we have a long way to go, I'd take a suds too. If it means "job well done", the job's hardly begun.

Now that the alarm bell has sounded, some people will address their daily work with a stronger resolve to include race work. Undoubtedly there are teachers planning curricula for next year who are thinking of ways at all grade levels to revise their plans to include histories, books, works of art, activities that take race seriously. Perhaps there are foundations, even hard hit as many are by the economy, who are thinking of ways to include new initiatives into their portfolios. Perhaps cultural institutions will take another look at themselves and ponder why, after fifty years of movements to democratize art and art making, their leadership is not more diverse. There are many practical ways that we can do race work, not just race talk in our daily lives. But should we go back to work the same way as before?

Charles Blow, in a New York Times op-ed, during the flurry of media attention on Gates/Crowley aptly referred to a "club" that many black men are required to join usually, but not always when they are young. I remember a very affluent black woman executive telling me about how she and her husband would prepare their young son for "the club". They decided that he could not get a driver's license until he had passed their tests of what he would do if pulled over by the police. This "other" license test is well known among many black parents. As his mother described the boy and what his life was like, I imagined the young man cuffed and straddled wearing tennis whites beside their fancy car. As the nation has heard this week, these stories are well known to blacks. This time the audience was broader and more attentive for many reasons well documented.

I had my own induction into the club. I get nervous around police officers. Even, after, as an actress, portraying two notable ones on stage - in their own words - in one of my plays - Police Chief Daryl Gates of Los Angeles fame and Theodore Brisenio, one of the officers who beat Rodney King. In fact, despite the many in law enforcement I have interviewed, I have not become more familiar in my feeling towards people in uniform with guns. When I did have a confrontation with the police, I was not at all prepared for what happened. And that's the danger. None of us of any color can afford to be unprepared. When it happens it is very very real.

Listen to this scenario:
I was living in Georgetown while doing some research for a project in Washington. I lived there off and on for five years. It was a stunning property - a town house with a large garden. My hosts were a Republican Congressman and warm liberal Democrat - his wife. Their hospitality was beyond beyond. One night on a weekend, when my hosts were out of town, I came back to the house and found that the front door was locked by bolt on the inside. I could not open the door. I looked up at the house and noticed lights on that were never on. I went through the garden door and into the basement of the house - terrified about what I might find - but nonetheless optimistic that as the lights were on the uppermost floor, that I could successfully call the police from the kitchen phone, the kitchen being as in those old houses, in the basement. I called 911. Immediately, in less than ten minutes I heard police arriving. I went out into the garden and opened the garden door to meet them and tell them what was going on. I found myself surrounded by about twelve police officers, men and women. In the fog of my fear, I saw what I thought were at least three races: white, Latino, and black. Perhaps there were more. Their guns were drawn. I was in a semi circle of guns pointing at me. What in my life and education would have prepared me for what to do? They began to shout in unison and at the top of their lungs "Get back! Get back! Get back!". I began to explain that I was the one who called. I assume that I look and sound like an educated person -at least I'm usually cast that way in movies and television shows. I was conservatively dressed - I had been interviewing political types that day. I tried to explain again - they charged closer and got louder. Suddenly my mind clicked to an interview I had done of a police officer, and trainer of officers in Oakland California. I saw him in my mind's eye and remembered his words about how - when police come into a home they accelerate from making noise - that is breaking down a door, charging in and yelling - to using force. I realized that my reasoning with them was not working because they were screaming 'GET BACK", and I was moving forward. I stepped back into the garden. When it was over, and I was terrified at what had happened I began to wonder what their story would have been if they'd shot me. Would they have shot to injure, or would they have shot to kill, in an effort to both protect property - and supposedly their lives. I was not armed. Where could this have gone - and mostly what would be their version of the story? I do not think this would have happened to a white woman in Georgetown.

At the risk of being misunderstood as dismissing the particularness and the seriousness of what happened to Professor Gates, by saying it happens to whites too, let me ask you to listen to this:
Phoenix, Arizona: I spoke to a middle class white woman - an executive in a well known national non-profit who was stopped for drunk driving just as she was leaving the parking lot of a bar after a happy hour event with people from her office. Her alcohol level was slightly above what is allowed in Arizona. The police were being rougher with her than her boyfriend thought was necessary. He intervened. He had been drinking in the bar too, but he was not driving. The officers immediately threw him onto the ground with such force that she thought for sure his head would crack open. They threw handcuffs on him. When he would not agree to a sobriety test, arguing that he was not driving - they threw him into the police car and took him to a hospital. In an open ward, they strapped him to a gurney, and catheterized him to take urine. When he screamed out in pain - the white officer said to him, in the presence of his colleague, a black officer, "Stop acting like a nigger."

