Acting Together I: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict: Resistance and Reconciliation in Regions of Violence - Softcover

Cynthia Cohen is director of the program in Peacebuilding and the Arts at the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life at Brandeis University. In that role, she leads research and action partnerships, teaches at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and leads professional development workshops and institutes for practitioners. She is principal investigator in an on-going inquiry into Creative Approaches to Coexistence and Reconciliation and writes on the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of reconciliation. Since 2005, Cohen has worked in collaboration with Theatre Without Borders on Acting Together on the World Stage, a project that is culminating in an anthology, documentary, website and toolkit for practitioners. Cohen was the founding director of the Oral History Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has facilitated coexistence efforts involving participants from the Middle East, the U.S., Central America, and Sri Lanka. She holds a PhD in Education from the University of New Hampshire, a Master in City Planning from MIT, and a BA degree in Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University.

Roberto Gutiérrez Varea began his career in theater in his native city of Córdoba, Argentina. His research and creative work focuses on live performance as a means of resistance and peace-building, in the context of social conflict and state violence. Varea is the founding artistic director of Soapstone Theatre Company, a collective of male ex-offenders and women survivors of violent crime; El Teatro Jornalero!, a performance company that brings the voice of Latin American immigrant workers to the stage; and founding member of the San Francisco-based performance collective Secos & Mojados. He is Associate Editor of Peace Review, an international journal on peace and justice studies, and an associate professor and Chair of the University of San Francisco’s Performing Arts and Social Justice Program. He has over 25 years of credits as a playwright, dramaturg, producer, director, actor, and artistic director, and has won awards and honors for his work throughout his career. Varea holds a Bachelor of Arts in Drama and Psychology from California Lutheran University and a Master of Fine Arts, Theatre, Directing, and Latino Theatre from the University of California San Diego.

Polly O. Walker is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Queensland. She is principal investigator of a research project examining the role of memorial ceremonies in transforming conflict between Indigenous and Settler peoples in Australia and the United States. She is also collaborating with the Malvatumauri Council of Chiefs in Vanuatu on transformative justice processes related to illegal aspects of the labour trade in Queensland. Prior to this, Walker held the position of lecturer in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Unit at the University of Queensland, where her research focused on reconciliation and on the reduction of epistemic violence toward Indigenous peoples and their knowledge systems. Walker is of Cherokee and Settler descent and grew up in the traditional country of the Mescalero Apache. She holds a doctorate from the University of Queensland Brisbane, Australia, and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of New Mexico.

Acting Together places before us the human story unfolding. It invites us to penetrate through the mask to the source and the vibrating essence of voice on the journey to find our way back to humanity.
—John Paul Lederach, Professor of International Peacebuilding, University of Notre Dame

An invaluable resource for the community of practitioners, students, scholars, and activists who are interested in the role of the arts in overcoming the worst of contemporary violence, war, and disaster.
—James Thompson, Professor of Applied and Social Theatre, University of Manchester, England

Thanks to the courageous creativity of the theatre artists across the world who have been willing to share their practice, we in Northern Ireland have new tools to help us excavate our truths and our troubled pasts, to speak to them and to dare to envision a future where our broken world will be healed.
—Pauline Ross, Artistic Director, Derry Playhouse, Northern Ireland

This book opens even narrowly focused minds to understanding how our global capacity to dream, touch, dance, and feel is a power source, one able to move people from what they know to what they can know, from what they have been told or forced to be to what they can become.
—Dee L. Aker, Deputy Director, Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice, University of San Diego

This publication is long overdue and will serve theatre students, directors, foundations, community-based theatres, and artist-based theatres as a much-needed guide to the complex, multilayered world of intercultural performance and conflict resolution.
—Frank Hentschker, Executive Director, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, The CUNY Graduate Center

A significant addition to an emerging field of expertise—performance and conflict. It is difficult not to be inspired by the sheer diversity and versatility of the practices explored.
—Michael Balfour, Chair in Applied and Social Theatre, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia

Acting Together will shift perspectives and change lives. It could transform the trajectory of human conflicts.
—Dr. Michelle LeBaron, University of British Columbia School of Law, Canada


Acting Together volumes I and II and the feature-length documentary film, Acting Together on the World Stage, are projects of Peacebuilding and the Arts, a program of the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life at Brandeis University, in collaboration with Theatre Without Borders.

Stories, description, and analysis of peace-building performances in regions the world over affected by war, poverty, displacement, and oppression. Examples from Argentina, Peru, Serbia, Palestine, Uganda, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, India, Australia and the United States document performance s singular ability to mend tears in the fabric of community life rent by violence and exclusion. Performance s reliance on collaboration and communication makes it the ideal medium for resistance, remembrance, relationship building, re-imagining, and reconciliation