Acting Together, Volume ll, continues from where the first volume ends documenting exemplary peacebuilding performances in regions marked by social exclusion structural violence and dislocation. Acting Together: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict is a two-volume work describing peacebuilding performances in regions beset by violence and internal conflicts. Volume I, Resistance and Reconciliation in Regions of Violence, emphasizes the role theatre and ritual play both in the midst and in the aftermath of direct violence, while Volume II: Building Just and Inclusive Communities, focuses on the transformative power of performance in regions fractured by "subtler" forms of structural violence and social exclusion. Volume I: Resistance and Reconciliation in Regions of Violence focuses on the role theatre and ritual play both in the midst and in the aftermath of violence. The performances highlighted in this volume nourish and restore capacities for expression, communication, and transformative action, and creatively support communities in grappling with conflicting moral imperatives surrounding questions of justice, memory, resistance, and identity. The individual chapters, written by scholars, conflict resolution practitioners, and artists who work directly with the communities involved, offer vivid firsthand accounts and analyses of traditional and nontraditional performances in Serbia, Uganda, Sri Lanka, Palestine, Israel, Argentina, Peru, India, Cambodia, Australia, and the United States. Complemented by a website of related materials, a documentary film, Acting Together on the World Stage, that features clips and interviews with the curators and artists, and a toolkit, or "Tools for Continuing the Conversation," that is included with the documentary as a second disc, this book will inform and inspire socially engaged artists, cultural workers, peacebuilding scholars and practitioners, human rights activists, students of peace and justice studies, and whoever wishes to better understand conflict and the power of art to bring about social change. The Acting Together project is born of a collaboration between Theatre Without Borders and the Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts at the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life at Brandeis University. The two volumes are edited by Cynthia E. Cohen, director of the aforementioned program and a leading figure in creative approaches to coexistence and reconciliation; Roberto Gutierrez Varea, an award-winning director and associate professor at the University of San Francisco; and Polly O. Walker, director of Partners in Peace, an NGO based in Brisbane, Australia.
Cynthia E. Cohen is director of the Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts at the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life at Brandeis University. Roberto Gutierrez Varea began his career in theater in his native Argentina. His research and creative work focuses on live performance as means of resistance and peacebuilding, in the context of social conflict and state violence. Polly O. Walker is assistant professor of peace and conflict studies at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. She is director of Partners in Peacebuilding, a private consulting organization based in Brisbane, Australia, and lectures widely on intercultural conflict resolution.
"Humanity [has the] capacity to inflict great suffering and unfathomable misfortune. Yet art and, as we see in this work, theatre in particular, can show us that there is a greater force in creativity and a greater power in solidarity. It is in instances like these that art is not just contemplation and transcendence, but also a form of justice that cleanses and vindicates our species in a universal way." -- Dr. Salomon Lerner Febres, former President, Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Peru "This book gives Shakespeare's "All the world's a stage" new meaning. Experts in foreign policy and diplomacy, conflict resolution and peacemaking, as well as theatre and performance professionals, can learn from these extraordinary examples what theatre and performance can do to heal the wounds of violent conflict." -- Ambassador Cynthia Schneider, PhD, Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University "In Volume II of Acting Together, editors Cynthia E. Cohen, Roberto Gutierrez Varea, and Polly O. Walker present vigorous case studies on the use of performance to create just and inclusive communities. 'In situations characterized by structural violence, exclusion, and social injustice, building peace involves more than ending violent conflict,' they write. In the aftermath of violence, structures to pursue justice and negotiate differences must be put in place. Silenced voices must be heard." -- Jean Randich, Truthdig "Political and social failures begin and end in failures of imagination. Acting Together invites a major renewal of the dramatic imagination for the sake of social healing and understanding. The project is itself an exemplar of the engaged imagination set free, a celebration and a challenge at once." -- James Carroll, columnist and author, Jerusalem, Jerusalem