The woman was sentenced to go to Sherriff Arpaio's "tent city" jail. She acknowledged throughout her talk with me that she was wrong wrong wrong to drive under the influence regardless of how few hundredths of a percentage her blood was above the acceptable level. Arpaio's jail is fashioned after what he says soldiers can endure in Iraq. It is a series of tents in hot sun, or cold nights. Whatever the weather in Phoenix provides. The inmates wear striped uniforms and pink underwear in case they try to escape and in doing so take off their uniforms. There is a large neon VACANCIES sign over the jail. One would gawk at the theater of many aspects of the sheriff's policing if it weren't so serious. Her boyfriend was traumatized and the relationship ended.

Again, I don't say all this to simply imply that injustices happen to women of all colors and that injustices happen to whites. I say it to bring our attention to the fact that policing changes all the time. But do we track the changes and how they affect us? Can we afford to just sit back and allow the police to "protect" and "serve"? Should we revive community activism that was alive in the sixties?

But this teachable moment has been framed by the media as more than a moment about policing. It is supposedly about "race." The teachable moment taught us perhaps to look more closely. We sat forward with an intense gaze because neither Professor Gates nor Sergeant Crowley were stereotypes. Ironic that the most shown photograph of Professor Gates in handcuffs looked to be a black and white photo and therefore especially reminiscent of the civil rights movement. And of course the moment would never have become teachable without the teacher - and I don't mean Professor Gates, I mean the President. His cameo performance was flawless, elegant theater. I say that as a high compliment - being a person who studies real life to make theater richer. The teachable moment has caused us to look closely but it has not yet taught us to look more broadly.

As we feel the heat ease off of the national debate let's bring our awareness to the racial tinderboxes of many kinds all over the country. A hot, as in energized, national debate about "race" will cause us to realize that we can pay attention to more than one narrative at once. To name a few -- women, their vulnerability both economically and to the criminal justice system -- the rates of women and young women who are incarcerated has increased exponentially in the last two decades; juveniles and disparities about how they are treated in the courts and in schools; Muslim Americans post-9/11; immigration reform... the list goes on and on.
As others have suggested, there are many ways to work towards ensuring a healthier justice system. Just as health care is about preventative activities and wellness, justice is about preventative activity and equity in all areas of society. There is a lot of concrete work to do. A lot that ends up in the courts or in hands of the police would not, if our public institutions were healthier. This would include cultural institutions too.

Students and practitioners of race relations need to acquaint themselves with all varieties of racial tinder boxes and racial tinder boxes waiting to happen due to crumbling institutions. Not for the sake of only enriching their own tinderbox, but for the sake of enriching America and preparing for leadership in a diverse global community. One of our president's greatest gifts is displayed in how he fashioned his own life to be a true reach across cultures. We should learn from him about the effort, determination, imagination and desire it took and takes to make that reach- even as he manages to portray ease.

What concerns me about the "heated debate" is that as radio hosts and guests talk, I hear the same kind of language that I heard -- and studied -- in the '90s. Talk of "safe places to have conversations," for example. That's not what we need right now. This is not about conversations and "learning about one another." We don't need salons. We need initiatives and resources to spark the work of building a stronger society, one with public spaces that allow for shared excellence. The clock is ticking on affirmative action. Six years down -- not so much of a long way da go, on the clock.

Several colleagues from grad school and the Arts Politics program at NYU founded a new and groundbreaking magazine called "The Arts Politic", dedicated to solving problems at the intersection of arts and politics. Check it out at:
http://theartspolitic.com/ . You can read it online and order the hard copy "Economy Issue" (#1) at: http://theartspolitic.com/magazine/issue-1/ .

Commentary: War on women in Congo

Editor's note: Eve Ensler is the playwright of "The Vagina Monologues" and the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls. V-Day has funded over 10,000 community-based anti-violence programs and launched safe houses in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Kenya, South Dakota, Egypt and Iraq. This commentary was adapted from remarks Ensler made Wednesday to the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs and the Subcommittee on International Operations and Organizations, Human Rights, Democracy and Global Women's Issues. Playwright Eve Ensler says conflict in Congo is taking a terrible toll on women and girls.

