Global Theater of the Girls: India
Global Theater of the Girls is an international arts program and an artistic entity in the making, which proposes to empower young women from underprivileged communities through live performance. Theater Between (under the name Global Theater for the Girls) is working in conjunction with Educate Girls Globally (EGG) and other similar organizations, to locate young women in global communities, often living a constrained life of cleaning, cooking, and tending siblings until married off at an early age, who wish to pursue creative self-expression and gives them the necessary training and platform for showing their work. During workshops and other cultural activities, the girls learn how to tell their own stories through acting, vocal and movement improvisation, and creative writing. Program's activities further the cause of women artists as vital to progress of any society, promoting equality and creative freedom of all its people while producing viable works of art for global dissemination.
The founding of Global Theater of the Girls is now in its first, exploratory phase. We begin it by mounting a multi-day, introductory workshop intensive in Rudrapur, India. There, we work with the girls from neighboring rural communities, previously selected for participation by the members of EGG. The workshop focuses on all of us getting to know one another through series of theatrical exercises designed to bypass barriers of difference. We play together and create together. During this time, the young women have an opportunity to explore a variety of expressive techniques so that they can express their intentions in performance and in life. Through engaging in this creative and embodied practice, we hope that the young women discover that the reality around them - just like the reality of the theater itself - is malleable and responsive to imagination and intent, rather than simply given by tradition and fate. This, in turn, may empower them to live an artistically informed and fully engaged life, which they get to shape as they see fit.
This introductory trip will take place from June 1 to June 14.
The second part of the project develops and deepens the ideas introduced in the first phase. It consists of an intensive 21-day workshop conducted in October 2017, during which the girls undergo performance training in improvisational and devised theater that results in mounting of a touring production for local communities and for future travels abroad.
A final word regarding the artistic integrity of the work: we wish to nurture the authenticity of the young women's expression while at the same time providing them with the highest achievable level of training that will culminate in the creation of a notable piece of stage work. We aim at both the honesty and rawness of communication as well as at the excellence of its formal presentation that makes use of many artistic techniques, from Realism to more abstract and/or symbolic styles. We realize that this is an ambitious goal and we hope to begin the process of its actualization in the near future and wherever we encounter girls seeking self-expression: in India, in the USA, and in any and all countries of the world.
The founding of Global Theater of the Girls is now in its first, exploratory phase. We begin it by mounting a multi-day, introductory workshop intensive in Rudrapur, India. There, we work with the girls from neighboring rural communities, previously selected for participation by the members of EGG. The workshop focuses on all of us getting to know one another through series of theatrical exercises designed to bypass barriers of difference. We play together and create together. During this time, the young women have an opportunity to explore a variety of expressive techniques so that they can express their intentions in performance and in life. Through engaging in this creative and embodied practice, we hope that the young women discover that the reality around them - just like the reality of the theater itself - is malleable and responsive to imagination and intent, rather than simply given by tradition and fate. This, in turn, may empower them to live an artistically informed and fully engaged life, which they get to shape as they see fit.
This introductory trip will take place from June 1 to June 14.
The second part of the project develops and deepens the ideas introduced in the first phase. It consists of an intensive 21-day workshop conducted in October 2017, during which the girls undergo performance training in improvisational and devised theater that results in mounting of a touring production for local communities and for future travels abroad.
A final word regarding the artistic integrity of the work: we wish to nurture the authenticity of the young women's expression while at the same time providing them with the highest achievable level of training that will culminate in the creation of a notable piece of stage work. We aim at both the honesty and rawness of communication as well as at the excellence of its formal presentation that makes use of many artistic techniques, from Realism to more abstract and/or symbolic styles. We realize that this is an ambitious goal and we hope to begin the process of its actualization in the near future and wherever we encounter girls seeking self-expression: in India, in the USA, and in any and all countries of the world.
Check out our Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the first leg of our journey
Thanks to all our generous donors!
Horace
Satyajit Shouche
Francesca Hampton
Mike Kass
Barbara Regis
Lesley Harris
Salima Cobb
Julie Oak
Santoshi Wagner-Anue
Our anonymous donors
Michele Rothkopf
John Kettles
Sue Groner
Lacey Friedman
Heather Ouida
Darlene Charneco
Andrea van de Loo
SKG
Biricim