(CNN) -- I write today on behalf of countless V-Day activists worldwide, and in solidarity with my many Congolese sisters and brothers who demand justice and an end to rape and war. It is my hope that these words and those of others will break the silence and break open a sea of action to move Congolese women toward peace, safety and freedom.My play, "The Vagina Monologues," opened my eyes to the world inside this world. Everywhere I traveled with it scores of women lined up to tell me of their rapes, incest, beatings, mutilations. It was because of this that over 11 years ago we launched V-Day, a worldwide movement to end violence against women and girls. The movement has spread like wildfire to 130 countries, raising $70 million. I have visited and revisited the rape mines of the world, from defined war zones like Bosnia, Afghanistan and Haiti to the domestic battlegrounds in colleges and communities throughout North America, Europe and the world. My in-box -- and heart -- have been jammed with stories every hour of every day for over a decade.

Nothing I have heard or seen compares with what is going on in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where corporate greed, fueled by capitalist consumption, and the rape of women have merged into a single nightmare. Femicide, the systematic and planned destruction of the female population, is being used as a tactic of war to clear villages, pillage mines and destroy the fabric of Congolese society.In 12 years, there have been 6 million dead men and women in Congo and 1.4 million people displaced. Hundreds and thousands of women and girls have been raped and tortured. Babies as young as 6 months, women as old as 80, their insides torn apart. What I witnessed in Congo has shattered and changed me forever. I will never be the same. None of us should ever be the same.I think of Beatrice, shot in her vagina, who now has tubes instead of organs. Honorata, raped by gangs as she was tied upside down to a wheel. Noella, who is my heart -- an 8-year-old girl who was held for 2 weeks as groups of grown men raped her over and over. Now she has a fistula, causing her to urinate and defecate on herself. Now she lives in humiliation.

I was in Bosnia during the war in 1994 when it was discovered there were rape camps where white women were being raped. Within two years there was adequate intervention. Yet, in Congo, femicide has continued for 12 years. Why? Is it that coltan, the mineral that keeps our cell phones and computers in play, is more important than Congolese girls?Is it flat-out racism, the world's utter indifference and disregard for black people and black women in particular? Is it simply that the UN and most governments are run by men who have never known what it feels like to be raped?

What is happening in Congo is the most brutal and rampant violence toward women in the world. If it continues to go unchecked, if there continues to be complete impunity, it sets a precedent, it expands the boundaries of what is permissible to do to women's bodies in the name of exploitation and greed everywhere. It's cheap warfare.The women in Congo are some of the most resilient women in the world. They need our protection and support. Western governments, like the United States, should fund a training program for female Congolese police officers.They should address our role in plundering minerals and demand that companies trace the routes of these minerals. Make sure they are making and selling rape-free-products. Supply funds for women's medical and psychological care and seed their economic empowerment. Put pressure on Rwanda, Congo, Uganda and other countries in the Great Lakes region to sit down with all the militias involved in this conflict to find a political solution.Military solutions are no longer an option and will only bring about more rape. Most of all, we must support the women.

Because women are at the center of this horror, they must be at the center of the solutions and peace negotiations. Women are the future of Congo. They are its greatest resource.Sadly, we are not the first to testify about these atrocities in Congo. I stand in a line of many who have described this horror. Still, in Eastern Congo, 1,100 women a month are raped, according to the United Nations' most recent report. What will the United States government, what will all of you reading this, do to stop it?Let Congo be the place where we ended femicide, the trend that is madly eviscerating this planet -- from the floggings in Pakistan, the new rape laws in Afghanistan, the ongoing rapes in Haiti, Darfur, Zimbabwe, the daily battering, incest, harassing, trafficking, enslaving, genital cutting and honor killing. Let Congo be the place where women were finally cherished and life affirmed, where the humiliation and subjugation ended, where women took their rightful agency over their bodies and land.

This statement about the death of Augusto Boal was released by the Center for the Theater of the Oppressed in Rio de Janeiro. It was written by Bárbara Santos on behalf of the CTO-Rio. I have copied it from Robby's blog... http://reconsider59.tumblr.com/ .

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Brothers and sisters in arms, companions in the struggle. Our beloved comrade Augusto Boal, that tireless sower of seeds, whotravelled the four corners of the earth scattering the seed of theTheatre of the Oppressed, is on yet another journey. He set off in the early hours of the second of May. He spent the First of May, May Day, in a vigil of solidarity with the workers fighting for a fairer and happier world, a world of solidarity. He set off on this special journey, for which reason he was not able to be physcially present at any event. But, as was his habit, he lived, loved and worked to the last drop of his energy, leaving ready (for publication) the new version of his book, The Aesthetics of theOppressed. He also left express instructions that no event should be cancelled because of his absence. “Isnt that the very point of Multiplication?”

Yesterday, on the third of May, we held a farewell ceremony. The cremation of his body marked the start of a new phase of the Theatre of theOppressed, in the physical absence of the Master himself. We wept, we talked, we sang. Celse Frateschi recited, beautifully, a passage from*Arena Conta Zumbi*. We sang a song written by Nuno Arcanjo. And CeciliaBoal, with all her strength and vitality, told the world that her husband should be remembered as the warrior that he always was. We dried our tears and affirmed Boal’s leaving.His body has gone, but not his presence! This Saturday, the 9th of May,from 5 pm to 8 pm (Brazilian time), we will pay homage to him and his presence at the Centre of the Theatre of the Oppressed with music, poems, performances and videos. At 7 pm we stop for a moment of tribute in Boal’s honor. We will celebrate the life, the struggle, the productivity, the work of Augusto Boal and the continuity of that work. We ask that everybody do same as us, and pay homage to him this Saturday. It will not be easy to follow our Master, Partner, Friend and Comrade in the Struggle. But what has ever been easy in the trajectory of the Theatre of the Oppressed? Ethics and Solidarity will be our foundations and our guides. Multiplication will be our strategy. And our goal will remain the same: to create concrete social actions to transform oppressive situations into realities of peace and justice.Viva Augusto Boal!

Barbara Santos, 4 May 2009 Centre of the Theatre of the Oppressed, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

Theatre of the Oppressed Founder Augusto Boal Dies at 78

Legendary political theater practitioner, director, and teacher Augusto Boal died on May 1, from complications arising from a long-term health condition, according to the The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory in New York City. He was 78.

Boal is best known for founding the Theatre of the Oppressed, an international movement and system for creating theater that seeks to examine forms of discrimination and oppression, with the goal of possible transformation. He conducted workshops throughout the world, and his techniques have been widely inspirational and influential.

Boal authored several books, including Theatre of the Oppressed, Games for Actors and Non-Actors, The Rainbow of Desire, and Legislative Theatre. He served as a Member of Parliament for Rio de Janeiro in the 1990s and was formerly the President of the Centre of Theatre of the Oppressed in Rio de Janeiro and Paris.

World Theater Day Message
by Augusto Boal

All human societies are "spectacular" in their daily life and produce
"spectacles" at special moments. They are "spectacular" as a form of
social organization and produce "spectacles" like the one you have come to
see.

Even if one is unaware of it, human relationships are structured in a
theatrical way. The use of space, body language, choice of words and voice
modulation, the confrontation of ideas and passions, everything that we
demonstrate on the stage, we live in our lives. We are theater!

Weddings and funerals are "spectacles", but so, also, are daily rituals so
familiar that we are not conscious of this. Occasions of pom
p and circumstance, but also the morning coffee, the exchanged good-mornings,
timid love and storms of passion, a senate session or a diplomatic meeting
--all is theater.

One of the main functions of our art is to make people sensitive to the
"spectacles" of daily life in which the actors are their own spectators,
performances in which the stage and the stalls coincide. We are all
artists. By doing theater, we learn to see what is obvious but what we
usually can't see because we are only used to looking at it. What is
familiar to us becomes unseen: doing theater throws light on the stage of
daily life.

Last September, we were surprised by a theatrical revelation: we, who
thought that we were living in a safe world, despite wars, genocide,
slaughter and torture which certainly exist, but far from us in remote and
wild places. We, who were living in security with our money invested in
some respectable bank or in some honest trader's hands in the stock
exchange were told that this money did not exist, that it was virtual, a
fictitious invention by some economists who were not fictitious at all and
neither reliable nor respectable. Everything was just bad theater, a dark
plot in which a few people won a lot and many people lost all. Some
politicians from rich countries held secret meetings in which they found
some magic solutions. And we, the victims of their decisions, have
remained spectators in the last row of the balcony.

Twenty years ago, I staged Racine's Phèdre in Rio de Janeiro. The stage
setting was poor: cow skins on the ground, bamboos around. Before each
presentation, I used to say to my actors: "The fiction we created day by
day is over. When you cross those bamboos, none of you will have the right
to lie. Theater is the Hidden Truth".

When we look beyond appearances, we see oppressors and oppressed people,
in all societies, ethnic groups, genders, social classes and casts; we see
an unfair and cruel world. We have to create another world because we know
it is possible. But it is up to us to build this other world with our
hands and by acting on the stage and in our own life.

Participate in the "spectacle" which is about to begin and once you are
back home, with your friends act your own plays and look at what you were
never able to see: that which is obvious. Theater is not just an event; it
is a way of life!

We are all actors: being a citizen is not living in society, it is
changing it.


Dia Mundial de Teatro - 27 Março, 2009
Augusto Boal

Todas as sociedades humanas são espetaculares no seu cotidiano, e produzem
espetáculos em momentos especiais. São espetaculares como forma de
organização=2 0social, e produzem espetáculos como este que vocês vieram ver.

Mesmo quando inconscientes, as relações humanas são estruturadas em forma
teatral: o uso do espaço, a linguagem do corpo, a escolha das palavras e a
modulação das vozes, o confronto de idéias e paixões, tudo que fazemos no
palco fazemos sempre em nossas vidas: nós somos teatro!

Não só casamentos e funerais são espetáculos, mas também os rituais
cotidianos que, por sua familiaridade, não nos chegam à consciência. Não
só pompas, mas também o café da manhã e os bons-dias, tímidos namoros e
grandes conflitos passionais, uma sessão do Senado ou uma reunião
diplomática--tudo é teatro.

Uma das principais funções da nossa arte é tornar conscientes esses
espetáculos da vida diária onde os atores são os próprios espectadores, o
palco é a platéia e a platéia, palco. Somos todos artistas: fazendo
teatro, aprendemos a ver aquilo que nos salta aos olhos, mas que somos
incapazes de ver tão habituados estamos apenas a olhar. O que nos é
familiar torna-se invisível: fazer teatro, ao contrário, ilumina o palco
da nossa vida cotidiana.

Em Setembro do ano passado fomos surpreendidos por uma revelação teatral:
nós, que pensávamos viver em um mundo seguro apesar das guerras, genocídios, hecatombes e torturas que aconteciam, sim, mas longe de nós em países distantes e selvagens, nós vivíamos seguros com nosso dinheiro guardado em um banco respeitável ou nas mãos de um honesto corretor da Bolsa--nós fomos informados de que esse dinheiro não existia, era virtual,
feia ficção de alguns economistas que não eram ficção, nem eram seguros,
nem respeitáveis. Tudo não passava de mau teatro com triste enredo, onde
poucos ganhavam muito e muitos perdiam tudo. Políticos dos países ricos
fecharam-se em reuniões secretas e de lá saíram com soluções mágicas. Nós,
vítimas de suas decisões, continuamos espectadores sentados na última fila
das galerias.

Vinte anos atrás, eu dirigi Fedra de Racine, no Rio de Janeiro. O cenário
era pobre; no chão, peles de vaca; em volta, bambus. Antes de começar o
espetáculo, eu dizia aos meus atores: "Agora acabou a ficção que fazemos
no dia-a-dia. Quando cruzarem esses bambus, lá no palco, nenhum de vocês
tem o direito de mentir. Teatro é a Verdade Escondida".

Vendo o mundo além das aparências, vemos opressores e oprimidos em todas
as sociedades, etnias, gêneros, classes e castas, vemos o mundo injusto e
cruel. Temos a obrigaç o de inventar outro mundo porque sabemos que outro
mundo é possível. Mas cabe a nós construílo com nossas mãos entrando em
cena, no palco e na vida.

Assistam ao espetáculo que vai começar; depois, em suas casas com seus
amigos, façam suas peças vocês mesmos e vejam o que jamais puderam ver:
aquilo que salta aos olhos. Teatro não pode ser apenas um evento--é forma
de vida!

Atores somos todos nós, e cidadão não é aquele que vive em sociedade: é
aquele que a transforma!

Some fantastic information on where the Presidential candidates stand on the Arts from "The Fund for Women Artists". I would copy and paste it in here but it's better to just click on the link.


http://www.womenarts.org/news/september2008news.htm#policies